on why Batman should have died.

        In anticipation of the large amount of writing that the upcoming three part blog is going to take, I'm keeping this week's post short, simple, and a little bit ranty.

SPOILER ALERT:
If you haven't seen all three movies in the Dark Night trilogy:

1) What are you doing with your life?

2)Don't read this blog.

Okay so that's fair warning. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about my favorite movie trilogy of all the movie trilogies, and we all know there are plenty of those out there.
The Dark Knight movies stand out for a number of reasons. First and foremost because, let's be honest, everything to do with Batman up until the release of "Batman Begins" was pitiful. There simply was no good Batman movie. Batman Begins changed that, and "The Dark Knight Rises" gave us the epic conclusion we all wanted.......almost.
The story goes like this: Following the disappearance of the Batman, and the death of Gotham's beloved DA, a villain by the name of Bane enters the scene and prepares to bring the city to it's knees as it rips itself apart. He effectively separates the city from the rest of the world and removes any comfort that society, order, and a government body might bring. This new "lord of the flies" society does exactly as Bane planned and begins to tear itself to pieces, all the while under threat of a nuclear bomb.
Inevitably, Batman swoops in to save the day and restore hope to a city that seems to have none. As the story comes to a head Bruce Wayne is forced to make a difficult choice. The nuclear bomb that has been roaming around the city is set to go off and has to dealt with, however the auto-pilot on his ship doesn't work and Wayne has no choice but to pilot the ship himself, and thereby ensure his own doom. It's tragic, ironic, and the perfect conclusion to the epic trilogy.
Except Bruce Wayne lives. Somehow, unbeknownst to anyone else, the auto-pilot had actually been repaired and somewhere along the line Bruce jumped out of the ship and escaped before the bomb exploded. I hate it, and I whole-heartedly believe he should have died. Let me explain.
At the heart of the story we have a group of people who, by their own wrongdoing, are trapped in a world of corruption with no hope of escape and no hope of survival. They are doomed and there is nothing they can do about it. Then, a man who seems to do nothing but selflessly give to these corrupt people, gives them a way out. Even though he fights the evil that suppresses them, gives them a shot at redemption, and ultimately sacrifices himself for their sake. He takes on himself the fate that had been given to those who, if we're being honest, probably deserved it.
Sound familiar? It should. Up until the very end, this story is the gospel. But then we find out that the masked hero really didn't sacrifice himself. He put his ship on auto-pilot and ran away with catwoman. It's an ending that is only made right with the revelation that Robin was in the movie the whole time. An ALMOST perfect trilogy that was tragically ruined by our ridiculous need to have the happiest ending possible.