After Joel Schumacher made Batman silly-
"Never leave the cave without it."
-but before Zack Snyder made him a joke.
"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?!"
Chris Nolan made a movie that got the Dark Knight - just - right.
"WHERE ARE YOU?!"
"Here."
Batman Begins
See one of the best, yet oddly not that successful, Batman films that was so good
It allowed Christopher Nolan to do whatever he wanted afterwards.
Except distance himself from the franchise.
In this perfectly told superhero origin story, back when we weren't sick of superhero origin stories
that realistically explains how a boy became a crime-fighting bat-ninja.
Instead of a trust fund kid with a deep-seated fear of wells.
"Bruce?"
I mean, had to be even odds he'd become Well Man, right?
Experience a feature length attempt to ground Batman in reality, where the Batmobile
was just a bridge-building rocket car WayneTech had laying around,
the Batcave was simply part of New York's Underground Railroad?
"Your great-great-grandfather was involved in the underground railroad."
and the Batshoes that summon a giant cloud of angry bats are-
uhm
total BS.
But who cares? How cool is this!
Follow along on every step of Bruce Wayne's heroic journey
from cosplaying as a hobo, to stealing food, to blowing up a school.
And witness his brutal training at the hands of the Liam of Neesons, I mean, the League of Shadows.
A group with the sinister plan to stop crime by using a microwave gun to vaporize their special fear juice to kick off the Purge.
*Unintelligible*
Wait, what? I thought this was supposed to be the realistic one. That sounds like something Adam West would go up against.
"It's a sad pill! *laughs* To neutralize the laughing gas! *laughs*"
But the League of Shadows aren't the only criminals plaguing Gotham.
There's also Batman, who, if you think about it, is a violent criminal
who answers to no one, waging a one-man war on the law itself.
"What do you want?"
"Too much- *unintelligible*"
"I'm Batman."
"AAAHHHHH!"
"I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."
Sorry, still counts as murder if you make a train do it.
Joining this loner on his one-man quest for justice are:
a lot of other people.
Like Alfred, a butler so loyal, he'll drag Batman's sedated girlfriend into the back of a car, no questions asked.
"Little bit worse for wear I'm afraid."
Lucius Fox, a man who might be helping Bruce to be a better serial killer for all he knows.
"Reason you don't have to tell me exactly what you're doing, when I'm asked, I don't have to lie."
Jim Gordon, a cop with the morals, glasses, and mustache of Ned Flanders.
Rachel Dawes, a childhood friend with a mysterious past of drinking condensed milk?
"Alfred still keeps the condensed milk on the top shelf."
And...
Holy sh*t is that King Joffrey?!
That is him! Why are you giving him military hardware?! Take him out before it's too late!
So strap in with the movie that saved Batman from puns and irrelevance.
'Let´s kick some ice'
With the right mix of gritty realism and comic book theatricality, that's a perfectly focused, character-driven story.
Except for the whole third act.
"If they get their machine into Wayne Station it'll cause a chain reaction that'll vaporize the entire city's water supply."
And the fact that half the dialogue is cutesy repetitions of something someone said earlier.
"It's a bit technical but the key/important thing is that my company's future is secure." X2
"It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you." X2
"Never did learn to *unintelligible*" X2
"Didn't you get the memo?"
Shut up!
"You shut up!"
Ach! No wonder this movie's so good!
They only had to write half a script.
"The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years.
We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague-rats, burned London to the ground."
Canceled Firefly, made Crash win best picture, discovered Justin Bieber, made Harambe a meme.
It's time to embarrass the Dark Knight, worse than Joel Schumacher did.
"Batman, you're a cunning strategist and a master of theatricality, but I found your one hidden weakness: getting the sh*t beaten out of you."
*audience laughs*
"GO AWAY!"
Holy scorched earth! If you'd like to watch the roast of Batman, click the box on the left to see the caped crusader's greatest foes get a rise out of the Dark Knight.