Christian Bale wears a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso

The Dark Knight Rises opens eight years after the last film, with Bruce Wayne retired and shut inside his mansion, walking with a cane after Batman took the blame for Harvey Dent's death. He still wears a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, the rectangular Art Deco watch whose whole trick is that the case flips over on its frame. But it is not the same Reverso he wore as a younger man. In the first two films he wore the Reverso Grande Taille; here it is the Reverso Grande Date, reference 240.8.15.

The two look almost identical from the front, both long steel rectangles. The difference is on the back and at the dial. The Grande Date adds a large double-digit date in a window at seven o'clock, and where the Grande Taille had a solid steel reverse, the blank shield the Reverso was built around in 1931 to survive a polo match, the Grande Date leaves the back open so you can see the movement turning. It is the Grande Date 8 Days, the version with a long power reserve, about 46 millimeters tall.

Watch writers never tire of the Reverso here, because a watch with two faces is an easy fit for a man with two identities, the billionaire on one side and Batman on the other. Jaeger-LeCoultre leaned into it directly: to mark the film, the company made a commemorative Reverso Tribute to 1931 with the Batman emblem set into the flip-side caseback, a separate piece from the Grande Date that Bale actually wore on screen.