2. Nolan Tips His Hand with The Bat
Even the hilariously bomb-like reactor pales in comparison to the incredibly blatant dialogue that set up the ending of the film. Early on in the film, Morgan Freeman's character shows Bruce some new toys. One such toy is 'The Bat', a weird and cool helicopter thing. In a ridiculous moment of foreshadowing, Mr Fox points out that the autopilot is broken. Now I consider myself pretty bad at spotting foreshadowing, but when Fox spoke this line I could have quite happily left the cinema I knew how the film would end. Audiences have seen it a million times before. Everyone would think Batman died in a horrible crash but it turns out he wasn't flying the thing after all. Big surprise. Then Nolan goes and introduces the aforementioned Plot Device reactor and it becomes even more obvious how the film will end. There's even more blatant set-up for this moment when they make a point of telling us that once the bomb is turned on it can't be turned off, and then kill off the only man who can fix it. The final piece falls into place when the reactor is flooded, ending any hope of turning the bomb off. At this point, was anyone really surprised how the film ended? I must admit, after seeing the trailers and specifically the 'you've given them everything!' dialogue between Batman and Catwoman, I thought that maybe Nolan would kill Batman off. It seemed like a fitting end to the trilogy. But thanks to some very clumsy foreshadowing, the finale was robbed of any suspense. I didn't think for one moment that Batman was dead.