This week marks the 16 year anniversary of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, and although
I covered the film for my 'Road To TENET' series last year, I wanted to revisit
the film in another video.
The film was a landmark in not just superhero cinema, but also with cinema in general, and
it becomes fascinating to look back on a film that had
such a large influence.
I'm going to be discussing how Batman Begins was a gamechanger for modern-day movies, and
in particular, the superhero films that dominate today's
landscape.
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But without further ado, let's dive into how Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins changed
superhero movies.
So superhero cinema before the 2000s was a weird mix of different styles, approaches
and tones that included the camp essence of Batman Forever and Superman 4.
It was a landscape of less thought, transferring the
comic book image directly onto film.
However, great innovation and change was soon arriving, with directors like Bryan Singer,
Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan each helping to piece together what we now know as the
modern-day superhero movie.
Before Nolan had released the dark reimagining of the
Batman with Batman Begins, the superhero genre was already beginning to form, when Singer’s
X-Men and X2 came out in 2000 and 2003.
Respectively, spandex was still in fashion, so whilst retaining the campy aspects of 90s
cinema, but the director gave us a taste of what a superhero team-up movie might look
like with sprinkles of a dark covering.
Nolan had quoted X-Men as one of the further influences to take a gritty approach the full
mile, and as we witnessed, he really pushed it.
Likewise, cult icon Sam Raimi created Spider-Man, and Spider-Man
2, demonstrating the true blockbuster potential of such characters.
By the time Batman Begins arrived in 2005, which is now celebrating 16 years since it
originally released, the flickers of what would become a flourishing genre had now truly
took form.
Christopher Nolan brought something that Singer or Raimi didn't, and that was an undisputable
quality of realism.
Where superhero movies of the past had shown little respect to their characters, treating
each of them like a cartoonish property, Christopher Nolan showed that these films could be both
financial hits but also great films in their own right.
His vision of the Caped Crusader, inspired by Frank Miller’s comic Batman: Year One,
was leaps and bounds ahead of the dreamworld version created by Joel Schumacher, Batman
& Robin, operating in a dark, industrial Gotham riddled with crime.
As such, Christopher Nolan’s iteration of Batman, played by Christian Bale, is troubled
and somewhat complex, plagued by the death of his parents, fatefully caused by his own
fear of bats.
As a result, Nolan’s Batman is grounded in a hellish version of reality and a tangible
character with a sympathetic and believable history.
Batman Begins was a groundbreaking success, for this reason, shining a light on the character,
his origin story, his antagonists, and iconography fitting them into the template of a real-world
setting.
Suddenly, it became the formula to reinvent all of cinema’s exhausted characters.
James Bond’s reboot Casino Royale, Spider-Man’s reimagining in 2012, and even Superman’s
take in 2013 would utilise a dark aesthetic re-conditioning each character for a modern
treatment.
The idea was to make each of them more grounded, and more palpable, but of course, this was
rather a blind choice, as whilst Batman’s gothic Gotham may be suitable for such a setting,
Spider-Man’s colourful New York is not.
Nolan inadvertently started the once-popular concept of the dark reboot, even participating
on the story for another of my personal favourite superhero movies, Man of Steel.
And let's not forget that the Batman Begins ending with the joker card became the template
for what would become the post-credit scene in today's superhero landscape.
While Christopher Nolan didn’t invent the origin story for superheroes, he made sure
that for the foreseeable future, origin stories would become the primary mode of rebooting
franchises for over a decade.
The extreme detail in the film such as it meticulously going over every element of the
Caped Crusader right down to being able to put together his cowl without arousing suspicion,
just speaks to the bounds of quality that really was the spearhead for the plethora
of these origin tales.
Nolan had considered the question, how do you make the audience buy into the reality
of this crime fighter who doesn’t have any superpowers beyond his wealth, intelligence,
and work ethic?
Well, the genius concept that Nolan and co-writer David S. Goyer focus on is fear.
Rather than making fear a one-way street where Bruce scares criminals,
they instead decide to make it a part of his character as well as a part of the overall
plot.
In the Batman comics, Thomas and Martha Wayne are gunned down outside a theatre in Crime
Alley by a mugger.
The twist that Batman Begins provides is that they left the show early because young Bruce
was scared of the bats that the opera reminded him of.
In this way, Batman’s origin of losing his parents becomes wrapped in a notion of fear
where Bruce sees how fear can drive people to tragic ends.
He wants to use that fear against criminals rather than as it’s currently being used
against the innocent.
By making fear the cornerstone of the Batman origin, everything else falls into place as
to why a billionaire would dress up like a bat
and fight crime.
And of course, we see this developed throughout the trilogy, with The Dark Knight being about
chaos and The Dark Knight Rises coming full circle, as Bruce
rises from the fear of failing and the pain he suffers.
Batman Begins is a successful relaunch because Nolan isn’t looking at his project like
it’s a comic book, but rather that it takes place in a world similar to ours that happens
to have a vigilante who dresses like he does.
The director's Gotham has real-world issues like corrupt cops, gangsters, and bad neighbourhoods,
and the accomplishment of introducing the theme of fear in this first movie, works hand
in hand with the world Nolan has built around it.
Christopher Nolan also stocked Batman Begins with upcoming and respected stars who knew
how to deliver great performances, but in 2005, before superheroes had completely dominated
the multiplex, Nolan and Warner Bros made a bet that a new take on Batman would be enough
to sell the film, and they were right.
But the most surprising element of Batman Begins is that it still kind of merges the
themes Nolan cares about.
If there were a movie for the studio in this trilogy,
it’s Batman Begins, which was a radical new take on the character.
Nolan commits himself to the reality of the universe he’s constructing right down to
the believable character motivations.
And it still has moments of humour that hits, likeable characters, and at its core, it's
a summer tentpole that delivers on big, spectacular action with a well-known superhero.
But Nolan worked within those confines to create something completely unique, that avoids
the comic book aesthetic of something like the Spider-Man movies in favour of something
closer to his own interests, within the surroundings of his favoured neo-noir thriller sensibilities.
The film worked and succeeded in changing superhero movies because it has complete control
over its tone and vision.
This is something we get less of today, and maybe we
could do with more of it.
But that was my video essay on how Christopher Nolan changed the game, with 2005's Batman
Begins.
Although it wasn't until we got to The Dark Knight that it felt like Nolan had fully realized
what a Christopher Nolan Batman movie should be, Batman Begins really paved the way for
certain stylistic elements and a methodology that a modern
superhero movie could structure around.
The sequel encapsulated his signature themes rather than putting them on the backburner,
but Nolan devoted himself to creating a concrete, realistic Batman that could be interrogated
deeper, as we move through the trilogy.
For Batman purists, it may not be the most accurate depiction of the character, and yet
it worked for what Nolan created and refashioned for a new generation.
But let me know down below what your thoughts are towards Nolan's first film in his Dark
Knight Trilogy and how do you think it revolutionised the superhero genre and blockbuster cinema.
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Just to let you know, I will be continuing my Nolan Variations Series next week, so make
sure to keep a lookout for whenever I post.
But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, I've been Cortex and as always make some noise.