12 Most Hated Blockbuster Movie Endings

If the X-Men and Spider-Man movies established that superhero movies were the new blockbusters, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins demonstrated that filmmakers, audiences and the critical establishment were ready to take comic book characters seriously. Follow-up The Dark Knight went one better, and is still held up by many as perhaps the single greatest comic book movie of all time.

After all that, there was a certain inevitability that trilogy closer The Dark Knight Rises wasn't going to meet everyone's expectations. Nolan and co might not have done themselves any favours with an ending that seemed uncharacteristically abstract for this most grounded of superhero sagas.

The final showdown sees Batman laden with an atomic bomb that's primed to go off and unable to be deactivated. With no other options available, he hauls the bomb away with the Batplane, and it detonates miles away.

A hero's death - or so it would seem. Except in the final moments, we see Alfred sometime later, in Florence, where he sees Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle dining together. Somehow it transpires he faked his death and got away without anyone being the wiser.

And if you're not already in knots trying to figure out how Batman managed that one, you'll be wincing at the eleventh hour revelation that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's cop John Blake is really named Robin, and is poised to take over as the new Dark Knight.