Today's episode of The Director Series
is brought to you by Tailorsound
After the completion of insomnia Nolan
used his newfound access to studio
resources to develop an ambitious
project on the life of Howard Hughes. 
The film would purportedly have starred Jim
Carrey as the reclusive billionaire
 if he hadn't scrapped it following his
discovery that Martin Scorsese was about
to embark on shooting The Aviator with
Leonardo DiCaprio. 
It was around the same time that he learned 
Warner Brothers was
looking to make a new Batman picture.The
property was one of the studio's crown
jewels. But had lain dormant ever since
Joel Schumacher effectively bludgeoned
it into a coma with 1997's Batman and Robin.
A two-hour consumer products memo
masquerading as a movie. Various pitches
had already been made by other such
high-profile directors as Darren
Aronofsky and spanned a wide range of
ideas from Schumacher's continuation of
his run with a third film titled Batman
triumphant to a live-action adaptation
of the animated television series Batman 
Beyond.
The closest any of these pictures
came to reality was Aronofsky's own riff
on the iconic Batman year one graphic
novel. Which explored Batman's origins
and early forays in a crime-fighting
from the perspective of the feature
Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim
Gordon.  Aronofsky stake would have
dramatically reworked some of the most
iconic aspects of Batman role to the
point that executives ultimately got
cold feet and abandoned his vision. 
Nolan like many others of his generation 
had grown up adoring the Caped Crusader in
his surrounding universe of villains. 
So his interest in the vacant director's
chair was more or less a foregone conclusion.
He was interested however
in making a quote-unquote comic book movie.
indeed he made no effort to
conceal his lack of knowledge with the 
medium.
Rather he was interested in
building the character of Batman with
what he called a cinematic reality.
Giving the story the weight and gravitas
of a real-life event. 
His initial pitch meeting with Warner Brothers 
apparently
lasted a mere 10 minutes but so
confident in his vision of a realistic
superhero film was he that the
executives cast aside their doubts about his 
relative inexperience as a studio
filmmaker and handed over their most
valuable piece of intellectual 
property to his control.
Nolan's next move would pave the way 
for his eventual reputation as a Hollywood 
trendsetter.
He did away entirely with
the continuity of 
the previous Tim Burton and
Schumacher films opting to reboot the
story from square one so he could tell it 
his way with no compromises or obligations.
 
Rebooting a failed franchise has now become 
the go-to trick
for frustrated development executives,
especially those assigned to the
spider-man franchise. So it's easy to
forget just how grand breaking of an
idea this was in the early 2000s. 
This decision combined with the fact that
money was essentially no object, allowed
Nolan to envision a boundless Gotham
City against wish he could stage an epic
story exploring Batman not just as a
character but as an idea.
Ridley Scott had always served as a chief 
influence
in Nolan's artistic development,
and Scott's seminal classic Blade Runner
became a key reference and imagining a
new kind of cinematic Gotham.
A living breathing city densely populated by
diverse subcultures desperately in need of a 
hero.
Whereas Gotham City had
generally been understood in previous
iterations to be a fictional version of
Manhattan,
Nolan modeled the soaring architecture
of his Gotham after Chicago the city in
which he'd spent a great deal of his 
upbringing.
With its deep ties to the
colorful history of organized crime and
bureaucratic shadiness, Chicago would
prove an inspired fit for Nolan's
grandiose vision of a once great city
mired in corruption and decay.
By grounding the action in a tangible place
he could inject the necessary gravitas
into his story while immediately
differentiating his Gotham from the
crumbling Art Deco spires of Burton's
Gotham or the garish day glow labyrinth
of Schumacher's.
Developing a project as high-profile as Batman 
was so many rabid
fans angling for a big scoop
naturally required a high degree of
secrecy. A requirement that dovetailed
quite harmoniously with Nolan's own
showman like penchant for strategic
opaqueness. 
He adopted Stanley Kubrick's late career 
practice of working from
home. Developing the story in his garage
with a small team that included
returning production designer nathan
crowley Nolan's producing partner and
wife Emma Thomas, and seasoned superhero
genre screenwriter David S Goyer. 
