Cast: Christian Bale (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Michael Caine (Alfred), Liam Neeson (Ducard), Katie Holmes (Rachel Dawes), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon), Cillian Murphy (Dr. Jonathan Crane), Tom Wilkinson (Carmine Falcone), Rutger Hauer (Earle), Ken Watanabe (Ra’s Al Ghul), Mark Boone Junior (Flass), Linus Roache (Thomas Wayne), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Larry Holden (Finch), Gerard Murphy (Judge Faden), Colin McFarlane (Loeb), Sara Stewart (Martha Wayne), Gus Lewis (Bruce Wayne—age 8), Richard Brake (Joe Chill), Rade Sherbedgia (Homeless Man), Emma Lockhart (Rachel Dawes—age 8), Christine Adams (Jessica), Catherine Porter (Blonde Female Reporter/Assassin), John Nolan (Fredericks), Karen David (Courthouse Reporter #1), Jonathan D. Ellis (Courthouse Reporter #2), Tamer Hassan (Faden’s Limo Driver), Ronan Leahy (Uniformed Policeman #1), Vincent Wong (Old Asian Prisoner), Tom Wu (Bhutanese Prison Guard #1), Mark Chiu (Bhutanese Prison Guard #2), Turbo Kong (Enormous Prisoner), Stuart Ong (Chinese Police Officer), Chike Chan (Chinese Police Officer), Tenzin Clive Ball (Himalayan Child), Tenzin Gyurme (Old Himalayan Man), Jamie Cho (Stocky Chinese Man), David Murray (Jumpy Thug), John Kazek (Dock Thug #2), Darragh Kelly (Dock Thug #3), Patrick Nolan (Dock Cop #1), Joseph Rye (Dock Cop #2), Kwaku Ankomah (Dock Cop #3), Jo Martin (Police Prison Official), Charles Edwards (Wayne Enterprises Executive), Lucy Russell (Female Restaurant Guest), Tim Deenihan (Male Restaurant Guest), David Bedella (Maitre D), Flavia Masetto (Restaurant Blonde #1), Emily Steven-Daly (Restaurant Blonde #2), Martin McDougall (Gotham Dock Employee), Noah Lee Margetts (Arkham Thug #1), Joe Hanley (Arkham Thug #2), Karl Shiels (Arkham Thug #3), Roger Griffiths (Arkham Uniformed Policeman), Stephen Walters (Arkham Lunatic), Richard Laing (Akham Chase Cop), Matt Miller (Gotham Car Cop #3), Risteard Cooper (Captain Simonson), Shane Rimmer (Older Gotham Water Board Technician), Jeremy Theobald (Younger Gotham Water Board Technician), Alexandra Bastedo (Gotham City Dame), Soo Hee Ding (Farmer), Con Horgan (Monorail Driver), Phill Curr (Transit Cop), Jack Gleeson (Little Boy), John Judd (Narrows Bridge cop), Sarah Wateridge (Mrs. Dawes), Charlie Kranz (Basement Club Manager), Terry McMahon (Bad Swat Cop #1), Cedric Young (Liquor Store Owner), Tim Booth (Victor Zsaz), Tom Nolan (Valet), Leon Delroy Williams (Pedestrian), Roger Yuan (Hazmat Technician), Joe Sargent (Narrows Teenager #1), Mel Taylor (Narrows Resident), Ilyssa Fradin (Barbara Gordon), Andrew Pleavin (Uniformed Policeman #2), Jeff Christian (Driving Cop), John Burke (Arkham Lunatic Cell Mate), Earlene Bentley (Arkham Asylum Nurse), Alex Moggridge (Arkham Asylum Orderly), Jay Buozzi (Asian Man/Ra’s Al Ghul), Jordan Shaw (African Boy in Rags), Omar Mostafa (Falafel Stand Vendor), Patrick Pond (Opera Performer #1 Faust—Bass), Poppy Tierney (Opera Performer #2 Margaret—Soprano), Rory Campbell (Opera Performer #3 Mefistofle—Tenor), Fabio Cardascia (Caterer), Spencer Wilding, Mark Smith, Khan Bonfils, Dave Legeno, Ruben Halse, Rodney Ryan (League of Shadows Warriors), Dominic Burgess (Narrows Cop), Nadia Cameron-Blakey (Additional Restaurant Guest #1), Mark Straker (Male Restaurant Guest #2), TJ Ramini (Crane Thug #1), Kieran Hurley (Crane Thug #2), Emmanuel Idowu (Narrows Teenager #2), Jeff Tanner (Bridge Cop). Producers: Charles Roven, Emma Thomas, Larry Franco. Executive Producers: Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan. Director: Christopher Nolan. Screenplay: Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer (Story by David S. Goyer, based upon characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, Batman created by Bob Kane). Director of Photography: Wally Pfister. Production Designer: Nathan Crowley. Editor: Lee Smith. Music: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard. Visual Effects Supervisors: Janek Sirrs, Dan Glass. Special Effects Supervisor: Chris Corbould. Costume Designer: Lindy Hemming. Casting: John Papsidera, Lucinda Syson. Studio: Warner Bros. Length: 140 minutes. United States Release Date: June 15, 2005.
As we’ve noted in the past two chapters, the 1997 release of Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin left Warner Bros.’ Batman film franchise in a creative and commercial sinkhole. After the film’s disappointing performance, the studio scuttled plans for a third Schumacher-directed Batman film that was to be titled Batman Triumphant, and they began trying to reimagine their franchise.1 That proved to be no easy task—the studio attempted to launch a number of Batman film projects that never made it past the early planning stages. All of these projects were designed to completely reboot the franchise—in other words, they would have had little or no connection to Warner’s previous Batman films.
Several of these projects were notable enough to mention here. In 2000, Warner began developing a big screen, live-action version of the animated TV series Batman Beyond. (We discussed that series last chapter.) The series’ co-creators Paul Dini and Alan Burnett were tapped to co-write the film’s script. Also in 2000, the studio worked on developing Batman: Year One, a film based on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s 1987 comic series of the same name. (We discussed that series in Chapter 7.) The film was to be scripted by Miller himself and directed by Darren Aronofsky. In 2001, Warner began developing a film that would have rebooted both Batman and Superman—unlike Batman Beyond and Batman: Year One, this project was not derived from any previous comic or screen work. The film was to be titled Batman vs. Superman, and directed by Wolfgang Petersen.2
Christian Bale as Batman in Batman Begins (2005).
As intriguing as these projects might have sounded, they did not end up impressing Warner Bros. enough to move forward on committing them to film. In early 2003, the studio finally found a filmmaker with a cinematic approach to Batman that they were willing to back wholeheartedly. Christopher Nolan was a 33-year-old director who was a dual citizen of both the United Kingdom and the United States. Nolan had first gained wide attention through his 2000 film Memento, a gripping, complex psychological thriller that became a surprise critical and commercial hit. The director followed up this success with the 2002 Warner Bros. film Insomnia, a thriller starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank that also turned out to be critically and commercially well-received.
Nolan presented Warner with his idea for a Batman film that was both true to the character’s comic book roots, and markedly different from their four previous Batman films. He would tell the story of Batman’s origin in a manner that was far more connected to the real world than Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s cinematic takes on the character had been. Through the studio, Nolan found the perfect screenwriter to help him script his Batman film—David S. Goyer had written the screenplays for the films Blade (1998) and Blade II (2002) that were based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, and had been a staff writer for DC Comics.
Interestingly, Nolan and Goyer basically started their Batman film at the same jumping-off point as Batman Triumphant, Schumacher’s canceled Batman film. Both films had planned on using the Scarecrow as one of their main villains. The Scarecrow character exemplified the tricky balancing act that Nolan and Goyer had to perform in putting together their Batman film—the movie would have to totally reinvent Batman from the ground up, but it could not feature any of the character’s most recognizable villains because they had all been used in Warner’s previous Batman films. So Nolan and Goyer were basically left with the unenviable task of starting Batman completely over without being able to start over any of his most well-known villains. Since the Joker, the Penguin, the Catwoman, the Riddler and Two-Face were out, Nolan and Goyer were just going to have to make do with a secondary villain like the Scarecrow in their film.
The Scarecrow was by no means a poor character, mind you—he had just never been as regularly-used or well-known as any of the villains listed above. Back in Chapter 7, we discussed the Scarecrow’s appearance in “The Fear,” a 1985 episode of the television program Super Powers Team: The Galactic Guardians, but we didn’t really examine the character’s history. We’ll go ahead and do that now. The Scarecrow was first introduced in Batman comic stories in the early 1940s—he was actually a professor of psychology named Jonathan Crane who became obsessed with inflicting fear on people. He donned a Scarecrow costume that looked quite a bit like Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow costume in the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and found all sorts of ways to paralyze his victims with fear. His most common method was to spray these victims with a hallucinogen usually referred to as “fear gas.”
