Cast your minds back to 1997, and the release of Joel Schumacher's "Batman and Robin". That ridiculously over-the-top camp take on Batman was something of a nail in the coffin for the series, effectively killing a franchise that had been rejuvenated by Tim Burton's gothic take on the caped crusader in the late eighties. It was a long time before Warner Bros. would even consider relaunching the Batman saga - but when they did, there was only one direction in which they could take it: dark, grim, and gritty.

Reimagining the Batman franchise as a serious superhero saga for adults (and drawing inspiration from the darker and more sophisticated Batman comics of the 1980s) was an inspired choice for Warner Bros., and marked a complete U-turn compared to the day-glo campness of Batman and Robin. But their real masterstroke came when they hired British director Christopher Nolan to direct "Batman Begins", which functioned as an origin story for Batman of the kind we'd never seen before. Eschewing the simplistic, condensed origin of previous movies (which jumped straight from Bruce Wayne's parents being killed to him dressing up as a Bat to fight crime), the first movie of Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy spends a significant portion of its long running time in telling the full story of Bruce's transformation from a bereaved young man into an adult crime-fighter. In doing so, it not only establishes Christian Bale's Batman as a plausible concept in a grounded and realistic world, but also introduces a complex and enigmatic bad-guy in the form of Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) - and embellishes things with a few secondary villains like Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow and Tom Wilkinson's gangster boss. The result is a movie that manages not only to salvage Batman's reputation from the campness of his previous screen incarnation, but also sets up a weighty, grown-up superhero franchise with the future potential to take the genre to adult places that had never been explored before.

And with "The Dark Knight", Nolan and his collaborators did just that. Taking the concept of 'escalation' as a theme - as teased at the end of Batman Begins - the movie explores the logical consequences of Batman's theatrical and elaborate approach to fighting crime. If Batman is the question, the answer is The Joker: the chaotic, anarchic yin to Batman's orderly, law-abiding yang, played to perfection by the late Heath Ledger in one of his last screen roles. Ledger's Joker doesn't so much steal the show from Bale's Batman as he steals it, drives it away, paints it in garish colours, and uses it to set all sorts of crazy (and lethal) plans in motion before blowing it up with childish glee and reveling in the chaos it produces. The character is a charismatic force of nature that makes the film gripping and impossible to turn away from - and his complete control of the movie is no mean feat, considering that Ledger is competing with supporting players like Maggie Gyllenhall (as love interest and crusading lawyer Rachel Dawes) and Aaron Eckhart (as the villain Two-Face, who plays a key role in terms of both the plot and the larger themes of the movie) - as well as returning actors like Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox (think James Bond's "Q"), and Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, all three of whom play their parts as though they were born to do it.

Finally, Nolan's concluding movie, "The Dark Knight Rises", takes all of the ideas of the previous two films and drives them to their logical conclusions, finding the time to follow-up on dangling plot threads from both of the earlier films whilst also introducing new characters of its own - as well as a plot that raises the stakes for Batman (and Gotham City) considerably. Tom Hardy's Bane is the oddly-voiced yet physically-imposing threat that an ageing Batman must eliminate, at the same time as Gotham begins to slide from prosperity into chaos as the villain seeks to redress the imbalance of wealth by turning the city into a chaotic, everyone-for-themselves no-mans-land through the threat of a nuclear weapon. And Anne Hathaway turns in one of the best performances of her career as Catwoman (sorry, Selina Kyle - her superhero name is never actually mentioned) a cat-burglar with ambiguous morality who will either help or hinder Batman in his quest. It might not be as perfect a movie as Batman Begins or The Dark Knight - as it lacks such a strong villain, is a little overlong, and loses focus by trying to juggle too many disparate elements as it approaches its finale - but it's still a fine end to the trilogy, and one that bravely dares to actually try and bring some closure and genuine character development to the world of Batman, rather than treating the hero's adventures as a continuous, open-ended saga.

In (briefly) reviewing all three films, I haven't even had time to mention the wonderful production design of the movies, which furnishes Batman with a host of vehicles that straddle a fine line between realistic military technology and outlandish gadgetry (such as the tank-like Batmobile, rechristened the "tumbler"), as well as a cool base of operations in the form of minimalist Batcave (or, in the second movie, bat-bunker). I've also been lax to not mention the superb photography by cinematographer Wally Pfister, which produces some jaw-dropping establishing shots of cityscapes, as well as some crystal-clear action sequences that benefit from the director's focus on clarity and comprehensibility, and which laudably resist the temptation to obscure the movies' action in a blur of fast-cutting and ultra-close-ups (as seems to be the trend with a lot of big action movies nowadays). Many of the sequences for The Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises were shot for exhibition in the large-scale IMAX format, and the detail and clarity shines through even on the reduced screen-size of home media.

Talking of which, on Blu-Ray the films look fantastic, with pin-sharp visuals that are reference-quality for those looking to show off their home cinema system. The only slight distraction is that the IMAX sequences are shot in a slightly different aspect ratio to the rest of the movies (meaning they fill a widescreen TV, whereas the rest of the film's scenes look 'letterboxed'). You get used to it eventually, and you hardly notice it by the end, but it's a bit weird to have the dimensions of the picture keep changing between shots.

The extras contained within this definitive boxset replicate those of the original Blu-Ray releases for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, including a host of documentaries, trailers and interviews that take you behind-the-scenes of these genre-defining superhero movies. And The Dark Knight Rises is accompanied by a similarly rich array of extras, my favourite of which has to be the in-depth look at the history of the Batmobile - going all the way back to the early Batman movie serials, through the '60s TV show concept car, the Burton and Schumacher versions, and even taking in batmobiles from the Batman comics and animations. It's a real treat for car nuts and Batman fans, and it's nice to see such a comprehensive and well-informed documentary covering one of the most famous attributes of the character.

All in all, this is a fantastic boxset of three of my favourite superhero films of all time, and in other circumstances I'd happily give it a perfect review. Unfortunately, however, the actual packaging itself is a little bit flawed, and I've knocked a star off for that reason. Whilst the five Blu-Ray discs come in a lovely fold-out slipcase inside a smart-looking matte black box, the producers of the set have unfortunately seen fit to clumsily glue a product information leaflet to the back of it, meaning that you have to either have to leave this cheap bit of paper stuck to the back of an otherwise very pretty and sleek blu-ray case, or you have to hope that you can pick off the glue without ripping chunks off the box itself. Also, the free art book on the Batman trilogy that comes with the set seems to have been altered from the version that was originally advertised: rather than a nice little hardback volume, it's a cheap-feeling floppy paperback - which is a couple of centimetres too short to sit comfortably in the box with the blu-ray case, meaning the producers have had to stick a loose strip of polystyrene packing foam into the back of the box so that the book's spine sits flush with the section that houses the discs.

These might sound like petty concerns, and they obviously don't affect the quality of the films themselves - so it's hardly a serious argument against buying this set. But when you're shelling out a substantial amount of money for a definitive trilogy boxset, I don't think it's too much to ask that all the pieces fit together properly, and that you can take off the packaging without damaging the set itself. Then again, having seen that Warner Bros. have already solicited an "Ultimate Dark Knight Trilogy Boxset" for release next year, maybe they've been happy to cut corners on this initial release.

Still, despite these small production errors in the set itself, there's really no reason not to check out these fantastic and peerless superhero films - especially in the beautiful, deluxe Blu-ray format.