In deed Nolan and company were so insistent 
on
their veil of secrecy that Warner
Brothers executives had to travel to
them forced to read the script on
Nolan's couch in an effort to prevent
unwanted copies from leaking. When the
necessities of the pre-production
process finally required him to send out 
physical copies of the script he did so
under a fake title.
The intimidation game to avoid any
unwanted scrutiny. This unconventional
process while admittedly unwieldy,
ultimately proved fruitful empowering
him with a dream cast and crew and a
budget in the hundreds of millions to
help realize the majestic vision he
would come to call Batman Begins. 
Christian Bale essentially beat out every 
eligible
actor in the business for the title role
by formulating his approach based on
what seems now in retrospect the obvious
concept of the characters dual nature.
Far from the elegant and the shirt playboy
embody by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and
George Clooney. Bale's Bruce Wayne is 
a tortured young man whose psyche was
profoundly fractured by the murder of
his parents when he was a small boy.
The hoarse growl he adopts as Batman is the 
object
of frequent parody now but Bales choice
to differentiate the speaking voices of
Bruce Wayne and his alter ego came as
something of a revelation in Nolan
during the casting process. Immediately
setting Bale apart from the pack of candidates. 
Bale brings his signature commitment to the 
role fully
inhabiting the character and mind body
and soul to arguably create the
definitive screen version of the iconic hero.
As a newly orphaned son of a
billionaire industrialist and
philanthropist Bruce grows up in his parent's 
mausoleum
like mansion his every need and desire
attended to by his caretaker and Butler Alfred.
In his first of several collaborations with
Nolan esteemed of British actor Michael
Caine also creates a definitive version
of the character giving his young charge
the necessary warmth and support he
needs to one day take over the reins of
his late father's business empire Wayne 
Enterprises.
Whereas prior Batman movies
had audiences simply counting the
minutes between the Caped Crusader's
crime-fighting forays,
Nolan makes the radical choice of
delaying a first glimpse of Bruce and
folk Bat regalia until the halfway mark.
Instead he traces Bruce's formative
years as his Restless desire for justice,
prompts him to drop out of college and
travel the world giving himself a
first-hand education in the nature 
of crime so that he can deliver said
justice himself. 
After landing himself in a Chinese prison he is 
approached by de card.
The urbane and charismatic face of
a vigilante syndicate known as the
League of Shadows.
Liam Neeson proves an inspired choice in the 
role
becoming a firm yet compassionate mentor
to Bruce while dispensing a sage advice
and virtuous platitudes that slowly
revealed their inherently malevolent nature. 
He presents himself as an underling to Ken
Watanabe role as  Al Ghul the
enigmatic and sphinx-like figurehead of
the League of Shadows but appearances
can be deceiving and Bruce's refusal to
complete his final test the execution of
a common thief brings his ideological
compatibility with Decard into urgent question.
Ducard lessons nevertheless proved
influential when Bruce returns to Gotham
and begins to formalize his own vigilante 
identity.
Of all Ducard's
teachings Bruce's biggest takeaway is
that he is more powerful as a symbol
than as a man a key concept of Nolan's
vision that would fundamentally inform
the remainder of the trilogy. For Bruce
that symbol takes the form of a bat
inspired by a formative moment of fear
from his childhood. Combining his flinty
determination for justice with the night
bottomless technological resources of
Wayne Enterprises at his disposal,
Bruce sets out into the night as Batman
intent on eradicating the cancer of
organized crime that has infected the
Gotham police department with corruption.
Batman's will to act inspires
clandestine partnerships with a cop
named Jim Gordon and Bruce's childhood
friend Rachel Dawes.
guys will swear in court to being
thrashed by a giant bat we've got
Falcone at the scene
Renowned for his many villainous turns Gary
Oldman initially seemed an unusual
choice to potray Gordon the only decent
cop in a police force besieged by
compromising corruption, but he would
deliver a brilliant performance that
cuts straight to the core of the character.
The character Rachel Dawes played by Katie 
Holmes 
is an original creation of Nolan's with no
comic book counterpart.
She's an ambitious district attorney and
the love of Bruce Wayne's life
stretching all the way back to their childhood.