The Scarecrow’s comic appearances were well-received enough, but the character’s stock began to rise quite a bit higher in the 1990s when he was featured in several standout episodes of the television programs Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman/Superman Adventures. In fact, Nolan and Goyer would borrow from these episodes quite liberally when they created their version of the Scarecrow for their Batman film. (We’ll discuss this in more detail later in the chapter.)
Nolan and Goyer decided to use another lesser-known Batman villain for their film, one that was a relatively new creation—still, the villain’s comic appearances had been so revered by serious Batman fans that he rated a much loftier place in Batman history than a character like the Scarecrow. That villain was the eco-terrorist Ra’s Al Ghul. As we also discussed in Chapter 7, Ra’s was created by writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams, and he first appeared in Batman comic stories published in the early 1970s.
As they began scripting their Batman film, Nolan and Goyer drastically changed the Scarecrow and Ra’s from their classic comic incarnations. The characters lost their fanciful costumes and sci-fi elements in order to better mesh with Nolan and Goyer’s realistic interpretation of Batman and his world. (We’ll discuss these changes in more detail later in the chapter.) Batman himself did not undergo anywhere near as large of a transformation for the film as the Scarecrow and Ra’s did—Nolan and Goyer drew extensively on a number of noteworthy Batman comic stories to construct their version of the crimefighter.
Two comic works had a particularly large effect on their interpretation of Batman. The first of these was a story entitled “The Man Who Falls,” which was written by Denny O’Neil and illustrated by Dick Giordano. “The Man Who Falls” was originally published in the 1989 DC trade paperback Secret Origins of the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes, and it provided a chronicle of the events that led Bruce Wayne to adopt his Batman persona.3
Interestingly, the story was not really an original work, but more of a retelling of a number of earlier Batman comic stories. For example, in the story young Bruce takes a fall into a large cave under Wayne Manor—this was pulled from Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. And in the story, Bruce serves as an apprentice to a ruthless bounty hunter named Henri Ducard—this was pulled from a 1989 comic series entitled Blind Justice written by the screenwriter of the 1989 Batman film, Sam Hamm. Also in the story, a pre–Batman Bruce makes his very first attempt at fighting crime, and that attempt does not go particularly well—this was pulled from Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s 1987 comic series Batman: Year One.
We discussed both Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One in detail in Chapter 7, but this is the first time we’ve noted Blind Justice. In 1988, DC called on Hamm to write a three-part Batman adventure for Detective Comics in order to commemorate the character’s upcoming 50th anniversary. Blind Justice was the result of this collaboration between Hamm and DC, and it was originally published in Detective Comics #598, March 1989 through Detective Comics #600, May 1989. The series was by no means as successful or influential as works such as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One—that is why we had not discussed it earlier in the book. Still, its introduction of the Henri Ducard character makes it worthy of note in this particular chapter.
Batman: Year One’s influence on Nolan and Goyer went far beyond the series simply being referenced in “The Man Who Falls.” The series as a whole ended up being the second comic work that had a profound effect on Nolan and Goyer’s interpretation of Batman.4 In fact, their script would feature a number of sequences that were pulled almost directly from the pages of Batman: Year One. It is hardly surprising that Nolan and Goyer regularly turned to the series for inspiration, given the fact that Warner had come close to actually making a Batman: Year One film. (We’ll examine the similarities between the comic works we’ve just mentioned and Nolan’s finished film later in this chapter.)
As Nolan and Goyer wrote the first draft of their Batman script, they decided on a catchy name for the film that perfectly captured its focus—Batman Begins. Both Warner Bros. and DC Comics were very pleased with the direction that Nolan and Goyer were taking with their character in the screenplay. After years of frustrating cinematic false starts, the Warner Batman film franchise was finally back in business with Batman Begins.
After Nolan and Goyer finished the first draft of the Batman Begins script, Goyer had to leave the project in order to return to his work on the Blade film franchise. Goyer had written the screenplay for the third installment of the franchise, Blade: Trinity, and he had been assigned to direct the film as well. After Goyer’s departure, all of the changes that were made to the script were done solely by Nolan.5
Nolan had started to form his production team for Batman Begins while he and Goyer were working on the first draft of the film’s screenplay. His wife Emma Thomas, who was an associate producer on Memento, would serve as a producer on Batman Begins. And Nathan Crowley, who was the production designer for Insomnia, would serve in that same capacity for Batman Begins.
From the very first moments that Batman Begins was becoming a reality, Nolan had a vision of what his version of the Batmobile would look like in the film. Nolan’s Batmobile was a very clear indication of just how different Batman Begins was going to be from Warner’s previous Batman movies. He imagined Batman’s auto not as the flamboyant sports car that it had been in those earlier films, but as a tank-like urban assault vehicle that still managed to possess incredible power and speed. Nolan and Crowley worked on making a three-dimensional model of Nolan’s imagined Batmobile, using pieces pulled from various model car and airplane kits to build it from scratch.6
The Batmobile model that Nolan and Crowley ended up creating was startlingly original—they described their car as “a cross between a Lamborghini and a Hummer,” and that description was a perfectly accurate one.7 It sat low to the ground atop huge all-terrain tires, and its armor gave it a streamlined look that suggested both the sleek design of a sports car and the no-nonsense durability of a military vehicle. The practicality and realism of Nolan’s Batmobile perfectly summed up where the director was going with Batman Begins as a whole, and Warner Bros. loved Nolan’s vision of the car—right after seeing Nolan and Crowley’s Batmobile model, they approved the construction of a full-sized, fully functioning prototype.8
Nolan’s version of the Batmobile was a radical departure from previous screen versions of the auto, but it did have a precedent in Batman comics. Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns depicted Batman using a massive tank-like Batmobile in his adventures. The Batmobile of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was much more of a tank than a car, but it still undoubtedly served as an inspiration to Nolan and Crowley as they designed the Batman Begins Batmobile.
Nolan’s Batmobile served as a hugely promising start for Batman Begins, but the director was just getting warmed up. His choice for the actor to portray Batman in the film was every bit as inspired as his vision of Batman’s car. In September of 2003, Warner Bros. announced that Batman Begins would star Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Bale was a 29-year-old Welsh actor who had a long and very diverse film resume. As a teenager, he had starred in Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed World War II drama Empire of the Sun (1987), and he went on to appear in movies such as Henry V (1989), Newsies (1992), Swing Kids (1993), and Little Women (1994).
Bale’s reputation as an actor was further solidified by his performance as a crazed serial killer named Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film American Psycho. Bale’s riveting, intense turn as Bateman showcased a darker side of his talent that would serve him well when playing Nolan’s version of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Bale’s physical attributes made him perfectly suited for the role as well—he was very handsome, stood at six feet tall, and possessed an athletic build.
Warner’s confidence in Batman Begins was evidenced by the huge budget they gave to the film—$180 million.9 This budget meant that Nolan would not have to spare any expense while he was making the movie. The casting of Batman Begins certainly reflected the film’s high-profile nature—Nolan loaded the movie with a truly stellar ensemble of well-known actors. The director’s casting choices included Michael Caine as Alfred, Katie Holmes as Bruce’s longtime friend Rachel Dawes, Morgan Freeman as Bruce’s Wayne Enterprises confidant Lucius Fox, Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow, and Liam Neeson as Ducard. (Obviously, there ended up being a lot more to Neeson’s role than him simply being “Ducard”—we’ll discuss that fact in detail later in the chapter.)
As Batman Begins continued to take shape, Crowley worked on bringing Nolan’s vision of Gotham City to life. The film’s Gotham would end up reflecting Nolan’s desire to present Batman and his world in a much more realistic manner than Warner’s previous Batman films had. Crowley’s Gotham City designs were inspired not by the fanciful images of Gotham found in Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s Batman films, but by real-life American cities such as New York City and Chicago.
