What makes for a great sequel is knowing what should be incremented and how much. Nolan nails the incremental changes in this film. There are hundreds of examples, from the score to the suit to Gotham City itself. There are no major leaps here, things are very much nearly right where we left them after Batman Begins. But things have incremented, in the most appropriate ways possible, to be new and to be more.
Take Batman’s strength. Take his personality, his very character. Take his tools, take this persona around other people. Look at Alfred, look at Lucius Fox, look at Jim Gordon. And then look at the city, look at what Batman has made of it, what it has made of Batman.
Batman is the center of a universe which both loves and hates him. He is in part the creator of what befalls him and the savior as well. And in The Dark Knight, we see even more of it than before.