Comic Book Movies 101: Batman Begins

• 28th Mar 2011

After 1997’s “Batman and Robin” bombed (and I mean BOMBED), it would have to be a brave man who was willing to take it on again. Step up Christopher Nolan.

I don’t want to use the word reboot as it’s bandied around a lot these days. But I think I’m going to have to. Short of calling ‘Batman Begins’ (2005) ‘I’m-starting-Batman-from-the-beginning-and-I’m-doing-it-properly-this-time’ Nolan couldn’t have made his plans to rejig (dodged a bullet there) the franchise any clearer. We’re saying goodbye to camp, goodbye to Robin and goodbye to ‘holy’ anything (‘holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods, Batman!’ is my personal favourite). The bare bones are still there (millionaire playboy by day/masked avenger by night, cave, butler, batmobile, etc) but everything else is totally different – this is reboot (sorry) with a capital R. Nowadays every new film that features an established character (comic book or otherwise) is touted as a reboot and, of course, darker. ‘Batman Begins’ was the daddy of them all – without it, we may never have had ‘Casino Royale’, ‘Terminator Salvation’ or the shiny new ‘Star Trek’. Nolan made it acceptable, even preferable, to stomp all over fanboys’ toes by reinventing their heroes.

‘Batman Begins’ takes us right back to the start of the road to bat (there’s a clue in the title) as we’re shown the origin of Bruce’s fear of bats (chiroptophobia, fact-fans), along with his parents’ murder by a mugger. After this, and following a fairly serious off-the-rails period, he’s recruited into a cult of ninja assassins headed up by one Ra’s al Ghul. Eventually he rejects their extremist ways and decides to return home to Gotham. But while he’s been off learning to fight injustice, the city has lost its way and is now ruled by the criminal underworld.

Christian Bale pulls off the Batman/Bruce Wayne dichotomy perfectly. We shouldn’t underestimate how difficult this is – they’re almost completely opposing characters but it’s obvious that Wayne hates the playboy persona he has to cultivate, while understanding that it’s necessary to protect his identity. A perfect demonstration of this is when he acts like a spoilt rich kid to get rid of the people at his party because Ra’s al Ghul is threatening to kill them all. He doesn’t even become Batman for the first hour of the film – he’s off in the Himalayas picking flowers and learning ninja stuff with Qui Gon Jinn, sorry, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson in Phantom Menace script recycling shocker*). When he does finally don the famous suit the way he takes out the criminals is kinda shocking – henchmen are taken out of play left right and centre. He turns the bat symbol on its head as he creates it by strapping a mob boss to a giant spotlight. Wayne goes well and truly… wait for it… batshit (c’mon, I had to!) and would probably be labelled psychotic in any other film, so kudos to Bale for making his alter-ego so sympathetic. On top of those two there’s also a third character – the ‘real’ Bruce Wayne, who’s an amalgamation of the two. In previous Batman films the villains have been bigger than the hero and while that’s not to take away from Cillian Murphy (the Scarecrow) and Tom “hasn’t-he-done-well-for-himself” Wilkinson (mob boss Falcone), it isn’t the case here.

Love interest Rachel Dawes is played by Katie Holmes who, quite rightly, was nominated for a razzie for Worst Supporting Actress. She’s neither interesting nor convincing. When she gets poisoned with a psychotropic drug, you hardly notice. Even her hallucinations are a bit boring. Rachel and Bruce’s relationship remains underdeveloped, but it doesn’t really matter – the romantic subplot is pretty superfluous to the rest of the film and the lack of resolution only adds to the impression of the trouble Bruce has with reconciling his two identities.

I’m happy to say that Holmes is the only weak link in an otherwise pretty stellar cast. Michael Caine plays Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne’s faithful butler who’s also pretty much brought Bruce up since his parents’ deaths. He’s become Wayne/Batman’s confidant, surrogate father and sometimes his conscience, reminding him of the practicalities of life with a dual identity whilst also keeping his feet well and truly on the ground. He also provides some well needed light humour every now and again (‘Drive sports cars, date movie stars, buy things that are not for sale. Who knows, Master Wayne? You start pretending to have fun, you might even have a little by accident.’).