Crowley was also busy helping to shape the Batman Begins Batmobile model into a real-life, working auto. He closely worked with the film’s Special Effects Supervisor Chris Corbould and Corbould’s mechanical engineer Andy Smith to accomplish this formidable task. The most unusual aspect of the car was that it did not have a single front axle like a normal auto—it had two sub-axles, one for each front wheel, which allowed the car to turn. The Batmobile was designed to be almost as functional in real life as it would appear on screen—it could perform jumps of up to 60 feet, and race at speeds of nearly 100 miles per hour. Eventually, a number of Batmobiles ended up being built so that at least one would always be on hand for filming.10
Batman Begins would outfit Batman with a new costume and crimefighting equipment to go along with his new Batmobile. The film’s costume designer Lindy Hemming created a Batsuit that was different from the Batsuits featured in Warner’s previous Batman films. However, this Batsuit was not as radically different from its predecessors as the Batman Begins Batmobile was from its predecessors. The Batman Begins Batsuit was completely black in color from its cowl to its boots, and featured a bat emblem molded into the costume’s chest armor—in other words, its style was somewhat similar to the Batsuits used in Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s Batman films. This likely came as a surprise to many longtime Batman fans, because obviously Nolan was going to great lengths to distance his Batman film from Warner’s previous Batman efforts. (Of course, there was one major and very welcome difference between the Batman Begins Batsuit and the Schumacher film Batsuits—the Begins Batsuit was not outfitted with nipples!)
The Batman Begins Batsuit did feature a new cape design that set it apart from previous Warner film Batsuits. Hemming created a cape for the costume that was cut from nylon parachute silk. The silk was then put through a process referred to as “electrostatic flocking,” which meant that the silk was covered with glue, electrically charged, and sprinkled with fine material. The material was held to the silk through the glue and the electric charge, giving the cape a flat black, velvety appearance.11
The plot of Batman Begins would end up giving the cape an added dimension. The film called for the cape to be able to become rigid so that Batman could use it like a hang-glider. Consequently, Hemming’s cape underwent a second design that transformed it into a bat-winged glider that was well over fifteen feet wide.
The Batman Begins Batsuit also featured a utility belt that was a completely original design. The belt was dark gold in color, and outfitted with magnetic strips that allowed Batman to easily carry his grapple gun and Batarangs. Its appearance and functionality meshed very well with Nolan’s desire to place Batman in a real-world setting in the film.
In March 2004, the Batman Begins cast and crew began shooting its first scenes in Iceland, which featured Bruce and Ducard swordfighting on a frozen lake. The shoot turned out to be every bit as adventurous as the action depicted in the film—the lake they were filming on sat at the foot of Iceland’s Vatnajokull Glacier, which was in the process of melting. Luckily, they captured the footage they needed before the lake’s icy surface completely melted away. The Iceland shoot continued to be very challenging—Bruce’s journey to Ra’s Al Ghuls’s headquarters was filmed there, and during the filming the crew had to brave winds of over 70 miles an hour.12
Huge sets for the film were built at Shepperton Studios in England, including a Batcave set that was 250 feet long, 120 feet wide and 40 feet tall. The set was outfitted with scores of water pumps to create a huge waterfall that ran through the set. The Batcave sets used for Warner’s previous Batman films had been impressive, but still, they paled in comparison to the Batman Begins Batcave set.13
As vast as the film’s Batcave set was, even it was dwarfed by the gigantic Gotham City set built for the film inside of Cardington Sheds, a former airship hangar located near London, England. At Cardington, Nolan and company had an indoor space to work with that allowed them to create the largest indoor film set that had ever been constructed. Cardington’s Gotham set was a staggering 900 feet long, 240 feet wide, and 160 feet tall! The Gotham locations that were built at Cardington included a run-down neighborhood known as the Narrows, a section of the base of the Gotham Monorail System, and the exterior of Arkham Asylum.14
The size of the Cardingon set allowed Nolan and company to film some of the movie’s most ambitious and spectacular action scenes in a controlled indoor setting. These scenes included Batman falling five stories from an apartment building while engulfed in flames, and Batman using his grapple gun to board a speeding Gotham Monorail train. Both of these dangerous stunts were performed by Christian Bale’s stunt double Buster Reeves.15
Batman Begins utilized miniature sets to realize its vision of Batman’s world as well. Incredibly detailed miniatures were constructed in order to capture several of the film’s most impressive action sequences—these sequences included the Batmobile’s journey across the rooftops of Gotham, and the destruction of a Gotham Monorail train.16
A real-life glacier, a massive Batcave set with a giant man-made waterfall, the largest indoor set in the history of moviemaking—what more could Nolan bring to the table for Batman Begins? But the director had plans for the film that were even more ambitious. In late July 2004, after finishing most of the movie’s England shoot, the Batman Begins cast and crew traveled to the United States for about two weeks of location shooting in Chicago, Illinois. The majority of the movie’s Batmobile chase scenes were filmed on Chicago’s Lower Wacker Drive and Amstutz Highway. These scenes involved very little special effects—the Batmobile was filmed while actually driving at speeds of around 100 miles an hour. Several scenes featuring Gordon and Batman were also filmed on the rooftops of the city. These scenes used some of the buildings found in Chicago’s impressive skyline as their backdrop.
While Nolan was directing Batman Begins, he did something that was quite unusual for a filmmaker to do on such a big-budget movie. Nolan directed every one of the film’s scenes himself, never using a second film unit with a second director to help him speed up the movie’s shooting schedule. Consequently, every last scene in Batman Begins would reflect the director’s personal artistic vision.17
As principal photography for Batman Begins wrapped up, there was still a considerable amount of work to be done in terms of completing computer-generated images for the film. The movie’s computer-generated images included a number of scenes showing Batman gliding through the air using his cape, and a scene showing thousands of bats flying around the huge cave located under Wayne Manor.18
Not surprisingly, Nolan made decisions regarding the musical scoring of Batman Begins that took the film’s soundtrack in a very different direction from the music found in Warner’s previous Batman films. The soundtracks for those films had featured lush, sweeping orchestral compositions, as well as contemporary pop music from artists such as Prince and U2. Nolan called on Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard to create the Batman Begins soundtrack, and the music they wrote for the film was nothing at all like those previous soundtracks. Zimmer and Howard’s Batman Begins compositions were very ambient in nature, often consisting of hypnotic percussion patterns and long-held musical tones that suggested the constant jumble of city sounds—sounds such as automotive traffic, commuter trains, and large electric generators. Their score might not have had a memorable main title theme like Danny Elfman’s “Batman Theme” written for the 1989 Batman—but even still, the power and intensity of the score as a whole perfectly meshed with Batman Begins’ real world interpretation of Batman.
Batman Begins was the first Batman big screen work to be released after the Internet had truly reached massive global popularity. Consequently, it ended up being the first Batman film that was promoted through an elaborate official website that could be easily accessed by millions of people all over the world. The Batman Begins website was launched by Warner Bros. in mid–2004, about a year before the movie’s actual premiere date. In the months leading up to the film’s release, the site featured a wealth of Batman Begins information—visitors could look at production photos, watch videos of the film’s theatrical previews, and read biographies of the film’s cast and crew. Incidentally, Warner has continued to maintain and update the site right up to the present day, so it still functions as a marvelous resource designed to enhance one’s appreciation of the film.
The world premiere of Batman Begins was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on June 6, 2005. Most all of the film’s principal onscreen and offscreen talent attended the event, including Bale, Caine, Holmes, Freeman, Oldman, Neeson and Nolan. The film’s Batmobile was also in attendance—it was parked out front of the theatre for everyone to see as they made their way inside. A week later, on June 15, Batman Begins opened in theatres throughout the United States.
Batman Begins opens with a shot of bats swarming in a sepia-toned twilight sky—for an instant, the bats form a huge bat silhouette. We are then transported back to Bruce Wayne’s childhood, when he is 8 years old. Bruce and his friend Rachel Dawes are playing in a greenhouse at Wayne Manor. Bruce hides from Rachel, standing on an abandoned well. The boards covering the well give way, and Bruce tumbles in. As Bruce lies injured at the bottom of the well, a terrifyingly large swarm of bats fly at him.
Cut to the present day—Bruce is in his late twenties, dirty and unshaven, and he is incarcerated in a Bhutanese prison. He has just awoken from a nightmare about his encounter with the bats in the well, and his reality is no better than his nightmare. Some other prisoners attack Bruce, and he beats them savagely. After the fight, prison guards put him in solitary confinement—in solitary, Bruce is visited by a man named Ducard, who speaks on behalf of Ra’s Al Ghul. Ducard tells Bruce that Ra’s can offer him a path in his life—this path will lead to true justice through Ra’s’ organization The League of Shadows.
Ducard tells Bruce that he will have him released from prison, and then Bruce will need to pick a rare blue flower and take it to the top of a mountain near the prison. Bruce does this, and at the top of the mountain he finds a huge structure that houses the League.
Inside, Ra’s and Ducard are waiting—Bruce gives Ducard the flower, and Bruce’s League training quickly begins when Ducard unexpectedly attacks him. Ducard sees that Bruce is a skilled fighter, but he wonders what fears are driving Bruce.
