12 Pointless Subplots In Otherwise Awesome Movies

8. Miranda Tate Is Talia Al Ghul - The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises is, in spite of its issues, a riveting finale to Christopher Nolan's superhero trilogy, packed with thrilling action, an epic, enthralling scope and emotionally affecting finale.

However, the big twist running through the spine of the story, that Wayne Enterprises board member and Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) recent shag-ee Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) is really the criminal mastermind Talia al Ghul, the daughter of Ra's al Ghul and the real evil genius behind Bane's (Tom Hardy) actions all along, falls rather flat.

Though the eventual reveal was obvious to anyone who had been following the production with any degree of closeness, it was so clumsily unspooled at the eleventh hour and felt both rushed and not remotely earned, while diminishing Bane's role to a sobbing lapdog, which felt so at odds with his prior villainy.

All this subplot does is add more convolution to an already rather over-complex narrative, and it's absolutely a case where less would be more. Bane is plenty villain for one movie, and the Miranda Tate character ultimately didn't really need to exist if a few plot elements were just slightly re-jigged.

After all, was Miranda's involvement with both the fusion reactor and Wayne himself totally necessary to the core story, or even at all interesting?