20 years. Seriously. Where has the time gone? Nothing makes you feel old like movies. You still remember, clearly, going to see a movie at the theater. You remember who you went with, the journey there, and what you talked about in the foyer. Then, suddenly, you realise that this event was two decades ago and the reality of time smashes you in the face like an Acme anvil smashes a coyote. Today it is the turn of Batman Begins to make you feel old.
20 years. Seriously. 20 years! How? How is that even possible? What have I achieved in that time? Why do I feel so curiously unfulfilled? Why do I have a sudden urge to have hair replacement surgery, buy a sports car again, and start dating much younger women? A spray tan. I suddenly need a spray tan…
Breathe… OK, now I have talked myself down from a mid-life crisis, let us talk about Batman Begins.
To me, it is the best of Nolan’s trilogy. Sure, The Dark Knight remains the shiniest and The Dark Knight Rises the most challenging, but Batman Begins still holds up on almost every level.
If DC and Warner Bros. weren’t such abject idiots, it also should have ushered in a golden age of superhero movies at a time when Iron Man was just a twinkle in Marvel’s eye and nobody had ever heard the phrase “Cinematic Universe”.
Director Christopher Nolan co-wrote the script with David S. Goyer, and as the movie reaches its landmark anniversary, Goyer has been out talking about the experience.
On the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, he revealed that Warner Bros. were originally concerned over the character of Batman taking an hour to appear on screen, despite the fact that the clue is in the title – Batman Begins. Of this corporate moronism, he says:
“They were not happy about that. No disrespect to the actors who played Bruce Wayne prior to this, and as moviegoers we were always twiddling our thumbs waiting for the character to get into costume and for the movie to begin. But why is that?
We knew fairly early on that we needed to have the audience fall in love with Bruce Wayne. We had to have an amazing action sequence that involved Bruce Wayne and not Batman. That’s how we came up with that massive escape from the temple and him sliding down the ice.”
He also said he prepared a presentation for executives that showed four other superhero origin movies, including Richard Donner’s touchstone Superman, and proved that they were not outliers in the amount of time it took to get the hero in costume and on screen.
Here, we see the studio executive in his/her natural environment of not really understanding the property they are overseeing.
