The first reviews for Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Batman trilogy topper The Dark Knight Rises have begun to appear online, and we’ve rounded up what all of the top critics are saying!

With the embargo lifted, every movie outlet and their aunts are rushing to share their thoughts with anyone who will listen. And while it’s early days, responses so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Not only does the film currently hold a 100% Fresh rating (based on 11 reviews) over at Rotten Tomatoes, but an overwhelming amount of reviewers are giving it five stars and some are even lauding it as the best film in Nolan’s trilogy. Check out our favourite thoughts from some of Hollywood’s top critics below. Readers are advised that some of the below excerpts may contain mild plot spoilers.

Empire – Five stars

“Dedicated fans of the comic books are unlikely to feel surprised by many story twists here, but that’s no surprise in itself given the DC icon’s extensive history. Another story strand feels a little familiar and may unconsciously reflect the director’s love of Bond (please, God, let him and Bale one day deliver 007), but it’s ideas, not schematics, that you will be mulling over afterwards. What’s impressive is how Nolan, his fellow story wrangler David S. Goyer and co-screenwriter Jonathan Nolan have found a way to bring their Bat-cycle full circle without coasting — instead touching on our world within a comic-book context.”

The Hollywood Reporter – No star rating awarded

“The director daringly pushes the credibility of a Gotham City besieged by nuclear-armed revolutionaries to such an extent that it momentarily seems absurd that a guy in a costume who refuses to kill people could conceivably show up to save the day. This is especially true since Nolan, probably more than any other filmmaker who’s ever gotten seriously involved with a superhero character, has gone so far to unmask and debilitate such a figure. But he gets away with it and, unlike some interludes in the previous films, everything here is lucid, to the point and on the mark, richly filling out (especially when seen in the IMAX format) every moment of the 164-minute running time.”

Total Film – Five stars

“There’s also a rumbling return for the Tumbler(s), plus magnificent flying machine The Bat. Fanciful but functional, the latter’s a winged symbol of what’s best about Nolan’s Bat-verse: the intelligently heightened realism that lets us buy the idea of a city enslaved by a half-naked muscle-man in an S&M mask. Particularly when he’s played by Tom Hardy, whose Bane is a virile mix of brawn, brains and Brian Blessed (those filtered vocals proving mostly legible).

“A bit camp? Wait till you see the fists of fury he lays on Bats in the film’s smarting centrepiece.

“The other new recruit from the costumed canon, Anne Hathaway’s cat-burglar Selina Kyle (never referred to as Catwoman, unless our ears deceive us), also strays from kitsch. She’s a bundle of spiky fun though – not a tragic misfit a la Michelle Pfeiffer, but a wily grifter nuanced enough in Hathaway’s hands not to seem like she’s just there to add a sexual frisson. Though she does that, too.”

Time Out – Four stars

“As in the previous films, Nolan and his co-writer, his brother Jonathan, draw on real-world issues to spice up the fantasy, and with dubious results: with its rampaging Occupy Gotham anarchists, philanthropic billionaires and decent cops who ignore due process, this is so staunchly right-wing it’ll thrill all those Fox News anchors outraged by ‘The Muppets’.

“But when the Bat flies, such considerations go out the window. Sublimating CGI in favour of real crowd scenes and massive cityscapes, Nolan creates a grand, dirty, engrossing world, and his action sequences just hum. The way the various strands tie up is a mite predictable, but it’s satisfying nonetheless.”

Variety – No star rating awarded

“Few blockbusters have borne so heavy a burden of audience expectation as Christopher Nolan’s final Batman caper, and the filmmaker steps up to the occasion with a cataclysmic vision of Gotham City under siege in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Running an exhilarating, exhausting 164 minutes, Nolan’s trilogy-capping epic sends Batman to a literal pit of despair, restoring him to the core of a legend that questions, and powerfully affirms, the need for heroism in a fallen world. If it never quite matches the brilliance of 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” this hugely ambitious action-drama nonetheless retains the moral urgency and serious-minded pulp instincts that have made the Warners franchise a beacon of integrity in an increasingly comicbook-driven Hollywood universe. Global B.O. domination awaits.”

Have the critics’ opinions upped your expectations for the final entry, or will it never be able to rise above the heights of The Dark Knight?