Ranking: Every Batman Movie Final Battle From Worst To Best

Christopher Nolan's finale to the Dark Knight saga is deeply flawed, but it's also hard not to get caught up in the epic sweep of Gotham's last stand against Bane (Tom Hardy) and his mercenaries.

Let's consider the problems first and foremost: the basically unarmed cops running towards the machine gun-totting mercs with horrible aim is a rather silly sight (especially in a PG-13 movie), the incredibly rough fight choreography (one of Nolan's big issues), the blindingly obvious Miranda Blake = Talia al Ghul reveal, Bane's devastatingly anti-climactic demise, Talia's howlingly bad death scene, and Batman "sacrificing himself" but ultimately surviving anyway.

By this point in Nolan's career, his use of parallel action began to feel a bit pat, and the final Bane-Batman showdown is undermined substantially by the easily superior sewer fight earlier in the movie. It just doesn't feel as well-written or water-tight as the climaxes of Nolan's other Batman movies, even if it still has an epic tone, is gorgeous to look at and provides a certain cathartic relief at the end of Nolan's trilogy.