A series of flashback scenes reveal those fears. Bruce’s father Thomas rescues Bruce after his fall into the well, but the boy is left terrified of bats. Days later, Thomas takes Bruce and Bruce’s mother Martha to a performance of the opera Mefistofle. The opera features a scene with batlike creatures on the stage, which frighten Bruce so much that he asks to leave. The Wayne family exits the opera through the rear of the theatre, which leads out to a seedy alley. In the alley, a mugger confronts them. Thomas tries to give the mugger his wallet, but the mugger panics and fatally shoots Thomas and Martha.
After the murders, Bruce sits alone in a Gotham City Police Station. A cop comes in to try to comfort the boy—the young officer is named Jim Gordon. Another officer named Loeb comes in to tell Bruce that the mugger has been apprehended. Sometime later, a funeral is held for the Waynes at Wayne Manor. After the funeral, Bruce is in the manor with only the Wayne butler, Alfred. Bruce tells Alfred that he thinks the murder of his parents was his fault because the opera scared him so badly. Alfred assures the boy that his actions were in no way responsible for the murders, and comforts the boy the best he can.
Back to the present day—a montage shows how daunting the League’s training of Bruce is. Ducard and Bruce are swordfighting on a frozen lake—during their combat, Ducard tells Bruce that his parents’ deaths were the fault of Thomas, because he did not take action against the mugger.
Another flashback sequence reveals that Bruce himself tried to take revenge against the mugger. Bruce returns from his studies at Princeton to attend a parole hearing for the mugger, whose name is Joe Chill. Chill is being considered for parole because he will testify against Carmine Falcone, a powerful mobster he once shared a jail cell with. Bruce goes to the hearing with a gun hidden in his coat so that he can murder Chill—but as Chill is being led out of the courtroom, a Falcone-hired assassin posing as a reporter shoots and kills him first.
Rachel, who now works as an intern for Gotham City’s district attorney, drives Bruce from the scene of Chill’s murder. Bruce shows her his gun and tells her that he was going to kill Chill. Rachel slaps Bruce, and says that Thomas would be ashamed of him. Bruce jumps out of the car, throws his gun away, and goes into a restaurant where Falcone is dining in order to confront the mobster.
Inside the restaurant, Falcone tells Bruce that he commands such incredible power because everyone fears him so much. Falcone says that his power is so great that he wouldn’t even think twice about shooting and killing Bruce right then and there. Bruce now realizes that the problem of crime is much bigger than the actions of petty criminals like Chill—it is the monstrous actions of criminals like Falcone that truly need to be stopped. Bruce resolves to disappear from Gotham and learn about the criminal mind so that he can learn how to take on the evil that is destroying his city.
Back to the present day—Bruce’s training with the League is almost complete, and their last test for him proves to be his most daunting. Ducard crushes the blue flower that Bruce brought to him and heats it so that it can be inhaled—Ducard instructs Bruce to breathe in the flower’s scent, which Bruce does. Bruce quickly realizes that the flower is a powerful fear-inducing hallucinogen. While Bruce is under the effects of the hallucinogen, he battles Ducard—even as he faces his deepest fears, he maintains his mental control and defeats his mentor.
Ra’s applauds Bruce’s efforts, and then Ra’s and Ducard direct Bruce to execute a man accused of murder that the League has imprisoned. Bruce refuses, and they tell him he needs to do this to prove that he is ready for the challenge they are about to give him. They want Bruce to lead the League into Gotham in order to attack and destroy the city—they feel that Gotham has become so corrupt and unjust that the city is beyond saving. Bruce is horrified by this plan, so he starts a fire in the compound in order to escape from the League. The entire League then attacks Bruce, including Ra’s—Bruce is able to fight them off, and Ra’s is killed during the struggle. Bruce is able to save the unconscious Ducard before the compound burns to the ground.
Bruce decides that it is now time to return to Gotham, so he has Alfred pick him up via a private jet. During their flight home, Bruce talks to Alfred about wanting to become some sort of symbol in his fight against crime in Gotham. Bruce has not decided what this symbol should be, but he knows that he wants it to be something terrifying. Back in Gotham, Dr. Jonathan Crane testifies in court on behalf of a crazed killer named Victor Zsaz. Rachel, who is now Gotham’s Assistant District Attorney, is furious with Crane for doing this, because Zsaz has connections to Falcone. Rachel suspects that Crane is connected to Falcone as well.
Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce starts researching Gotham’s cops and criminals. As he works, a bat flies into the room. This leads Bruce to go back down into the well where he fell as a boy, and he finds that the well leads to a huge, bat-filled cave under the Manor. As he stands in the cave, bats flying all around him, it is obvious that he has found the symbol he is looking for. He can strike fear into the hearts of criminals by disguising himself as the creature that frightened him so badly when he was young.
Meanwhile, Crane meets with Falcone, and tells the mobster that Rachel is a problem that needs to be handled. The next day, the Wayne Enterprises Board meets to discuss the future of the company, and Bruce walks in—since Bruce has been gone from Gotham without a trace for six years, everyone is shocked to see him. Bruce tells the Wayne C.E.O. William Earle that he wants to work in the company’s Applied Sciences division, which is run by Lucius Fox.
Bruce goes to see Fox, who shows him some of the division’s projects, including high-powered grapple guns and armored suits. Bruce asks Fox if he could “borrow” some of this equipment, but he doesn’t tell Fox about his plans to become a crimefighter. Later, Bruce and Alfred work down in the cave under Wayne Manor, transforming it into a base of operations. Alfred mentions that Bruce is likely not the first Wayne to be in the cave—the Wayne home was a stop on the Underground Railroad, so Bruce’s ancestors probably shielded runaway slaves by hiding them in the cave. Bruce also begins work on modifying one of the armored suits into a costume for himself.
Wearing this costume, along with a ski mask to hide his face, Bruce sneaks into the office of Gotham City Police Sergeant Jim Gordon. Gordon thinks he is being accosted by some lunatic when Bruce asks him how they can bring down Falcone. Bruce then tells Gordon to watch for his signal. The sergeant tries to apprehend Bruce as he flees the station, but Bruce gets away.
Bruce goes to see Fox again, who sets him up with some more high tech equipment. This equipment includes a fabric known as “memory cloth” which can be used to design a glider-like cape, and a tank-like armored automobile known as “the Tumbler.” Later, in the cave Bruce and Alfred put the finishing touches on Bruce’s first Batman costume, which includes a cape, a bat-eared cowl, and bat-shaped weapons.
Falcone meets with a crooked Gotham cop named Flass at the Gotham docks, where Falcone is having a large amount of illegal drugs shipped in. Flass checks in on the shipment, and tells Falcone that everything seems in order. Flass’ assessment turns out to be very wrong when Batman attacks the thugs Falcone has hired to carry out the shipment. Batman takes all of the thugs down, and then attacks Falcone in his car. Right before Batman bears down on Falcone, the mobster says “What the hell are you?” under his breath. Batman answers him by pulling him out of the car, saying “I’m Batman,” and knocking him out.
Meanwhile, Rachel is riding a Gotham Monorail train to her home, and several of Falcone’s hitmen make an attempt to kill her. Batman stops them, and gives Rachel information that will help her to prosecute Falcone. Gordon arrives at the docks to find Falcone tied to a searchlight that is powered up—the light casts a batlike silhouette on the clouds in the sky.
The next day, Gotham Police Commissioner Loeb instructs his force to bring this vigilante to justice. Also, Earle learns that a microwave emitter weapon has been stolen from a Wayne Enterprises shipment—the weapon is designed to vaporize large amounts of water. That night, Bruce goes out on the town to build his “eccentric playboy” image. He runs into Rachel for the first time since returning to Gotham—she is very disappointed in his lifestyle.
Later that night, Crane goes to see Falcone in jail. Crane shows Falcone a scarecrow mask that he uses to torment his patients, and then he sprays the mobster with a form of the hallucinogen used by the League of Shadows. Batman attacks Flass in order to get information about Falcone’s drug shipment—Flass tells the crimefighter that some of the drugs had something hidden in them, and those drugs were taken to a run-down Gotham neighborhood known as the Narrows.
Batman goes to the Narrows to find out about the drugs. There, a young boy sees him, and Batman gives the boy a small flexible periscope from his utility belt as a kind of “souvenir.” Batman finds the apartment where the drugs are being hidden, and Crane is there to destroy them. Crane, in his scarecrow mask, sprays Batman with the hallucinogen and sets his costume on fire. The crimefighter jumps out of the apartment window to escape, and he calls Alfred for help.
