Christopher Nolan promised that "The Dark Knight Rises" would end his trilogy of Batman movies, and the man wasn't fooling around — even if the ending isn't exactly what everybody saw coming. Speaking with MTV News about ending the series, Nolan said he knew how Bruce Wayne's story would draw to a close early on in developing "Rises." In fact, it was figuring out Bruce's ending that made Nolan realize that his third "Dark Knight" film had a story well worth telling.

"For me, movies are all about knowing the end of the story," he told MTV News recently. "Once I know the end and once I know where it's going, then I know I'm going to climb on that train and make that film; we're really going to do something with it. So it was one of the first things I knew about the project, was how to end the story."

For his part, Christian Bale felt that Batman was "always destined for some kind of a fall" from the very beginning of the series.

"We know that he's altruistic, we know his motives are born from genuine, sincere pain and a very understandable desire for revenge. We know he's attempting to turn that into something good, but we [also] know he has this monstrous personality inside of him. He's forsaken his life for that. Unless you make some serious changes, you know that something will befall him that's not going to be healthy."

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