I gotta give Nolan credit, he kept with it for three highly profitable films... none of which dipped as low as the Schumacher era. I like how he resisted turning the movies into big toy commercials. But wow, I think I have to agree that Heath's death really knocked the wind out of Nolan's camp. I think they wanted to bury Batman to help close this chapter of their lives.
It's a nice sentiment. He almost had an Iron Giant moment at the end. Somehow it just doesn't feel right. He's not a Christ character and he's not a Dread Pirate Roberts. How can a man so singularly driven, so superhumanly obsessed just stop because of a blubbering nanny of a butler? Or settle down with a stray cat?
You can make almost everything about him believable. You can give him nifty cutting edge tech, you can try to dress him up practically, but he's not meant to be understood. Ever. That's his mystery and that's his edge.
We can't bury him; he's already buried. Wayne Manor is his tombstone. All his money, ingenuity and training ever did was reflect his abyss back out into the world. His inextinguishable grief fuels the vigilante but again we're not meant to fathom it.
He works best in small doses. He'll vanishes if you stare too long. He would be content to leave us arguing against each other like a bunch of panicked eyewitnesses. We know we saw something but we'll never get the story straight.
I hope they bring the mystery back somehow.