The hallucinogen is so damaging to Bruce’s mental state that Alfred has to call Fox for help. Fox is able to synthesize an antidote for the hallucinogen in order to save Bruce. Bruce tells Fox that he had better prepare a lot more of the antidote, because it is obvious that the hallucinogen is being used by Gotham’s underworld and is somehow connected to Falcone’s drug shipment. (Obviously, by this point Fox has figured out that Bruce is spending his nights fighting crime as Batman.)
Rachel stops by Wayne Manor to wish Bruce a happy 30th birthday. A big party is planned for Bruce at the Manor later in the day, but Rachel will not be able to attend. She needs to go to Arkham Asylum, located in the Narrows, because Crane has moved Falcone there. Worried that Rachel is heading into a very dangerous situation, Bruce races to Arkham as Batman. At Arkham, Crane realizes that Rachel is suspicious of his actions, so he sprays her with the hallucinogen. Batman bursts in on Crane and sprays him with the hallucinogen. The drugged Crane now sees Batman as a fearsome monster, and he tells the crimefighter that he has been working for Ra’s Al Ghul. Batman is shocked by this confession, since he himself had watched Ra’s die.
As Batman struggles to digest this information, he hears sirens—scores of Gotham Police officers have arrived at Arkham to arrest him. Gordon goes in to the asylum before the rest of the police, and Batman tells him that the hallucinogen is the work of Crane and someone even worse than Falcone. Before the rest of the Gotham Police enter the asylum, Batman activates a transmitter that emits a frequency that will attract bats. Thousands of bats swarm the asylum, allowing Batman and Gordon to exit the building with the gravely injured Rachel.
Batman puts Rachel in his car—it is the Tumbler, painted all black. In the car, Batman leads the Gotham Police on a high-speed chase through the streets of Gotham. The crimefighter is able to elude the police and make it back to his headquarters in the cave. There he is able to give Rachel the antidote for the hallucinogen. Batman tells Rachel that for the safety of Gotham, she needs to get what is left of the antidote to Gordon.
At Arkham, Gordon learns that a huge amount of the hallucinogen has been put into Gotham’s water supply by Crane’s thugs. At the same time, Bruce arrives at his birthday party at Wayne Manor, which is already in progress. Fox is at the party, and as Bruce and Fox talk they realize that the hallucinogen could be dispersed throughout Gotham by using the stolen microwave emitter to turn the poisoned water into vapor.
Bruce is shocked to see that Ducard is also at the party, and that Ducard is not who he seems to be at all—in reality, he is Ra’s Al Ghul. Ra’s has come to Gotham to make good on his promise to destroy the city—he is the one who has stolen the microwave emitter, and he will use it to unleash his hallucinogen on all of Gotham’s citizens. Bruce pretends to be drunk, and he throws everyone out of his party so that Ra’s cannot hurt them. Ra’s and his men attack Bruce and set the Manor ablaze—luckily, Alfred is able to save Bruce before he is burned in the fire, and the two men escape into the cave. Ra’s has other members of the League positioned throughout Gotham—some of them free all of the inmates in Arkham, including Crane.
Rachel finds Gordon, who is still at Arkham, and she gives him the antidote. She then rescues a little boy who has lost his parents—it is the boy whom Batman gave his periscope to. Ra’s has arrived on the scene, and he loads the microwave emitter onto a Gotham Monorail train. He turns on the emitter, which vaporizes the water in all of the nearby water pipes—the dispersion of the hallucinogen has begun.
Batman arrives in the Narrows to confront Ra’s. The crimefighter gives Gordon the keys to the Tumbler, saying he will need the Sergeant’s help to stop Ra’s. Before Batman engages Ra’s, he rescues Rachel and the boy from a number of escaped Arkham inmates, including a horseback-riding Crane dressed in his scarecrow mask. As Rachel talks to Batman, she realizes that he is actually Bruce. Batman is able to intercept Ra’s’ train by latching onto it with his grapple gun. He climbs up his grapple line to board the train as it speeds down the track, and once he is on board he fights Ra’s. While they are fighting, Gordon uses missiles in the Tumbler to destroy one of the bridges that the train will be passing over. Batman jumps out of the train just before it crashes—Ra’s is killed, and the microwave emitter is destroyed.
Batman has brought Gotham through a tremendous ordeal, but his story is really just beginning. Bruce has gained control of his family’s company, and he plans on rebuilding his burned-out home. Rachel comes to visit him as he works on the Manor—they are in love with one another, but Rachel feels there is no way for them to be together because of Bruce’s double life.
Batman then meets with Gordon on the roof of the Gotham Police building. There, Gordon has installed a spotlight with a bat silhouette on it that can be used to signal the crimefighter. They still have much to do to fix all of the damage that Ra’s, Falcone and Crane have caused. And to make matters worse, they have new criminals to worry about.
A bank robbery/double murder has just been committed by someone who leaves a Joker playing card at the scene of his crimes. Batman tells Gordon that he’ll look into this crime. As the crimefighter turns to leave, Gordon says to him, “I never said thank you.” Batman says that Gordon will never have to as he jumps off of the roof and into the night sky.
Christopher Nolan’s plan to make a Batman film that would tell the story of the character’s origin in a real world setting had succeeded spectacularly. Batman Begins took the Batman character and his world much more seriously than any previous Batman feature film had—and as a result, the movie turned out to be a complex, richly detailed crime drama that was truly light years ahead of any previous big screen adaptation of the Batman character. Another thing that really set the film apart from its predecessors was that it was about what a Batman film should be about—namely, Batman himself. The previous Warner Batman movies had all seemed to be more interested in the gaudily costumed villains they featured than they were in their title character. Batman Begins put an end to this line of thinking, placing Bruce Wayne’s quest for justice and his transformation into Batman squarely at the center of the film’s plot.
Nolan’s reinvention of Warner’s Batman film franchise received a resoundingly positive response from both the critics and the general moviegoing public. Batman Begins garnered better reviews than had any previous Batman big screen work, and it performed very well at the box office. The film made over $48 million during its opening weekend in the U.S., and it went on to take in well over $200 million in the United States alone. It also made almost $170 million in foreign box office returns, bringing its worldwide total gross to over $370 million.19
The success of Batman Begins was made all the more impressive by the fact that the movie had to convince critics and the general public to give Warner’s Batman film franchise another chance after they had been so disappointed by Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin. As we discussed earlier in the book, many people knew the long line of characters that had been used in Warner’s previous Batman films and assumed that everything that could be squeezed out of the Batman universe for the big screen had been squeezed out—they figured that Batman simply had no more to offer in terms of further movie projects. Batman Begins proved what all of us serious Batman fans had known all along—that Warner’s Batman film franchise had barely scratched the surface of the character’s big screen potential, and that Batman had so much more to offer in terms of further movie projects.
In spite of all of Warner’s efforts to make it clear that Batman Begins was a complete restart of their Batman film franchise, there were those critics and moviegoers that had somewhat of a difficult time understanding this fact. They thought that the film was a prequel to all of Warner’s previous Batman films, not a brand new cinematic interpretation of the character. This confusion would definitely be cleared up by Nolan’s two later Batman films The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), since so many of the characters featured in those films were completely different interpretations of characters that had been featured in Warner’s previous Batman films.
Batman Begins has so many strengths that it is hard to decide where to begin an analysis of the film. We’ll start with an in-depth examination of the Batman comics, graphic novels and screen works that inspired Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer’s screenplay. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Nolan and Goyer drew on a number of classic Batman works when crafting the script. What follows is a list of scenes from the film and the Batman works they can be directly traced to. (Incidentally, we have discussed all of these works at one point or another earlier in the book.)
Young Bruce takes a fall into a cave under Wayne Manor, and a terrifyingly large swarm of bats fly at him—this was pulled from the 1986 graphic novel series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and the 1989 comic story “The Man Who Falls.”
While training himself to be a crimefighter, Bruce is mentored by a skilled combatant named Ducard—this was pulled from the 1989 comic series Blind Justice, and the 1989 comic story “The Man Who Falls.”
Thomas and Martha Wayne are murdered by a mugger as Bruce looks on—this was pulled from numerous Batman works such as the 1939 comic story “Legend—The Batman and How He Came to Be,” the 1948 comic story “The Origin of Batman,” the 1986 graphic novel series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the 1987 comic series Batman: Year One, and the 1989 comic story “The Man Who Falls.”
A bat flies into Wayne Manor while Bruce formulates his crimefighting strategy—this was pulled from the 1939 comic story “Legend—The Batman and How He Came to Be.”
Batman interrogates Flass in order to find out what he knows about Falcone’s illegal drug shipment. The crimefighter does this by suspending Flass high above the city streets in an upside-down position—this was pulled from the 1996 graphic novel Batman: Haunted Knight.
