10 Greatest Comic Book Movie Endings
3. The Dark Knight - Batman Becomes The Hero Gotham Needs
Although The Dark Knight Rises and its happy ending have their supporters, there's a case to argue that Christopher Nolan should have brought the curtain down when Batman sped off on his motorcycle at the end of the previous movie.
A two-movie arc was enough for the Caped Crusader to become the hero Gotham needed. Not a clean-cut white knight who is hailed as such by the public, but a man who's willing throw himself under the Joker's bus if it means saving the city.
Batman has always been an enduring symbol representing this ideal, and speeding off onto the horizon with ambiguity in his future was, in some respects, a more fitting conclusion than retirement to Italy.
The Dark Knight offers a harsh lesson in life right at the end: sometimes the truth isn't good enough. There are occasions when it does more damage than a sugarcoated lie and inflicts pain on those who don't deserve it.
The closing montage, in which Rachel's letter and Bruce Wayne's mass surveillance machine go up in flames, rams this point home and gives multiple characters the endgame they deserved and, in Batman's case, the end he needed.