The Definitives
Batman Begins (2005)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Liam Neeson
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 140 min.
by Brian Eggert
Entered into
The Definitives:
07/16/2008
Original Release Date:
06/15/2005
Batman’s conceptualization has undergone innumerable adjustments and transformations over his nearly seventy years in comic books, television, and film—from vigilante to detective, from campy hero to public enemy, from Caped Crusader to The Dark Knight. Batman Begins reinvents the iconographic comic book character in near operatic terms, finally actualizing the depth and emotional potential that remained untapped through so many adaptations. Director Christopher Nolan, drawing heavily from continuities shaped by Frank Miller and Bruce Timm, erases decades of mediocre superhero moviemaking and elevates Batman to a potent source for dramatic storytelling.
Retelling the hero’s origin story, Nolan describes Batman’s starting point with sobering consequence, relying on symbolism to infer the character’s grand theatrical transformation within the narrative. His parents gunned down before him by Crime Alley thug Joe Chill, child Bruce Wayne is scarred by his ensuing obsession with vengeance. Upon maturing into an adult, Wayne vows to punish injustice without becoming a murder-bound vigilante himself. His pledge ultimately pits him against Gotham City’s entire urban sprawl, riddled with both organized and unfettered crime.
This basic outline of Batman’s widely-known origin story is the only consistent aspect throughout the character’s various mythologies; Nolan’s film deepens the origins, making Wayne’s battle more about overcoming his anger, childhood fears, and guilt—all present since the night his parents were murdered—rather than defeating some villain. Indeed, the central conflict of Batman Begins is largely psychological. These themes have always stewed under the surface, but never with as much dramatic clout as Nolan structures.
Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger for DC Comics in 1939, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics, issue #27. Unlike contemporary heroes such as Superman, Kane’s creation had no uncanny powers, just human endurance and initiative, wealth and intelligence (perhaps this is why Batman remains so appealing, as he signifies the limit of normal human potential). Kane originally conceived the Bat-Man with a domino mask, stiff wings attached to the arms, and red tights. His design was later re-envisioned by Finger for a more ominous look: no exposed skin but his mouth, a cowl, gloves, a flowing cape in which he could wrap himself like a gargoyle, and glowing, bat-like eyes.
While Kane negotiated a byline “Created by Bob Kane” when he signed his character over to DC, Finger was left uncredited in spite of his significant contribution, which even included selecting the name Bruce Wayne as the hero’s alter-ego. Only after Finger’s death in 1974 did DC acknowledge the writer’s ongoing development of Batman and a number of the comic’s quintessential villains.
Kane and Finger initially devised Batman to kill wrongdoers in pulp fiction detective style, underlining the vigilante-hero’s distance from the judicial system. But after a particularly violent storyline where Batman shot several criminals to death with a gun, Editor Whitney Ellsworth insisted the hero adopt a more official attitude, and instead track criminals by unconventional means for punishment under law (regardless of how inefficient The System often proved to be). Batman’s gun was replaced with a “batarang” and utility belt, he turned over criminals to his official counterpart Commissioner James Gordon, and Arkham Asylum became the temporary hub for the hero’s rich assortment of supervillains (all of whom would escape again and again to reign terror on Gotham).
Batman is malleable according to his writers and editors, like most comic book characters, changing along with the era’s political climate to reflect or deflect social concerns. During post-WWII positivism and existing all through the 1960s, the hero’s grim city and tragic past were replaced with a lighthearted, juvenile air of escapist children’s entertainment. Laden with cartoonish plotlines and homoerotic subtexts, this version of the hero later furnished the live-action television show Batman, a camp classic of the 1960s starring Adam West.
Crucial to defining the modern Batman persona, including his looming past and lasting obsessions, Frank Miller’s Year One storyline retold the hero’s origins on the comic page in 1987. Miller strengthens the rapport between a just-learning Batman and Lieutenant James Gordon, which blossoms to save a corrupt city from falling apart, requiring two honest men to stand for whatever hope remains. Gordon struggles to persevere over the bureaucracy of Gotham’s crooked elite; Batman steps over boundaries where his official counterpart must halt. In lieu of earlier BAM and KAPOW tactics purveyed by the ‘60s TV show, Miller’s storyline acculturates Batman with characteristics of film noir and other gritty crime yarns, placing his continuity inside an asphalt jungle of untamable vice, rather than a comic book world of fantastical supervillains and plotlines beyond belief. From Miller’s pointedly dour, realist tone, Christopher Nolan etched his foundation, erasing any memory of previous cinematic attempts at DC’s character.