Batman interrogates Jonathan Crane after Crane has been sprayed by his own fear-inducing hallucinogen. The drugged Crane then sees Batman as a fearsome bat-like monster—this was pulled from “Nothing to Fear,” a 1992 episode of the television series Batman: The Animated Series.
At the end this interrogation, the drugged Crane says to Batman that “Dr. Crane isn’t here right now” as if he is out of his body, and his body has somehow become his personal answering machine—this was pulled from the 1996 graphic novel Batman: Haunted Knight.
Batman escapes from the Gotham Police by activating a transmitter that attracts a swarm of bats—this was pulled from the 1987 comic series Batman: Year One.
Crane attempts to poison Gotham’s water supply by dispersing fear toxin into water pipes located under Arkham Asylum—this was pulled from “Dreams in Darkness,” a 1992 episode of the television series Batman: The Animated Series.
Crane, in his scarecrow mask, sits astride a horse that is performing a leaping maneuver known as a levade—this was pulled from the 1996–97 graphic novel Batman: The Long Halloween.
Gordon and Batman meet on the rooftop of the Gotham City Police Department to discuss a new criminal who calls himself the Joker—this was pulled from the 1987 comic series Batman: Year One.
It is interesting to note that while Nolan and Goyer publicly acknowledged the Batman print works that Batman Begins was inspired by (particularly “The Man Who Falls” and Batman: Year One), they apparently chose not to publicly acknowledge any inspiration they might have drawn from Batman: The Animated Series. This is somewhat surprising, because it seems almost a certainty that the television series had a substantial influence their work—after all, the similarities I’ve just noted between episodes of the series and scenes from the film are striking.
At any rate, no previous Batman big screen work had ever drawn on such a wide array of classic Batman material. By crafting their Batman Begins screenplay in this manner, Nolan and Goyer showed more respect for the time-honored traditions of Batman character than any filmmaker had ever shown. Of course, it should be pointed out that they still chose to take quite a few liberties with this material. For example, in the film the Waynes were leaving a performance of the opera Mefistofle because Bruce was scared of the batlike creatures on the stage when Thomas and Martha were shot and killed. In the comics, neither the opera nor bats ever had anything to do with the Wayne murders—the family was always shown leaving a movie theatre right before the tragedy.
Most all of the liberties that Nolan and Goyer took with Batman mythos were decidedly small ones, so the film’s depiction of Batman generally stayed very close to the character’s time-honored traditions. However, there was one noticeable exception to this rule—Nolan and Goyer chose to portray Bruce Wayne as not being particularly skilled in the disciplines of science and technology. Since Batman’s very first origin story “Legend—The Batman and How He Came to Be” was published in 1939, Bruce was depicted as having developed his mind every bit as much as his body in order to become Batman. In fact, that story even stated that he had trained himself to become a “master scientist.”
In Batman Begins, Bruce is shown to be unapologetically ignorant of scientific and technological matters. For example, when Lucius Fox tells Bruce what steps he had to take in order to synthesize an antidote for Crane’s hallucinogen, Bruce implies that he does not understand a word that Fox is saying. Also, all of the high tech equipment that Bruce uses to fight crime as Batman is not developed by Bruce—rather, he obtains it from the Wayne Enterprises archives through Fox. In this author’s opinion, Nolan and Goyer’s decision to slightly “dumb down” the Bruce Wayne character in the film is an unnecessary and unwelcome one.
Incidentally, this decision leads to Fox being a much more integral character in Batman Begins than he had ever been in any previous Batman work. Ever since Fox was first introduced into Batman comic stories in the late 1970s, he had played a decidedly peripheral role in Batman mythos—he was a Wayne Enterprises executive who was a close confidant of Bruce’s, but he had no knowledge of Bruce’s exploits as Batman. Obviously, the Batman Begins Fox not only knows that Bruce is Batman, but he also sets Bruce up with all of his crimefighting gear. This new version of Fox is basically a shameless copy of the character known as Q from the James Bond film series—over the years, Q provisioned Bond with an endless array of high tech spy gadgetry. Here is perhaps the most concise way to sum up the manner in which Fox is depicted in Batman Begins—Fox seems to have been given all of the intelligence that Nolan and Goyer decided to take away from Bruce!
But this “dumbing down” of Bruce is basically the only objection I have with Nolan and Goyer’s take on Batman/Bruce Wayne in the film. In my opinion, the Batman/Bruce Wayne of Batman Begins is the most definitive big screen version of the character ever created. He is grim and determined, but he is still very much in control of his actions and emotions. There is darkness in his soul because he is born from great tragedy, but he can still take some satisfaction in the fact that his mission is truly helping Gotham City and its citizens. As we’ve just discussed, Nolan and Goyer formed their version of Batman/Bruce Wayne by piecing together elements drawn from classic incarnations of the character—but their version of Batman/Bruce Wayne ended up being so well-constructed that he himself ended up being a classic incarnation of the character.
Nolan and Goyer’s powerful vision of Batman/Bruce Wayne is acted to perfection by Christian Bale. As we’ve made our way through the history of Batman feature films, we’ve examined all of the actors who have played the role on the big screen—Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery, Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney. Bale’s incredible performance in Batman Begins is head and shoulders above all of the Batman performances given by these actors.
What really sets Bale apart from these actors is that he is equally marvelous at playing both Batman and Bruce Wayne. His striking good looks, muscular physique, and psychological intensity capture both of the character’s identities to a degree that is almost startling. It is difficult for me to find words to convey just how good I think Bale is in Batman Begins, but I’ll give it a try. To me, Bale is Batman/Bruce Wayne during every moment he is on the screen in the film—I can’t think of a higher compliment to give his performance.
There is one more element of the Batman Begins Batman that is worthy of high praise. The Batsuit that costume designer Lindy Hemming created for the film is every bit as impressive as Nolan and Goyer’s writing and Bale’s acting. As we noted earlier in this chapter, the costume is perhaps more similar to the Batman costumes used in Warner’s previous Batman films than one might have expected in a franchise restart. But the costume still has enough differences in style and design to set it apart from these earlier costumes. At any rate, here are the most important observations that need to be made regarding Hemming’s Batsuit—it looks flat-out spectacular on film, and it captures the character’s iconic appearance as well as any movie Batman costume ever created.
The high quality of Bale’s performance as Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins is matched by the film’s supporting cast. Michael Caine’s interpretation of Alfred is particularly stellar—Caine bears no physical resemblance to the Alfred of the comics, but his acting brings a warmth and humanity to Bruce’s closest confidant that is both believable and touching. The interplay between Bale and Caine in their scenes together gives the film some of its best quiet, character-driven moments.
Liam Neeson is excellent as Ducard, though obviously he really is not so much “Ducard” as he is Ra’s Al Ghul. In this author’s opinion, Nolan and Goyer’s decision to fold Ducard and Ra’s into one single character does not work particularly well. Elements of both characters are incorporated into Neeson’s portrayal of Ducard/Ra’s, but combining them together does not allow for either of them to be explored with any great depth.
This is not especially disappointing in terms of the Ducard character—as we noted earlier in this chapter, the character never had made much of an impact on Batman mythos since he was first introduced in 1989. It is more disappointing that Ra’s is shortchanged—he had become one of Batman’s truly classic villains since his creation in the early 1970s, so he could have been more richly developed if he had not been shoehorned into a “surprise ending” kind of a plot device.
That said, however, Nolan and Goyer’s decision to lose the sci-fi/fantasy elements of Ra’s like his ability to achieve immortality through the use of his Lazarus Pit made the character fit in very well with the film’s real world interpretation of Batman. (We discussed the origin of Ra’s and his Lazarus Pit back in Chapter 7.) And Nolan and Goyer did stay very true to the overall spirit of the character in the film—Ra’s’ determination to wipe out millions of lives in order to restore the planet to what he considered to be its “natural balance” perfectly captured the essence of the comic book Ra’s.
I should probably say at least a few words about the film’s “decoy Ra’s” played by Ken Watanabe. Watanabe’s acting, looks and wardrobe nicely convey that Ra’s is a man of far eastern descent who is in possession of great wisdom and strength—in other words, he is perhaps more similar to the comic book Ra’s than the film’s real Ra’s! Of course, this misdirection was a very intentional one on the part of Nolan so that he could outfit Batman Begins with a whopper of a plot twist.
Katie Holmes turns in a solid performance as Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins. Rachel is the only major character in the film that has no origin in Batman’s comic book roots. Her ties to Bruce that go all the way back to their childhood together and her strong moral convictions make her a more interesting character than the heroines in Warner’s previous Batman films—in other words, she is definitely an upgrade over Vicki Vale and Chase Meridian! Holmes does a very nice job with the strong material that Nolan and Goyer have given her to work with.
