1. The Ending
Michael Caine gives The Dark Knight Rises a rare touching moment at the climax: as Alfred comes to Florence, he takes a seat at a cafe and looks into the camera, as though he's recognised someone. Who has Alfred seen? Is it Bruce? If it is, is he merely a figment of Alfred's imagination? Nolan could end it there, on a note of intriguing mystery, but instead he opts not to, because this is The Dark Knight Rises. If you expected subtlety, you're watching the wrong movie, because there's Bruce Wayne, sitting in a cafe in Florence, definitely alive, definitely well, nodding back at Alfred and still managing to look depressed while he's doing it. And look, he's brought Catwoman with him, and it looks like they're life partners now, despite previously only speaking a total of four times. Then Alfred walks away, because obviously that's what you do when your long-feared-dead surrogate son suddenly re-enters your cold, meaningless life. For the director who gave us one of the most talked about endings of recent times with Inception, it's a decidedly poor move from Nolan, giving overt theatricality where ambiguity would've worked better. Nolan just saves his ending with Blake's discovery of the Batcave, but fails to give a decent send-off to the two principle characters of his franchise. And now to the flip-side... or Why We Love The Dark Knight Rises...