10 Teased Movie Endings That Frustratingly Never Happened

6. Batman Dies - The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises sure grappled with some heavy themes, even for the grim standards of Christopher Nolan's Batman saga.

And the end of the movie appears to conclude with the Caped Crusader (Christian Bale) sacrificing himself to save Gotham City, using the Bat to transport a neutron bomb away from the shore, where it explodes, seemingly killing him.

And for a moment, it was a fittingly bleak send-off for Nolan's Bruce Wayne, a tragically heroic end for a man who no longer had any desire to don the cape and cowl.

The montage that follows, depicting the city's subsequent adoration of Batman, Alfred's (Michael Caine) trauma over "failing" Bruce's parents and John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) quitting the Gotham P.D. to inherit Batman's legacy, is a tremendously moving, rousing and suitably dark end to Bruce's story.

But Nolan sadly lacked the courage to decisively kill Bruce off, instead revealing him to be alive moments later in a heavy-handed final scene, where he's bafflingly hanging out in Florence in broad daylight with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) as Alfred (Michael Caine) looks on with relief.

While it can sure be argued that Bruce suffered through enough that he "deserved" to live a happy life of retirement, the final reveal felt more like corny fan service than what best served the storytelling.

Had Nolan been brave enough to kill Bruce once and for all, it might've been a little easier to forgive some of the film's narrative wonkiness elsewhere.