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Movie of the Week #17 - Batman Begins
Second superhero movie Nolan's Batman Begins from 2005.
How familiar are you Batman - comicbook, animated series, other movies - and how does this compare? Have you seen the other movies in Nolan's Batman trilogy and does this stand up against the rest?
The rest of the schedule for February is:
- 26th: Gangs of New York
Nobody saw The Aviator. But some connective tissue between this film and that film. Nolan was looking to do a Howard Hughes biopic with Jim Carrey after Insomnia released. But when Scorsese went into production for The Aviator those plans fell through. So Nolan was a little lost, WB had been wanting to reboot Batman for a while and they contacted him and his wife asking for a pitch. Nolan's pitch was really appealing to them, so they bet on him going into production for the first Batman film since Batman and Robin.
I was 5 years old when this came out. I don't remember it coming out. I'm pretty sure I have a Batman toy from this movie, but I didn't know they were connected. When The Dark Knight came out, not only did I think this was the first Batman movie since Batman and Robin, I thought it was connected to the Burton/Schumacher universe. I wasn't terribly familiar with the concept of a reboot when I was a child. I didn't even learn about this movie until I was 13. And I didn't watch it until I was 18.
I know this was a moderate hit at the box office at the time. It barely broke even in theaters, but it was huge on DVD back when the profits for those were huge. So that's what gave us The Dark Knight, both it being greenlit and it being such a huge hyped hit.
I love the Nolan trilogy. I think they're the best comic book movies. And I rewatch them often especially as they've been made widely available on a lot of streaming services these past few years. I think this might be my least favorite of the trilogy (I like the scale of visuals of Rises a lot), but I still really like it. I like it more than The Batman. I think the place where it differentiates itself from the rest of the trilogy is the look of Gotham. Like it looks much more in line with Burton's depiction of Gotham than the "just a city" vibe you get from Dark Knight and Rises.
Katie Holmes is kind of a bad actress, so she's also a weak link. Amy Adams actually screen tested with all the potential Bat-men, so I don't know why she wasn't offered the part. Adams being in this and Dark Knight would have been sick.
I like Cillian Murphy a lot in this, the start of his relationship with Nolan which eventually gave us Oppenheimer.
It's a good movie, even if it often gets overshadowed by it's sequel.
I thought Tildes was supposed to be a kinder corner of the internet, then you come and commit actual murder with this line.
I grew up with Batman: The Animated Series, which is IMO the best Batman ever done, but Nolan's films are the only live action ones that feel anywhere close.
I've seen it, but it was so long ago I can't remember much about it other than me thinking it was merely okay. And TBH, an almost 3 hour commitment to rewatch a movie I remember as only being okay was a bit too much to ask. Sorry, @winther.
Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, on the other hand, I've seen at least a dozen times over the years, so can speak of without even having to rewatch them. I totally agree with you, @cloud_loud, that they're probably the best comic book movies ever made. And also like you, Begins is my least favorite of the three as well... Mostly because redoing the origin story of Batman for the Nth time significantly takes away from my enjoyment of it. That, and I also don't think Katie Holmes was that great either. And TBH, I even think Liam Neeson was a bit meh in this movie too. I normally like him as an actor, but he was super wooden in it. And IMO, ironically, Ken Watanabe probably would have been so much better than him as actual Ra's al Ghul. :P
Bale as Batman, Caine as Alfred, Oldman as Gordon, Freeman as Fox, and Murphy as Scarecrow were all amazing though. So their excellent portrayals make up for a lot of the film's other shortcomings.
It more than doubled its budget. Budget=$150 million, Worldwide Box office=$373.7 million. But I suppose in Hollywood terms that's not considered amazing. And that's certainly nowhere even close to the $1Bn that Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises each brought in.
Barely broke even is perhaps exaggerated. But i think it’s somewhere in between broke even and small profit. The DVD sales were insane, it was 100s of million in revenue from DVD sales. It had to pay for Batman and Robin theatrically but made up for it in the home video market by actually being good.
