The Dark Knight Rises: Five Most Shocking Scenes

How long do we have to keep saying that?Director Christopher Nolan’s Batman finale, The Dark Knight Rises, may have resolved itself nicely in the end, but along the way, there were plenty of surprising twists and turns. The film had some pretty shocking reveals, and in many cases each of them had a long-term impact on not only the story of the film, but in some cases the continuity of the series as a whole.ComicBook.com assembled a list of what we thought were the five most shocking scenes in the film.Alfred Pennyworth LeavesIt happened in the comic books, but even those of us pretty well-versed in ’90s Bat-verse stories didn’t see this one coming: Alfred, discouraged by Bruce seemingly drifting out of control as Batman, gave his surrogate son an ultimatum and told him that he had to leave. When Bruce tried to talk him into sticking around, telling him that he needed help and that Rachel’s death in The Dark Knight had, after all, taken his dream life away from him and stolen any chance he had at normalcy, the gentleman’s gentleman spilled his guts with regard to a long-held secret regarding Rachel Dawes’ last communication with Bruce (to wit, that she was going to leave him and marry Harvey Dent). This was enough to make Bruce snap, and rather than attempting to bring Alfred back to him, he fired him, leaving Bruce truly alone in his house and subject to the whims of Miranda Tate, who would come visit soon thereafter.Bane breaks the BatmanAgain, this happened in the comics and it was widely expected to happen for a year before the movie ever came out. So it’s not particularly shocking when you look at it that way. Still, the idea that they would even adapt Knightfall into a big-budget feature film is a bit bizarre…and the fact that they kept Bane’s iconic “signature move,” the rather silly-looking back-breaking drop, was included in Christopher Nolan’s “realistic” universe is a little surreal.Of course, it was also a harbinger of things to come: the film was far less grim and gritty than its predecessors, having less in common with Batman Begins than with Batman Returns, in some ways: as the finale progressed, it became something of a techno-thriller, with Batman flying around the city in an experimental aircraft while working against a ticking clock to stop a bomb from destroying Gotham. At the end of the day, Nolan’s final outing was a more traditional Batman movie than his previous ones–taking cues from influences like James Bond and Die Hard rather than Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli.