10 Movie Plot Twists That Were Hiding In Plain Sight
1. The Dark Knight Rises
Twist: Miranda Tate is Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter.
Over-bloated as it was, The Dark Knight Rises was a pretty decent action film with some heady sociopolitical commentary. But Christopher and Jonathan Nolan just couldn’t fight that urge to stick with their brand and give us one big plot twist at the end of the film. Only this time, nobody fell for it.
When Bruce Wayne’s back is broken and he is sent into a prison inside of a pit (that is surely against some United Nations regulations), he is told the story of Ra’s al Ghul’s wife who was lowered into the pit while pregnant. Mrs. Ghul has a child inside the pit and Bruce believes this to be Bane, the big bad guy who’s currently terrorizing Gotham City. The problem with this red herring was that anyone who’s read the comics knows Ra’s has a daughter, Talia, not a son. Had Bane turned out to be Ghul’s son would have actually been a bigger twist—albeit one that surely would have angered fans.
When the big reveal came at the end that the new CEO of Wayne Enterprises and awkward one-night stand, Miranda Tate, was in fact Talia al Ghul, fans the world over turned to each other and said, “Oh yeah, we knew that already.” It cannot be expressed enough that this plot twist did not work because EVERYONE EXPECTED IT.
The internet called this practically from the day Marion Cotillard was cast. Everyone called it that Nolan’s final chapter of the trilogy would wrap back around to the Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows from the first film. The filmmakers and Cotillard herself kept telling the media that, no, she was a completely new character, a love interest for Bruce Wayne, but nobody bought it. It went down as the Nolans pulling an unnecessary twist.