As excellent as all of Batman Begins’ supporting cast is, one would be hard pressed to pick out just one cast member as being the best of the bunch. But if I were forced to do just that, I think I would choose Gary Oldman’s performance as Jim Gordon. Like Bale, Oldman completely disappears into his part—this allows him to bring Gordon to life in a richly detailed manner that makes all previous big screen versions of the character look laughingly simplistic by comparison. Of course, Oldman’s performance benefits greatly from Nolan and Goyer’s thoughtful interpretation of Gordon—it is drawn almost exclusively from Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s version of the character found in their 1987 comic series Batman: Year One. Oldman’s appearance in the film is meant to reflect this version of the character as well—he is made up to look exactly like the Batman: Year One Gordon.
By contrast, Cillian Murphy’s depiction of Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow in Batman Begins has little to do with any comic version of the character. Nolan and Goyer made the decision to lose the character’s Ray Bolger–like scarecrow costume and outfit him with nothing more than a business suit and a burlap mask. In keeping with the film’s real world sensibilities, the burlap mask has a practical function—it houses a gas mask that Crane wears while spraying his victims with fear toxin. Murphy’s creepy performance both in and out of the burlap mask makes Crane a very memorable character even though he is so far removed from the Scarecrow of the comics.
As we discussed just a bit ago, Lucius Fox is made to be a very integral character in Batman Begins. Nolan wisely chose to entrust this important role to the acclaimed veteran actor Morgan Freeman. Freeman gives a likable, low-key performance as Fox in the film—by investing Fox with a sense of quiet wisdom and a wonderfully wry sense of humor, Freeman effectively conveys what a valuable ally Fox is to Bruce.
There are several characters in Batman Begins that were first introduced into Batman’s world through Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s 1987 comic series Batman: Year One. Tom Wilkinson plays Gotham crime boss Carmine Falcone, Mark Boone Junior plays Gotham City Police Detective Flass, and Colin McFarlane plays Gotham City Police Commissioner Loeb. None of these characters are carbon copies of their Batman: Year One counterparts in terms of their actions or appearance—still, they greatly enhance the film because they are so well-written and acted.
There is one more character in the film that I just have to examine in some detail. Jack Gleeson plays the young boy who receives a small flexible periscope from Batman as a kind of “souvenir.” At the end of the film, Batman rescues both Rachel and the boy from the clutches of a number of escaped Arkham inmates. The boy is by Rachel’s side when she realizes Batman’s true identity and calls the crimefighter “Bruce.”
All right, I realize that I might be reading too much into this character, but doesn’t he appear to be a lot like a very young Robin? He has equipment given to him by Batman in his possession—he might even have Batman’s real identity in his possession as well, for goodness’ sake! It appears than he might have been orphaned due to Ra’s’ attack on Gotham City. (Of course, most all classic versions of the Robin character featured origins in which they were orphaned.) I mean, come on—just look at all of these signs! You want more? Well, here’s one more for you—the boy is even wearing a red t-shirt that looks a bit like a Robin tunic in his scenes!
Did Nolan find a very subtle way to incorporate the Robin character into his vision of Batman and his world in Batman Begins? Well, the director went out of his way not to give us any hints as to just who this boy might be—Gleeson is billed simply as “Little Boy” in the film’s credits. And Nolan chose not to feature the character in either of his Batman sequels, so we’ll probably never know any more about the character than we do right now. And not only did Nolan never revisit this character, but he also found a way to incorporate a new character with the name of “Robin” into one of his Batman sequels—we’ll discuss that “Robin” in detail later in the book. Still, I wonder—that “Little Boy” sure seems a lot like a Robin to me!
It is interesting to note that even though Batman is such a quintessential American character, much of the Batman Begins cast and crew hail from countries in and around the United Kingdom. For example, Christopher Nolan, Michael Caine, Tom Wilkinson and Gary Oldman are English, Christian Bale is Welsh, and Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy are Irish. But even though so much of Batman Begins’ creative talent is U.K.-based, the film still has a decidedly “American” feel to it. Bale, Oldman, Wilkinson and Murphy in particular adopt flawless American accents when they assume their roles—so all of their characters convincingly come across as having been born and raised in the United States.
One of Batman Begins’ most potent strengths is the film’s incredible production design. The collaboration between Nolan and his production designer Nathan Crowley ended up bringing Batman’s world to life in a way that was both wonderfully atmospheric and strikingly realistic. All of the film’s massive sets are a wonder to behold—Gotham City, Arkham Asylum, Wayne Manor and the Batcave are realized in such spectacular fashion that audiences are totally drawn into the production. The scale and detail of these sets makes one feel as if they are standing right next to Batman during his adventures. The Batman Begins sets are so ambitious that most all of the sets used in Warner’s previous Batman films are left looking claustrophobic by comparison—and given how elaborate many of the sets were for Burton’s and Schumacher’s Batman films, that really is saying something!
The gigantic scope of the film’s sets is matched by the scope of the film’s location shooting. The scenes filmed in Iceland and in Chicago help to bring Batman’s world to life in an immersive manner that would not be possible by filming on cramped soundstages. These scenes definitely showcase the incredible work of the film’s director of photography Wally Pfister. Pfister’s Chicago shots that depict Batman standing on top of skyscrapers are the ones are particularly unforgettable—as a lifelong Batman fan, I can truly say that I had been waiting for iconic scenes like these to show up in a Batman movie all of my life!
Interestingly, so much of the production design and cinematography of Batman Begins seemed to be tied to one particular color. Many of the film’s Gotham scenes are bathed in light that appears to come from the common overhead street lights that emit an orange/brown color—as a result, these scenes have a decidedly sepia tone to them. This color doesn’t just show up in the film itself—it was also the dominant color in most of the theatrical posters used to advertise the film’s release.
Of course, far and away the most striking element of the film’s production design is its Batmobile. (Incidentally, the Batmobile was always referred to by the name of “the Tumbler” in the film, but we’ll stick with tradition and call it by its time-honored name here!) When Nolan and Crowley decided to realize the Batmobile in such a utilitarian, no-nonsense manner during the early planning stages of the film, they really were on to something—the incredible car really is every bit as much of a star in the film as its lead actors, and its design is a perfect summation of the film’s real world approach to Batman. The true genius of the auto lies in the fact that its appearance is so memorably unrefined—if one would outfit it with a long handle coming off the back, it would look a lot like a giant push lawn mower!
Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s excellent musical score is another essential component in establishing Batman Begins’ overall atmosphere. Their ambient compositions have a power and intensity that perfectly complements the film’s real world interpretation of Batman. Incidentally, Zimmer and Howard titled these compositions in an unusual way—all of the pieces were named with Latin words that describe various species of bats.
In the end, most all of the things that are so wonderful about Batman Begins can be traced directly to Christopher Nolan. The film is definitely based on a wide variety of classic Batman material, but it is Nolan’s vision that pulls all of that material together to form an unforgettable cinematic portrait of Batman and his world. Batman Begins is by turns savage, sensitive, tragic, and funny, and it rarely loses sight of the fact that Batman’s real strength as a character lies in his close ties to reality.
That said, however, I do still have a few quibbles with the film. First, I feel that some of its scenes suffer from very hyperactive editing—there are moments in the movie when one has to process so many ridiculously quick cuts that it is hard to keep up with what is happening onscreen. This is especially true of the film’s action sequences—after all of my repeated viewings of the movie, I still find some of its action difficult to follow. For example, one of the film’s signature scenes is when Batman leaps from the top floor of Arkham Asylum and uses his cape to glide to the bottom of the Asylum’s ornate circular stairwell. There are a total of seven different camera angles cut into Batman’s seven-second glide! In my opinion, a few less angles would have allowed viewers to better take in this iconic scene.
Another problem that I have with Batman Begins involves one of the film’s major plot points. The climax of the movie revolves around Ra’s Al Ghul’s fear hallucinogen being dispersed into Gotham’s water system—the poisoned water is then turned into vapor by some sort of powerful microwave emitter. This scenario is physically impossible for a variety of reasons. First, because water pipes are highly pressurized, they cannot be opened they way they are opened under Arkham Asylum where the hallucinogen is being poured into the water system. If a real water pipe was opened in that manner, the water inside of it would not keep flowing through the pipe like a fast-moving stream—instead, it would quickly flood the entire area.
Furthermore, if the city’s water pipes started rupturing because the water inside of them was vaporized, the overall water pressure in the system would lower, not raise. So the idea of the microwave emitter somehow being able to generate enough water pressure to cause a chain-reaction explosion of the city’s entire water system is at odds with real physical science.
