9. The Justice League Tie-In Can Still Happen
There is no need to assume that a Justice League film and another Batman film on the same narrative thread can't co-exist, and in fact the way Nolan left his story at the end of The Dark Knight Rises offers the perfect opportunity to branch off into a Justice League movie with John Blake taking over as Batman for that purpose. Blake will presumably need help, given that he has only police training and a Bat-cave full of gadgets and goodies to help him fight to save Gotham, and his allegiance with the super-ensemble would fit, as well as papering over his own short-comings. The hints that this might actually happen are quite difficult to resist once you've let them take hold - Man of Steel will bring Superman more in line with Nolan's darker, grittier image of the comic book universe, and the decision to offer the excellent Ben Affleck the reins for the JLA movie would suggest that the studio are looking for a similar take on that property as well. That might well sound like wishful thinking, but a JLA movie that consciously channeled the established foundation of Nolan's universe could well be a smarter idea than a whole new stand-alone property. It would also help get over the fact that the JLA movie won't have the same kind of ground-work as the Avengers did, with nothing like the same amount of individual films to establish the characters, before having them come together as an ensemble and watching the dynamics between characters develop. That was one of the best parts of the Avengers, and it will be a missed opportunity for the JLA, and one that will require masses of developmental story time within the film.