10 Movie Scenes That Should Have Happened Off-Screen

2. Bruce Lives - The Dark Knight Rises

The ending of The Dark Knight Rises has been tirelessly dissected and debated by fans, especially the revelation that Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) didn't die in Bane's (Tom Hardy) fusion reactor explosion, but rather ejected himself to safety and started a new life in Florence with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).

Many fans were miffed, quite understandably, that Christopher Nolan went as far as to show Bruce living it up in a Florence cafe, where he's spotted by Alfred (Michael Caine).

This obviously paid off an earlier scene in the film where Alfred expressed hope he might one day see such a sight, but given that we all knew what Alfred was going to look up and see, did we really need to actually see it?

The visual of Bruce at the cafe just highlighted how absurd it would be for him to go anywhere without being recognised, while at least if Alfred simply nodded happily to another table, we'd know that Bruce lived without being invited to consider how daft it all was.

You can argue that Nolan had earned such an indulgence after three largely terrific movies, but even so, an absence of Bruce would've been the more artistically watertight way to go.