Hundreds of millions in revenue notwithstanding, Warner Bros. produced four artistic disappointments that failed to penetrate into the story’s potentially vast personal drama; instead, each seems preoccupied with design and style: In 1989, Tim Burton filmed Batman, a movie that feels hollow and dated by an awkward soundtrack by Prince, a near-useless Commissioner Gordon, and Jack Nicholson playing himself decorated as the Joker. But its success inspired 1992’s improved (and sexually-charged) sequel Batman Returns, which fosters The Penguin’s childhood wounds more than its hero’s. From there, director Joel Schumacher took over the franchise, returning in 1995 with Batman Forever to a child-friendly tone reminiscent of the ‘60s show. Saturating every moment with neon and alternative music for the MTV generation, Schumacher’s first crack at Batman is colorful but brainless, his interpretations of Riddler and Two-Face laughably out of character, if not (insultingly) likened to the Joker. Beating the franchise nearly to death was Batman & Robin in 1997, Schumacher’s stupid, overstuffed farce packed with far too many characters, cheeky puns, and Hollywood names. Almost everyone involved, including Schumacher and star George Clooney, now admit fault for nearly collapsing the franchise with their living cartoon, initiating an eight year coma for Batman on the silver screen. Warner Bros. hired writer after writer for potential relaunches of the franchise; among them an adaptation of Miller’s Year One directed by Darren Aronofsky and Batman vs. Superman by Wolfgang Petersen. None came to fruition.
And yet, throughout the mid-1990s Warner Bros. Animation had already discovered the ideal Batman interpretation, in a combination of noirish storytelling and entertainment suitable for youngsters. Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) achieved the tone sought on the comic page, using an innovative animation style that built up from black backgrounds to furnish Batman’s world with an appropriately gothic demeanor. Created by Bruce Timm, the Emmy Award-winning show features an Art Deco-fuelled 1940s stylization, writing certainly more adult and less pun-reliant than the live-action Batman films, and music punctuating each character. Timm and collaborator Paul Dini’s time at Warner Bros. Animation generated an artistic canon for DC Comics’ hero mythologies, including the Superman and Justice League cartoons, and until Batman Begins, their show’s efforts resulted in the best filmic representation yet of the Caped Crusader—the theatrically released animated movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Refurbishing characters and creating all new ones, their work was so heavily lauded that even the comics followed their hail for a more severe take on the legend, instilling their innovations as Batman’s criterion mythology.
Years of scrapped concepts and denied scripts for another live-action film placed the Batman franchise in Christopher Nolan’s capable hands. Nolan and co-writer David S. Goyer begin their mythology with Wayne, played with appropriate gravitas by Christian Bale, having willingly condemned himself to a far away prison. There he trains his body and mind in combat against hardened inmates; having resolved to fight the criminality inherent in Gotham’s underworld, he has traveled the world learning the nature of the criminal, struggling to center his emotions. They need centering, he finds, after his parents’ murderer is released from prison by becoming a district attorney informant; Wayne plans to assassinate the killer, but his plan is foiled when the mob takes Chill down first. Consumed by unfocused anger, weakened by guilt, Wayne escapes his pampered billionaire lifestyle to understand his enemy, landing himself in the Asian prison.
Future sensei and father figure to the parentless Wayne, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) arrives in his cell and offers to teach Self-mastery and fear control for an ultimate goal of enemy intimidation: the way of the League of Shadows, led by mysterious figure Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). Wayne is trained in martial arts, distraction, diversion, and intimidation, developing into a living weapon, into more than a man: an idea. His paralyzing childhood dread of bats surmounted, his anger and guilt better understood, Wayne can now become an emblem of fear.
But he refuses the League’s next measure of cleansing: fatal vigilantism on a citywide scale, specifically Gotham City. The League intends to help along Gotham’s path of self-destruction; this is something they’ve done for centuries, from Rome to London, when a city’s time comes, they drop the blade. Wayne’s training sequence and eventual rebellion against Ducard could be considered cliché, but the scenes build on Wayne’s desperate search for a father; and after Ducard proves morally slanted, butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and good cop James Gordon (Gary Oldman) replace him as father-partner figures. Following his own ideals, Wayne splits from his mentor Ducard, and returns to Gotham to become its protector.
