After the immense success of The Dark Knight in 2008, a superhero sequel that scored big with critics, fans, and at the box office, Christopher Nolan and company would return in four long years with the highly-anticipated conclusion to The Dark Knight Trilogy. The story's final chapter, The Dark Knight Rises, upped its scale and stakes, sticking very close to the aesthetic and tone of its predecessor. Ultimately, the trend-setting genesis of the whole phenomenon, Batman Begins, would get lost at the sidelines following its sequels as the production team continued to build upon the visual and storytelling style of The Dark Knight -- a movie heavily influenced by Michael Mann's crime epic Heat. As a result, the trilogy's most celebrated elements are often cited from its second or third installment -- rarely from its first.
Batman Begins had the daunting task of reintroducing Batman to cinema after Joel Schumacher's well-meaning but flawed 1997 film Batman & Robin forced Warner Bros. to put the franchise on indefinite hold. With grit, attention to detail and a strong sense of realism, Batman Begins put a lot of work into designing and establishing a stylistically unique yet grounded and believable Gotham City. Pulling a bit from the comics but managing to create a unique setting all their own, the people behind Batman Begins managed to pull off a Gotham that didn't bear any clear resemblance to any specific existing American city.
Christian Bale's Tough, Trained Batman Fights Like Jason Bourne
This is one of the ways in which the sequels seem to discard a lot of the qualities established in the trilogy's first chapter. Both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises depict a sleeker Gotham by comparison, not really diluting the fact that Chicago -- with its sleek, distinguished architecture -- was heavily utilized as a stand-in for Gotham. A monorail that ran throughout the city and had its terminus at Wayne Tower tied nicely into Bruce Wayne's family history as well as the sociopolitical history of the city.
The general feel of the action sequences in Batman Begins, especially the final confrontation aboard the monorail between Christian Bale's Batman and Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul, maintained the exhilaration and excitement of a modern action movie, strongly echoing Paul Greengrass' The Bourne Supremacy with Matt Damon, which came out the year before. One prime example of this kind of combat choreography takes place in the Narrows, an essentially forgotten part of the city, where Batman experiences Scarecrow's fear toxin for the first time.
Batman Begins Depicts a Recreated, Realistic Gotham City
In the sequels, Nolan pulls back the camera and portrays the fights and chases in a more streamlined way (again alluding to Heat). The Dark Knight's extremely serious tone was also an obvious plus, especially considering its complex and violent story. However, the action set pieces in Batman Begins, which used in-camera effects, stunts, pyrotechnics and even miniatures in addition to CGI (pay attention to the derailed, crashing train at the end), get brushed aside in favor of the sequels' polished appeal. But this aspect of Batman Begins' filmmaking surely deserves its due, as do other major elements of the film.
Batman Begins takes place somewhere between the comics and the real world, offering a refreshing perspective on Gotham as a whole. Arkham Asylum, a major location in countless Batman stories and the impetus for a major Batman videogame series, was unfortunately never shown again after Batman Begins put it to good use both plot-wise and as an effective piece of world-building. Arkham also provided a great, atmospheric action set piece when, in one sequence, Batman has to use a special ultrasonic call (sent from the bottom of his boot) to summon thousands of bats from beneath Wayne Manor -- and use them as cover. Batman leaps and glides down a stairwell completely swarming with bats, making for one of the movie's most iconic shots.
Batman Begins Doesn't Ignore The Dark Knight Detective's Hopeful Side
Mentioned above, the Scarecrow -- played by Nolan regular Cillian Murphy -- is integrated well into this film and, indeed, both sequels as an existing villain with his own goals. Other characters, like Michael Caine's Alfred, Gary Oldman's James Gordon, Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox and Katie Holmes' Rachel Dawes, are all introduced and utilized in a way that feeds into and supports the story.
Nolan runs intense, dramatic elements throughout his entire Batman trilogy, but the first movie does a good job of reminding the audience, however briefly, of Batman's power to inspire younger kids -- hinting at the character's continued relevance. A small, gentle moment near the middle of the film between a surprised boy and Batman -- who ends up giving the boy one of his special tools -- works to illustrate that through all the dirt and darkness of Gotham, there is an inherently hopeful streak to this character and his mythos in general.
Batman Begins Is The Dark Knight Trilogy's Highest Achievement
Speaking of tech -- outside of the obvious, now-iconic creations like the tumbler (an update on the Batmobile) or Batman's high-tech gliding cape -- a quasi-science fiction device stolen from Wayne Industries becomes an important component of the overall plot. This microwave emitter, grounded in real-world implications, was hijacked by villains who would later use it to vaporize Gotham's poisoned water supply. This kind of plotting added an effective bit of speculative fiction to the movie.
The Dark Knight clearly made a lot of good creative decisions, influencing not only comic book movies but cinema in general for years to come -- but over time, it seems that the people working on these films were comfortable leaving key elements of Batman Begins behind, opting for an expansion of what had worked in the sequel. This, coupled with the massive success of The Dark Knight, made it easier for Batman Begins -- the trilogy's true gem -- to get overshadowed and, in many ways, dismissed. This is unfortunate, as Batman Begins is easily the trilogy's highest achievement.