20 Most Intense Movie Endings Of All Time

14. Batman Begins (2005)

Though all three of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies have sweepingly operatic finales, there's something to be said for the more scaled-back purity of that simple yet devilishly effective sequel tease in Batman Begins.

The film of course ends with Batman (Christian Bale) meeting with Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) on a Gotham rooftop, where he's informed that a criminal with a "taste for the theatrical" is terrorising the city, before revealing his calling card: an actual Joker card.

It's surely one of the most chilling and exciting sequel-bait endings in cinema, a fantastic nod towards the future, which of course ended up surpassing just about everyone's expectations three years later.

It may not have been as showy as the endings to the two sequels, but the reveal nevertheless stuck with audiences and made the three-year wait for The Dark Knight nothing short of agonising.