While Batman Begins receives much praise for its realistic approach to the superhero’s birth, this supposed “realism” exists above all in its emotional treatment of Wayne and his clumsy growth into Batman. The film is about a man dressed up as a bat, after all. Nolan’s construction of Batman’s arsenal of gadgets and weapons comes without the polish of previous films, most deriving from abandoned prototypes by Wayne Enterprises’ Applied Sciences Division: his Batmobile was made to assemble bridges; his impenetrable Nomex suit was intended for military body armor; his cape lightweight “memory cloth” that hardens for gliding-flight during parachute drops—all reformatted from practical items, versus the hero inexplicably constructing futurist gizmos from scratch (and thus, finally responding to that long-unanswered question, “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”). Even the Batcave remains just a cavern, to be redecorated no doubt in future sequels. His first forays into Gotham City are not without punishing results, leaving him bruised and burned from the learning process. The painful and human reality of his night stalking physically marked, audiences see Batman’s fear-inducing presentation evolve, empathizing with him all the more when his theatricality succeeds and sends criminals screaming into the night.
Rather than pit our hero against his most commonly-known archnemesis the Joker, or any other of the colorful antagonists painted with comic strokes over the years, the chosen villains, conceptualized without flashy and polished getups, personify Batman’s varied emotional conflicts central to the plot, all arranged to form what becomes a single criminal scheme. And unlike previous entries in the franchise, the result does not overwhelm since the villains, however numerous, represent stages of our hero’s psychological growth: Signifying Gotham’s criminal underworld, thus a figurative link to the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, mob boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) imports drugs into the urban sprawl, among them hallucinogens for Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy). Also identified as Scarecrow, Crane, Arkham Asylum’s psychopharmacologist, mirrors Batman’s vulnerability to and exploitation of fear; manipulating fear as his greatest weapon, Scarecrow studies the effects of the emotion on his patients to disturbing extremes. He implements a scheme, sponsored by the League of Shadows, to release his fear toxin into Gotham on a massive scale, send the population into panic, and bring down the city as Ra’s al Ghul intended. By stopping this trifecta of villains, Wayne confronts the underworld that murdered his parents, prevails over his surrender to fear, and establishes himself as the guardian of Gotham City.
Instilling flawless substance in every performance, Nolan’s cast was chosen not by their celebrity, rather for their abilities to epitomize classic characters. Bale’s performance pivots Wayne on the actor’s undeniable ability to evoke the character’s brooding disposition, handled with genuineness and severity by a performer slowly becoming one of Hollywood’s most respectable figures. Michael Caine decorates his lines with appropriate humor and intellect, servicing the film, and indeed his character’s master, with limitless supplies of conscience and heart. And Gary Oldman seems to embody the very essence of the James Gordon from Miller’s text and Timm’s cartoon, both in appearance and spirit. The combined presence of the cast—including names like Liam Neeson, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, and Rutger Hauer—brings an unprecedented, unexpected integrity to what might have been a mere comic book movie.
Batman Begins restores an ongoing mythology that in film was close to crumbling, sustaining its frames with drama far surpassing the usual overtly commercial popcorn-munching fare of the genre. Nolan’s reinvention of the series disregards Burton and Schumacher’s now altogether eclipsed efforts, starting afresh in the grave traditions of Miller and Timm. The film extends adult themes into realms of tragedy, and therein births a new style for the genre. Whereas Hollywood often consumes and spews out superhero franchises like bubblegum unworthy of consideration, several properties have taken a hint from Nolan’s film, underlining darker, dramatic, and realist aspects of their characters’ psychology to elevate the filmic story into cinematic art, deepening their description beyond just brave symbols and into relatable individuals retaining emotional pull.
As a result, the concept of “mere comic book movie” has evaporated since the release of Nolan’s dark opus, inciting a singular comic-to-film renaissance that has since established the genre’s authority. When treated with the appropriate respect and sincerity, though rare, the comic book film can earn the label of high cinematic art. Batman Begins is the launching pad for that movement.