BATMAN BEGINS (2005)

Back in 2005, prior to Batman Begins being unleashed to the world, its now legendary British-American director Christopher Nolan was virtually unknown to the masses. He had made just three films: Following (1998), Memento (2000), and Insomnia (2002). Each of these had been met with good-to-excellent reviews, but with all that said and done, it’s still astonishing to think that Warner Bros. gave Nolan the risky job of resurrecting their Batman franchise—and a ton of cash to make it. But what’s even more incredible is that the then relatively inexperienced filmmaker would also succeed so spectacularly, and go on to pull off that rarest of achievements: direct a superhero trilogy that not only succeeded commercially but also critically.

Of course, two decades later, anyone remotely interested in cinema, even a casual filmgoer, will have heard of Christopher Nolan. Since the beginning of his career, Nolan’s turned out hit after hit to varying degrees, with three from his filmography even crossing the $1BN mark. Such is his success that he’s now listed as the seventh-highest-grossing film director, putting him against such heavy-hitters as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Peter Jackson—with all of his films combined earning over $6.6BN worldwide.

Unlike Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s take on The Dark Knight, Nolan’s film would set out to explore Bruce Wayne’s psyche and show his complete backstory as to why he decided to become Batman and fight crime in Gotham City. Yes, we would see his parents’ murder again, but this time, it would be at the hands of petty criminal Joe Chill, as seen in the comics, not like Burton’s version which gave that responsibility to Jack Napier, who would go on to become the Joker.

In the opening half-hour, Nolan’s film skilfully shifts between timelines to explore what drives Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale). We first see him as a child playing with Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), then falling into a well and being swarmed by bats—a traumatic event that haunts him. A short while later, while watching the opera Mefistofele with his parents, a scene triggers memories of the bats, prompting them to leave early—only for his parents to be killed in a mugging. A decade on, Bruce witnesses Joe Chill’s murder in court and admits to Rachel he intended to kill Chill himself. Appalled, Rachel rejects him, prompting Bruce to spiral into a criminal lifestyle that lands him in a brutal Bhutanese prison. There, he meets Ducard (Liam Neeson), who tries to recruit him into the League of Shadows, a secretive group that punishes the corrupt through chaos. Upon returning to Gotham, Bruce begins his plans to become Batman, targeting mob boss Carmine Falcone and his sinister ally, Dr Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy)—the Scarecrow.

If all that plot, and character, exposition sounds a little too much to take on board within the film’s first act, it’s down to Christopher Nolan’s and David S. Goyer’s smart screenplay that, watching this unfold before you, it never becomes a chore. In fact, from minute one you are effortlessly swept up in the Batman mythology, and are kept entertained right through to the film’s conclusion. The time-jump narrative is used throughout, but definitely more within the first part of the story; however, it’s used so skilfully that it never distracts, in fact, just the opposite.

Perhaps it’s Goyer’s influence that really helps keep Batman Begins’ script thundering along at pace; after all, Goyer has a long history steeped in comic books that goes back to the Nineties with his involvement as writer on the first Blade (1998) film. This would continue with its sequels and go on with Nolan’s next two Batman features, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) and Zack Snyder’s Superman films. Goyer has also penned many comic books, so it was a flash of genius from Warner Bros. that they brought in Goyer to help write the screenplay. In hindsight, one can see that the studio was doing this in an attempt to have as much zero-risk of failure for their new film after the critically derided and commercially disappointing Batman and Robin (1997).

Following a rejected story-reboot idea from none other than the now infamous Joss Whedon (The Avengers) in 2002, the studio hired Nolan and Goyer with a vision of making this new version darker and having a more realistic tone to the proceedings—plus, above all else, it had to engage the audience on an emotional level. Not much pressure then! After all, by this point, Sony had already just achieved that rare feat of producing two hugely successful Spider-Man films, and Warner Bros. very much wanted to reclaim a slice of the hit superhero film pie, which had once belonged to them in the guise of Burton’s Batman films.

It’s fair to say that, from the get-go, Nolan’s film doesn’t waste any time in its mission to fuse elements of realism into the film’s DNA: for starters, a large part of the production utilises authentic locations for its various scenes. Iceland’s Vatnajökull glacier was chosen for the Bhutan sequence showing Wayne traversing towards The League of Shadows’ temple—which was where the crew also built the village and temple doors. For Gotham, a combination of areas in and around London, New York and Chicago came into use, and the 19th-century Mentmore country house in Buckinghamshire had the honour of becoming the very stately-looking Wayne Manor. From the outset, Nolan mentioned that Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was one of his influences when it came to the scale of the project, and it’s easy to see this in the finished film. To say that it barely resembles Burton’s 1989 film is something of an understatement. Here, Gotham looks and feels like an actual sprawling city; the scale of the buildings and sites immediately convince you that everything is, in fact… well, real.

To perfectly complement the exteriors, British production designer Nathan Crowley built the Batcave at Shepperton Studios. To help aid authenticity, Crowley installed twelve pumps to create a huge waterfall and built rocks using moulds of real caves. If you’ve seen the film, then you’ll know how incredible the whole set looks. Crowley was also instrumental in designing the Batmobile, or Tumbler, as it’s called in the film. Several millions of pounds were spent in its initial development and overall construction, but when it was finished, the vehicle (using a 5.7-litre Chevy V8 engine) could travel at speeds up to 100 mph, and accelerate from 0-60 in five seconds.

