'The Dark Knight Rises' teaser poster debuts online

The first teaser poster for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" has hit the net, featuring a crumbling Gotham creating the famed symbol of Batman.

The film will be released July 20, 2012.

It is an interesting motif, and rather reminiscent of limbo in Nolan's "Inception." Other than the fact that we know the third film in the director's Batman trilogy adds Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Anne Hathaway, "Love and Other Drugs") and Bane (Tom Hardy, "Inception") as the major villains, little has been revealed about the story.

An open casting call for the film described "a city besieged by crime and corruption," which could explain a symbolic reason for the crumbling city in the poster. A less likely answer could be that it is referring to the No Man's Land arc in which Gotham is struck by a massive earthquake and left to fend for itself by the federal government.

In the comics, Bane orchestrates a mass breakout of Arkham Asylum as part of his quest to wear down Batman and take him out, a feat he ultimately succeeds at. This would fit the viral marketing which has appeared online describing a prison break.