As mentioned earlier, Liam Neeson is in Qui Gon mode but, without giving too much away, plays a multi-layered character whose motivations seem worthy but are actually very draconian. We also have the ever reliable Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, a previously high-ranking Wayne Enterprises employee who was demoted after Bruce’s father’s death (presumably due to the fact that he has morals). He now works in the Applied Science Division which, luckily for Batman, is a Q-like basement full of handy gadgets. Also in the ever-reliable camp is Gary Oldman as Sergeant (he’s not a Commissioner yet) Gordon, the only unbendy cop in Gotham City. He was also the officer who responded to the murder of the Waynes, so he and Bruce share a bond already. Although he’s a bit baffled by Batman to start with, he’s a ray of light in all the mould – a compassionate and courageous policeman almost at the end of his tether who’s brought back from the brink by Batman.

Villain-wise we’ve got several for the price of one. First up is Tom Wilkinson as Carmine Falcone, head honcho of the Gotham City underworld. It’s refreshing to find an old fashioned mob boss here, without traditional Batman-villain spandex or catchphrase. His strings are being pulled by Cillian Murphy as Dr Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow, a scary psychopharmacologist who runs Arkham Asylum and is testing some less-than-legal drugs on the inmates. And HIS strings are being pulled by Ra’s al Ghul who has a very complex plan to do something scary with fear-inducing toxins and a machine that vaporises water. It’s all very complicated. Ghul’s motivations are interesting and explored convincingly – the well-worn phrase ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ is vividly brought to life.

Whether it’s just because a lot of the film was shot in Blighty, or perhaps the casting person was a bit foreign-ist, but almost everyone in ‘Batman Begins’ is English, Irish or Welsh. The obvious ones are Bale, Caine, Oldman, Neeson, Wilkinson and Murphy, but there’s also Linus Roache (Ken Barlow’s son) and Sara Stewart playing Batman’s parents, Colin McFarlane (who’s also been in Corrie) as Commissioner Loeb, Tim Booth (yes, the lead singer from 90s ‘Madchester’ band James) as Victor Zsasz, and Gerard Murphy as Judge Faden. And there’s a Dutch and a Serbian dude too. Make of that what you will.

Gotham City is almost a character in itself. It’s dark, dank and brooding and swimming in corruption. This is nicely shown when Rachel travels home on the tube (or whatever it’s called when it’s up in the air and American) and it’s full of dodgy characters and graffiti, in stark contrast to the shiny new transport system we saw being put in place by Thomas Wayne a few years earlier.

Music-wise, the soundtrack was composed by Hans Zimmer (super-composer who’s worked on loads of stuff including “Gladiator”, “Sherlock Holmes” and “Inception”) and James Newton Howard (also pretty super, having scored, amongst others, all of M Night Shyamalan’s thrillers). The music further highlights the Wayne/Batman split personality by using a mixture of orchestral and electronic music.

No review of ‘Batman Begins’ would be complete without saying this: Best. Batmobile. Ever. The Tumbler is amazing. At a cost of $250,000, it’s probably not going to be in my garage anytime soon. And they built four of them, one with an actual jet engine and six propane tanks attached to it.

Despite Nolan achieving the impossible and managing to ‘out-dark’ Tim Burton’s 1989 outing, the film cleverly avoids being too gory or scary. There are some genuinely frightening moments, mainly in the shape of Murphy’s freaky Scarecrow and the macabre hallucinations he brings, but they’re few and far between which means the film can genuinely be watched and enjoyed by kids and adults alike.

The reason that this film works so well is that it’s all about story, character and motivation. This is further hammered home by Nolan’s removal of any fantasy elements (in the comic books Ra’s al Ghul is somewhere between four and six hundred years old) and his reluctance to rely on CGI for effects – its use is minimal as he favours traditional stuntwork and miniatures. ‘Batman Begins’ could have come across as a bit sanctimonious with all its talk of rotting cities, corruption and the nature of revenge. By chucking in a hero who is inherently good but also fundamentally flawed, Nolan avoids making it feel like a lesson. He has totally understood the schizophrenic nature of the comic-book character and translated him onto the big screen in a new and far more satisfactory way than most of the previous outings. And for a character that’s almost 75 years old, that’s no mean feat.

The tantalising Joker playing-card at the end of the film is the perfect finish. At the time, it left me wondering if there was any room in Nolan’s paired down Gotham for the cartoonish Batman villains of old – Jack Nicholson’s flamboyant Joker would have no place here. Of course now we’ve all seen ‘The Dark Knight’ and know it was pretty darn amazing. This is thanks in no small part to the much-missed Heath Ledger who created a whole new breed of Batman-villain all on his own. It’ll be interesting to see how Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and Bane (the fantastic Tom Hardy) fit into ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.

*Why anyone would want to recycle anything from the Phantom Menace is beyond me.

Emma Wilkin