Nolan had repeatedly stated that he wanted to keep Batman Begins as closely tied to reality as possible—so it seems like a very odd decision on his part to have set up the entire climax of the film around a scenario that could not possibly happen in real life. In my opinion, Batman Begins could have been an even better movie than it turned out to be if it had given a plausible climax that was more in keeping with its real world sensibilities.
All right, that’s enough of my quibbling—let’s go back to saying good things about Batman Begins. During the film’s initial theatrical run, it was treated to a cinematic upgrade that no previous Batman screen work had ever received—it was remastered so that the film could be shown in IMAX theatres. Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with the IMAX film format, I’ll take a moment here to give a quick rundown of what it is and what it does.
In the late 1960s, a Canadian film company called the IMAX Corporation began creating its own motion picture film format and corresponding set of cinema projection standards. Movies that were filmed in the IMAX format were able to capture images of far greater size and clarity than movies using conventional film formats. At first, the format was used almost exclusively for the creation and screening of documentary films. Giant-sized IMAX theatres constructed at museums and science centers around the world showed IMAX films about animals, nature, science, travel, and a host of other topics.
But the format started to be used to produce and screen non-documentary films as well—for example, Walt Disney Pictures released their animated film Fantasia 2000 on IMAX format in early 2000. Not long after the release of Fantasia 2000, IMAX developed technology to remaster non–IMAX films so that they could be shown in IMAX theatres. Since the IMAX format was crossing over from the world of documentary works to the world of entertainment works more and more frequently, multiplex cinemas around the world started outfitting their facilities with IMAX theatres.
In the early 2000s, Warner Bros. started releasing a number of their high-profile movies in IMAX format—Batman Begins was one of those movies. Simply put, the film looked absolutely dazzling when it was screened in the IMAX format. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Batman Begins realized Batman’s world in such spectacular fashion that audiences were totally drawn into the production—the movie became even more immersive once it was transferred onto high-resolution IMAX film and projected onto giant IMAX screens.
Incidentally, this assessment of the film having even more of an impact when screened in IMAX is based on personal experience. During the summer of 2005, I attended IMAX showings of the movie in Cincinnati, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana and my hometown of Columbus, Ohio—these showings definitely took my Batman Begins viewing experience to a whole new level. The showing that was particularly memorable was the one in Indianapolis—I saw the film at the massive IMAX theatre at the Indiana State Museum, and I left the theatre feeling like I had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Batman during most every second of the time he was on the screen.
Obviously, I was not the only one who was so impressed with how incredible Batman Begins looked in IMAX. When Christopher Nolan began work on his sequel to the movie, he decided to actually film a sizeable portion of the sequel with IMAX cameras. That sequel was the stunningly successful The Dark Knight (2008), and it was the first non-documentary feature film ever made to include scenes that were shot using IMAX technology. (We’ll discuss the film and its IMAX scenes in detail later in the book.)
Let’s take Batman Begins from the big screen to the small screen and examine the movie’s home video release history. The film’s box office success led to a high demand for Batman Begins DVDs and VHS tapes when Warner Bros. first released it to the home video market in October 2005. Incidentally, Batman Begins was the last Batman big screen work to be made commercially available on VHS before the format was put on the road to obsolescence by the DVD format. There were several different DVD versions of the film released by Warner. It was offered as two separate single-disc releases, one in its original widescreen format and one in a format cropped to fit a standard television screen. Batman Begins was also released as a 2-disc set—the set contained the widescreen version of the film, as well as a wealth of bonus material.
This bonus material was very similar to the bonus material found on the 2-disc DVD sets of Warner’s previous Batman films. (As we’ve discussed a number of times earlier in the book, these DVD sets were also released in 2005 in the wake of Batman Begins’ success.) Highlights of this material included eight featurettes about the making of the film—the featurettes were entitled “Batman: The Journey Begins,” “Shaping Mind and Body,” “Gotham City Rises,” “Cape and Cowl,” “Batman: The Tumbler,” “Path to Discovery,” “Saving Gotham City,” and “Genesis of the Bat.” These featurettes included commentary from many of the individuals who played a major role in the movie’s creation, including Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Nathan Crowley, Emma Thomas, Chris Corbould, Wally Pfister, Lindy Hemming, Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, and Katie Holmes. Their commentary was accompanied by a good deal of behind-the-scenes footage shot on the Batman Begins set showing the film’s cast and crew at work.
This 2005 DVD set remained the highest-quality home video version of Batman Begins until Warner released the movie on HD DVD in October 2006. However, the HD DVD format turned out to be a short-lived one. The majority of consumers ended up choosing Blu-ray over HD DVD as their preferred high definition video format, so HD DVD production was completely suspended less than two years after the release of the Batman Begins HD DVD.
Warner released Batman Begins on Blu-ray in July 2008 to coincide with the theatrical release of The Dark Knight, Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins. The Batman Begins Blu-ray included all of the special features found on the DVD set, as well as several new special features. Far and away the most notable of these was “The Dark Knight IMAX Prologue,” the bank robbery sequence featuring the Joker that opened The Dark Knight. Since that sequence had actually been filmed in IMAX, those who purchased the Batman Begins Blu-ray got the opportunity to see the extraordinary level of visual quality that high-resolution IMAX film was going to bring to The Dark Knight. And needless to say, the Batman Begins Blu-ray flawlessly reproduced all of the incredible sights and sounds found in both Batman Begins and “The Dark Knight IMAX Prologue.” (Of course, the Blu-ray really couldn’t deliver the kind of overwhelming viewing experience that IMAX showings of these films could—but hey, let’s not get too greedy here!)
There is one more screen version of Batman Begins that we should take note of here. The video game Batman Begins was released on major gaming platforms such as PlayStation 2 and Xbox in June 2005 to coincide with the theatrical release of the actual film. Batman Begins presented its players with a long, complex plot that closely adhered to the plot of the film, and its graphics were designed to capture the look of the film’s characters, props and sets. The game’s connection to the film was made even stronger due to the fact that all of the film’s principal actors provided the voices for their characters in the game’s audio. Interestingly, even though the Batman Begins video game enjoyed a reasonable amount of commercial and critical success when it was released, it did not end up inspiring Warner Bros. to release video game tie-ins to Nolan’s two later Batman films—so to date, Batman Begins is the only modern, immersive video game based on a live-action Batman film ever to be produced.
It is also interesting to note how Warner Bros. chose to handle general merchandising tie-ins to promote the release of Batman Begins. Obviously, the film was intended for adult audiences—indeed, it was the most complex, mature Batman film that Warner had produced to date. But even still, the film’s release was supported by the usual amount of merchandise intended for children—there was a wide variety of Batman Begins action figures, toys, books, comics, trading cards, clothing, etc., in stores as the film first hit theatres. Thankfully, this merchandising blitz did not create the kind of controversy that the merchandising blitz for the adult-oriented Batman Returns had. The reason for this was simple—even though Batman Begins was also an adult-oriented film, it was nowhere near as dark and disturbing as Batman Returns had been. Consequently, it did not seem at all inappropriate to help promote the film through some products designed for children. (Plus, how could you ever stop a kid from wanting a toy version of a cool car like the Tumbler?)
I’ll close my discussion of Batman Begins with these thoughts. This reboot of Warner’s Batman film franchise certainly did not reach the incredible, history-making level of success that the studio’s first Batman film did back in 1989—but it still undoubtedly stands as one of the greatest achievements in the history of the Batman character. To date, Batman Begins is the only Batman big screen work that draws on a wide array of classic Batman material—and as a result, it is widely considered to be one of the best cinematic portraits of the character ever created.
I think that I can best sum up what an important milestone Batman Begins is in the history of the character with these following sentences. Most all previous Batman big screen works had their moments for us serious Batman fans, moments that gave us a glimpse of the iconic character that we loved. But sitting through an entire Batman film just to enjoy a moment or two was by no means a truly satisfying experience for us—wasn’t there a filmmaker out there who could give us a Batman movie that contained more than just “moments?” We longed for a well-constructed, intelligently-written Batman film that would really take the character seriously—one that would capture the spirit of Batman’s greatest comic adventures by staying true to the time-honored traditions of the character from fade in to fade out. Christopher Nolan delivered that film to us—it was Batman Begins.
In other words, I consider Batman Begins to be the best Batman big screen work ever created. I realize that Nolan’s next two Batman films The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) ended up being so staggeringly successful that most people see them as being far greater triumphs than Batman Begins. I personally do not agree with this line of thinking—in fact, even though I very much enjoyed The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, I feel that neither film lived up to the promise established by Batman Begins. I’ll lay out my case for this argument in the next few chapters of the book.