Grade: D

This review contains spoilers of the new “The Dark Knight Rises” prologue featured before “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.”

This past Friday I ventured all the way to the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan with the sole purpose of seeing the prologue to the “The Dark Knight Rises,” due out Summer 2012.

Man was I excited to see it. The prologue that was featured before “I Am Legend” back in 2007 got everyone I knew including myself pumped for “The Dark Knight.”

But this time I’ve gotta say it was very disappointing.

It was just six minutes of the opening to the new movie and it features the new protagonist Bane, played by Tom Hardy, as he kidnaps a scientist, whose name escapes me at the moment, from American government agents. This scientist is apparently very important to Bane and most likely deals with the device that is permanently attached to his face.

While the prologue features a very spectacular stunt the whole thing is overshadowed by the fact that you can barely hear a word Bane says. Its apparent that the mask he wears alters his voice but it does so so much that it’s nearly impossible to hear what he has to say. My hopes are that they perform some additional dialogue recording to make Bane’s dialogue clearer.

The prologue just didn’t have that shock and awe mystery that The Dark Knight one had. The end featured some interesting short clips however. One of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, a stunt scene featuring the “Batwing,” and one of Bane walking through the rain holding a piece of Batman’s shattered cowl, which was supposed to be a fan boys dream. But if they really wanted to make fan boys shriek like little girls they probably should’ve had Bane holding Batman over his head just as he’s about to break his back on his knee, as he does in the comic books.

Don’t get me wrong I still can’t wait for “The Dark Knight Rises” and hope it lives up to the expectations of fans and critics everywhere, I mean it’s got a lot to live up to following the third highest grossing film in U.S. history.