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The highly anticipated film The Dark Knight Rises has somehow managed to surpass expectations to become a fittingly epic conclusion to arguably the best superhero series in cinematic history. This most recent Christopher Nolan installment sets an exhaustively dark and dreary tone. As the saying goes, “The sweet is never as sweet without the sour, ” and Nolan spends much of the film embroiled in the “sour ” to drive home a particularly poignant and eloquent message about the “sweet.” The “sweet ” relates to the positive psychology character strength of hope, as The Dark Knight Rises offers a sophisticated commentary on this psychological variable, which merges with current psychological research to teach us much about its nature and effects. Hope becomes a prominent weapon in Bruce/Batman’s armory, a notion foreshadowed by a setup in The Dark Knight that established a profound sense of hopelessness. The Dark Knight Rises begins eight years later. Bruce/Batman is now a cast-out, discarded recluse—physically defeated by a decaying body and psychologically defeated by the moral fall of Harvey Dent/Two Face and the death of his beloved Rachel Dawes. He rarely leaves the manor, disengages from Wayne Enterprises, and even pushes away hi