The Dark Knight Rises Plot Holes (Spoilers)

I actually enjoyed the movie, and even though I felt that The Dark Knight had a tighter and more polished script, I was more emotionally invested in Rises. It is like watching an athlete that you loved and supported way past his prime and in the last seasons of his career. Being beaten down right to the lowest point of his life...defeated, every time I see Bruce Wayne worn-out body and spirit in the movie it is just quite sad. But against all odds he put everything he has left into one last comeback, to go out in a blaze of glory before his retirement, and even though he never reached his old peak you have just got to smile. Artistically it probably would have been better if they ended the movie with Bruce Wayne dying, or at the very least end the cafe shot with just Alfred nodding, without showing us so blatantly that he sees Bruce Wayne. I am Glad though that they didn't, because as good as it would have been, I would have walked out of the cinema depressed, but instead I walked out feeling good.

Unsurprisingly though, when attempting a plot of this magnitude and ambition there are bound to be plot holes ,irrationalities and things that just don't seem to make sense. Some are minor and some are not, but they are quite large in numbers.

1. It was shown early on in the movie that Blake already knew that Bruce Wayne is Batman, and he also said he didn't know why he took the fall for Harvey Dent's crimes. So I don't understand why later on when Bane read Commissioner Gordon's speech note to the world, Blake got so angry and acted like all this information was new to him and said that the commissioner hands are plenty dirty.

2. The Pit, the prison that is supposed to be hell on Earth, where Bane was born and lived in the dark, is a joke. First of all it is not even that dark; in fact in all the scenes it seems brighter than the streets of Gotham City. The Prisoners are also allowed to try to escape whenever they want "risk free" by climbing the wall with a safety rope. It might have been more intimidating if every time you fail you die. You have also got to wonder, "the ledge is not that far", I mean if it is reachable with a single leap it can't be more than 6-7 meters away, they could have easily made something to bridge the gap.

3. Batman is often teased by comic fans when compared to Superman for not having any superpowers, but he must be able to fly or run really fast or stop time or something. After climbing the wall of the prison bare footed, located in South Africa I think, he managed somehow to get all the way back to Gotham City with no money, no passport, no nothing, and then strolls unnoticed into the city that is supposedly in complete lock down.

4. The scene when the Sun comes up and the police and the mob lined up against each other are just comical and make no sense. This is not Braveheart people, you are fighting with guns. Especially for the police, I mean couldn't they have gotten themselves better equipments than their little pistols? They are running at bad guys armed with machine guns in one big column that seems like the worst tactic possible.

5. If you want to search for an unknown crime army in the sewers, don't send in every single policeman you have in a disorganized mob not knowing what is waiting for you. A few organized search parties would have done the job.

6. By the end of the movie the whole world probably knows who Batman is. After seeing Bane use several cars looking exactly the same as the Bat car, I am sure at least a few of the 12 million people living in Gotham would have deduced or researched that the cars were stolen from Wayne Tech and coupled with the fact that Bruce Wayne died at the same time as Batman...hmmm...maybe he IS Batman.

7. The Bat cars seems very easily destroyed, most of them just took one shot from the Bat bike, maybe they are slightly different models to the one Batman used, or maybe he used some super resistant black paint or something.

8. The bomb trucks are probably the bad guy's most valuable asset, so what do they do? Let's just drive them around in the open and put about 4 of our least competent guys on guard duty. On top of that let's not have any alarm system so that when they are attacked we will never know about it. 

9. Carrying on from the last point, Miranda/Talia at one point was actually helping Gordon and his team tags the bomb trucks, so she knew of their plans to take them out and yet did nothing about it.

10. Why didn't Miranda/Talia just set off the bomb when she and Bane saw that Batman was back with the Bat signal, or even when they saw that the police are back with Batman fighting alongside them, it's not like they were planning on escaping or something. I can understand (maybe) waiting 5 months to torture Batman as he watch his city suffer, but I mean what difference does a day make? Maybe she wanted to kill him in person with a knife but even that doesn't make sense because she didn't, she told Bane to keep Batman alive to feel the heat from the explosion.

11. And considering how much she hated him she still was able to sleep with him??? 

12. Why didn't she just destroy the reactor right after getting the bomb instead of waiting until she is almost dead to flood it.

13. The burning Bat sign was pretty cool, but when you start to think about it logically it's just an overkill and completely ridiculous. I mean surely there were better uses of his time than doing some graffiti right then. All the policemen are probably shocked to see how, after months of their secret planning to take back the city, Batman just went and told Bane "hey guys, I'm back and we're gonna attack you now, just a heads up so you can better prepare", didn't the League Of Shadows taught him about the element of surprise. What if the bad guys saw the sign and said "he's back in the city to try and stop us, might as well just trigger the bomb now, it's going to go off tomorrow anyway", did he think about that?

14. Surely the mess with the stock trade that cost him to lose all his money could have been sorted out without him having to give Miranda/Talia control of his company. I mean it wasn't like they hacked in secretly and did the trades; they stormed the trading floors with machine guns.

15. Seeing the emotion Alfred showed, crying like a baby at the funeral, I would like to see more emotion when he found out later that Bruce Wayne is still alive. If he sees Bruce Wayne sitting there alive and well, someone who is like a son to him, after he was 100% certain he was dead, I think tears would immediately well up in his eyes. Hell what's the harm in going over for a hug and maybe talk a little. I know a lot of people have been saying whether it is all a fantasy, but I think the film maker's intention is to have Bruce Wayne still alive. They dropped hints constantly throughout the plot with Catwoman about starting over on a clean slate; they also went to the trouble of including the scene with Fox saying how he had already fixed the autopilot. Earlier in the movie I think Alfred also mentioned how he went to this particular cafe in Florence everyday and ordered a particular drink, so I think Bruce went there on purpose to let him know that he is still alive. A lot of people have been wondering when Bruce Wayne had time to put all his affairs in order. I think he did it after the bomb went off; maybe he stayed around Gotham for a while to sort things out before leaving with Catwoman. Leaving the note for Blake to go find the Batcave. I think he was also the one who fixed the Bat signal because he knew that Blake would replace him as Batman.