10 Reasons You’re Wrong About The Dark Knight Rises

10. The John Blake Reveal Gets To The Heart Of Batman

The notion of a heroes real identity being secret has, on film at least, fallen out of fashion in recent years. Since Tony Stark went against all good judgement and announced he was Shellhead at the end of Iron Man the Marvel lot have worn their real personas like an extra suit of armour. In The Dark Knight Rises the bat-mask is well and truly on, with the reveal that playboy Bruce Wayne is really a crime-fighting vigilante providing some of the film's most gut-punching moments. When John Blake, trying to get someone to take the masked-man-in-the-sewer threat seriously, tells Bruce he has figured out that he's the Dark Knight is the most ridiculed of these reveals, often pointed to as an example of the film's weak screenwriting. And when you distill it down to a one sentence summary - he realised it because of Bruce's face - it does sound silly. But as presented in the film it serves as a dissection of the mask Bruce Wayne wears everyday, something that was previously discussed at the end of Batman Begins, highlighting how he's still, even after cleaning up the city, haunted by the death of his parents.