As much as all these elements go a long way in helping to forge a fresh new look to the Batman mythology, I would be remiss not to mention the sweeping soundtrack from composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. In a slightly unusual collaboration, both musical talents provide this film with plenty of emotive, powerful string-heavy music that goes some way to heightening your viewing enjoyment. Along with this impactful aural soundscape, Wally Pfister’s cinematography is a feast for your eyeballs, giving you just the right amount of dark blue light that contrasts brilliantly against a more natural sunlight setting. All the colours in fact are richly realised but never appear false or stylised—which was the case in the Schumacher films.

Impressive as all these technical aspects are, the film’s cast is no slouch either. Christian Bale bravely decided to don the Batsuit in the lead role shortly after finishing the dark arthouse thriller The Machinist (2004). For that role, he had dropped a frightening four stone to just 120 pounds and so only had a few months to get back up to crime-fighting shape. To do this, the Welsh-born actor took on an intensive weightlifting regime, while also binge eating pizza and ice cream.

Of course, with Bruce Wayne becoming the Caped Crusader, you need a capable Alfred Pennyworth to help look after things while keeping up appearances, and who better to do this than acting royalty Sir Michael Caine. Caine not only looks the part, he plays it to perfection, and also goes some way to provide much of the film’s humour—sometimes with just a line or two of dialogue. One scene that springs to mind is when Bruce has to order thousands of components that go to make up the Batmask, to which Alfred says: “They’ll have to be, er, large orders to avoid suspicion.” Bruce asks “How large?” Alfred: “Say 10,000.” Bruce: “Well, at least we’ll have spares.” Alfred: “Quite!” Caine’s delivery is everything; his timing is simply perfect, and this humorous exchange is just one of many that nicely adds some levity to the film.

Rounding off the stellar cast, you have the ever-dependable Gary Oldman as police officer Gordon, Tom Wilkinson as Carmine Falcone, and last but by no means least, Morgan Freeman as Wayne Enterprise’s Weapons & Tech specialist Lucius Fox. As with Caine, Freeman instils much warmth and wit to his role.

In trying to form some type of analysis over Batman Begins, and why I think it works as well as it does, two main factors have to be considered: first, the script. For the most part (more on that in a moment) it’s excellent; confidently balancing themes of death, trauma, identity, redemption—it wraps these all up in an exciting comic superhero package that also has just the right amount of emotional depth to make you really care about what’s going on. Second, Nolan’s precision direction effectively serves scenes of quiet drama, warm humour, and kick-ass action throughout. To think what films he made before this, the mind boggles as to how he did this with so much aplomb.

Quickly going back to that near-perfect script: I feel that this film shares an interesting fault with its sequel, The Dark Knight, which is that come the third act of the film, say about 30 minutes before the end, the story starts to lose momentum and things get a little baggy—right before the final closing few minutes when the film picks up again and goes out with a bang. It’s almost as if all the best ideas have been played out too soon, and the script naturally finds a point where it’s merely treading water. It’s not a major issue, but for me it does take some of that dramatic spark out of what is an otherwise superb film. As with its sequel, the final few minutes more than make up for this minor flaw: here, Nolan expertly (apparently it wasn’t intentional) teases what’s to come next in a simple exchange of words between Lt Gordon and Batman, mentioning other criminal elements that have started to come forward; Gordon: “Take this guy, armed robbery, double homicide, has a taste for the theatrical like you, leaves a calling card…” He then reveals a Joker playing card wrapped in an evidence bag—just genius.

When the film was released, it took a healthy $48M over its opening weekend, going on to earn $205M in North America, with a worldwide total of $371.8M—pretty good overall, but not outstanding when you consider its production budget was $150M. However, three years later, its sequel, The Dark Knight (2008), would prove something of a phenomenon, pulling in a whopping $1.6BN. Reviews for Batman Begins were generally strong. The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan felt that, while the film began slowly, he stated that the “story, psychology and reality, not special effects”, assisted the darkness behind Batman’s arsenal, while critic James Berardinelli praised Nolan and Goyer’s work in creating more understanding into “who Batman is and what motivates him”, something Berardinelli felt Tim Burton’s film had lacked.

Thinking back to June 2005, watching this in the cinema proved to be a hugely entertaining watch. I distinctly remember thinking it had exceeded my expectations, and that on a technical level, it was outstanding. Even my friend at the time, who was not into mainstream Hollywood films at all, came out of the auditorium with me and said that she enjoyed it immensely, much more than she had expected it to.

We all now know what Nolan would do next with Bruce Wayne and his dark alter ego: both sequels proved to be gargantuan box office hits, with The Dark Knight even attracting near-universal acclaim and some critics labelling it as being one of the best comic-book films of all time. Personally, Heath Ledger’s Joker aside, I don’t think it deserves so much praise, but taken together, Nolan’s trilogy makes for an entertaining viewing spectacle, and all feature streaks of brilliance throughout, but for me, Batman Begins remains the best of the bunch. It manages to nail down Bruce Wayne-Batman’s origins and motivations perfectly, and walks that fine line of being a clever-but-not-pretentious superhero film, while at the same time still being exciting, interesting—and full of humour. Its largely non-linear structure makes you more attuned to all the characters; this pulls you into the story and, ultimately, heightens your overall viewing experience. Highly recommended.

USA • UK | 2005 | 140 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Christopher Nolan.
writers: Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer (story by David S. Goyer, based on characters from DC Comics.)
starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe & Rutger Hauer.