When this came out it was definitely a huge milestone in opening up for superhero movies to be considered more than just "comicbook adaptations for younger audiences". The massive success of The Bourne Identity shifted the way the industry did action movies. Easy to spot with the big shift from Pierce Brosnan as James Bond to Daniel Craig. Now also superhero movies could be "dark and gritty". Of course the smash hit for wider acceptance as superhero movies as something to take serious came with The Dark Knight, but this paved the way.
I had seen the various 90s versions of fun and games Batman movies, but those mostly built on an already established character. I didn't know Batman's origin story back then and to this day I still think this is the best superhero origin story. I think Bruce Wayne's motivation is a more interesting character arc to follow, than the high school drama of Spiderman for example.
The man drawback here is that the villain isn't that interesting here. Of course nowhere near the level of Ledger's Joker, but it is also mostly in the movies first half where Bruce Wayne's trains himself and finds his new identity I find to be the best. As a story, I think I like this better than The Dark Knight - it is just that Heath Ledger steals that entire movie that elevates it to something else. I haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises though and don't really have much interest in it. My interest in superheroes drops dramatically after the origin story is done.
It has a negative reputation, but I really like Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway. I also think it's the best looking of the three. It's a little like a classic Hollywood epic.
I remember feeling luke warm towards Rises the first time I watched it, but it's grown on me more and more every time I've rewatched it since then. The acting is solid, Tom Hardy is a great villain, the plot is decent, and Bane actually pulls some Joker level mind-fuckery as well. So if you haven't seen it, you really should give it a watch some time to judge it for yourself, @winther.
I personally rank Rises above Begins, but below Dark Knight. I think the only major mistake Nolan made was letting the runtime get a bit too out of hand. IMO he should have tightened it up and cut 20min from it.
The Bane/Batman fight scene is better than anything in Begins imo.
Hathaway is also tremendous in the role and Zimmer gave her such a cool theme. Shes my favorite Catwoman. Shes the best actress to handle the role and the change in physicality in that scene really showcases how good she is at this.
I’d say Rises is the second best Batman movie after Dark Knight.
Hathaway has been tremendous in every role I've seen her in (Fantine in Les Mis being my favorite)... so it almost goes without saying at this point. :P
Lol. Twenty years ago I got to see scenes of this film being filmed outside my office building in the Chicago loop. It was on a weekend, but a bunch of us were in the office on deadline.
It was a pain in the ass when we wanted to step outside to smoke cigarettes because there were production assistants posted over all the doors to the building making sure we weren't stepping out into any shots. When we asked them what movie they were filming, the title they said was "The Intimidation Game", but when we saw some barricades that were painted "Gotham Police Department", we knew what was up.
Later in the night, we started going out to smoke back in the alley, but that was where craft services was set up, grilling chicken for the film crew. We got a glimpse of the Tumbler Batmobile parked out behind the alley too, but when one of us tried to snap a photo of it, we got chased back into the stairwell.
Through the day, I got glimpses of both Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale (in his young, courtroom Bruce Wayne costume) throughout the day. A year later, it was a trip to see some of the scenes they were filming up on the big screen.
It’s only tangentially related, but this video series changed the way I view The Dark Knight (and Nolan’s direction in general). Worth a watch for anyone interested in the technical side of filmmaking; specifically, the composition of an action sequence.
This might be a wild take but I've always liked this movie more than The Dark Knight.
I gotta be honest, when I think of Nolan's Batman, I often completely forget about Begins. No, it's not a bad movie but the retelling of the origin combined with the League of Shadows that more casual fans are less familiar with makes it a bit less memorable and when I think of Scarecrow I think of the Arkham games honestly.
It doesn't have the energy and tone of a more campy Batman to make the story fun, which with my last memory of Batman movies involving bat nipples it was a bit of a shift.
I remember in theaters feeling a bit meh on the new direction.
All that to say, on rewatch, I felt more positive about it but I'm not certain how much of that was having the whole trilogy in mind. A pretty solid cast and all that, obviously, but I felt like it was more "The first part of the trilogy" as opposed to "infinitely rewatchable on it's own" like The Dark Knight was.