As such she is the only person besides  Alfred 
who can penetrate his
veneer of American Psycho style
narcissism and nonchalance to access the
broken little boy at Bruce's core
deep down you may still be that same
great kgs
The Batman universe has always been
known for its rich world of
well-developed allies and enemies 
a grand tradition in which Batman Begins
easily follows. In his performances Wayne
Enterprises R&D had Lucius Fox, Morgan
Freeman takes one of the most
underappreciated characters in Batman
comic  role and transforms him into one
of the property's most indelible
personalities and a key ally on par with Gordon 
or Alfred.
By supplying grease with the gear he
needs to function as Batman
he becomes analogous to Q from the James
Bond series and a vital tool for Nolan's
to ground Batman's fantastical tech in
the real world.
Nolan is gracious enough to give Freeman
his own character arc as well as his own
nemesis in the form of the smug chairman
of the Wayne Enterprises board and yet
another nod to blade runner's key
influence on the picture. 
Momentos mark Boone jr. 
embodies of the Gotham PD
shameless corruption escorted slovenly
partner Flass. While Tom Wilkinson's
Carmine Falcone serves as the refined
face of the city's organized crime epidemic.
With this appearance here as the
psychopathic psychiatrist Dr. Crane
Killian Murphy would join Kane and Bale
as a recurring collaborator in Nolan's
larger body of work.
Crane of course is better known by his
supervillain alter-ego the Scarecrow 
a rogue who employs fear as a weapon
imposing terrifying hallucinations on his victims.
Like Ra's al Ghul scarecrow is one of the more 
fantastical villains
of the Batman Canon and doesn't
necessarily lend himself to a grounded
cinematic reality. But Nolan creates a
highly effective adaptation while
staying true to the characters comic roots 
His ability to incite fear seems
not from a supernatural source but from
a chemical that he's weaponized into a
spray that paralyzes his targets with
debilitating waking nightmares. 
Whereas prior Batman films chosen villains 
first
and forced the script to twist itself
into narrative pretzels to accommodate
their pairing no one avoids marquee
villains like the Joker or penguin to
place a focus squarely on Batman himself.
Besides the obvious benefit of using
villains never before seen on the big
screen, Nolan's emphasis on story allows
him to create a rather harmonious
pairing between scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul,
linking the former's fear spray
directly to the latter by revealing its
active ingredient to be a mysterious
blue flower that grows in the mountains
where the League of Shadows has 
established their temples.
 
This unique pairing also allows the ideological
concept of fear to emerge as the central
theme of Batman Begins. A pillar upon
which every narrative decision can
revolve around.
Part of what makes the Dark Knight
trilogy so resonant as Nolan's ability
to distill each individual installment
into a singular unifying theme
In the case of Batman Begins
that theme is fear and it doesn't just
make for a convenient justification of
scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul's master plot.
It's also an entirely appropriate prison
to which to explore the genesis of
Batman himself
In deed Batman Begins it's the first Batman film to
truly understand and portray the
characters nature as something that
strikes genuine fear in the hearts of criminals.
Finally nolan uses the opportunity to include a few minor
cameos that are nonetheless notable in
the context of his artistic growth. 
For instance followings Jeremy Theobald and
Lucy Russell make fleeting appearances.
The former being a technician for the
Gotham Water Board and the latter being
the elegant foil of a heated political discussion 
at a fancy restaurant. 
Game of Thrones fans will also recognize the inclusion
of King Joffrey himself Jack Gleeson 
as a small boy growing up in the Narrows
who encounters Batman outside his back porch.
If insomnia is majestic Cinematography
hinted at no one's ambitions towards
classic Hollywood spectacle then Batman
Begins makes those designs clear for 
all to see.
Nolan is something of an iconoclast in
the film industry in that he vigorously
bucks modern trends in favor of
old-school techniques. He's become 
a valiant defender of celluloid film
resistant to the relentless advances of
digital filmmaking. He endeavors 
to ground his stunts and set pieces and
practical effects as much as possible.
Where the vast majority of his peers
prefer the centrical precision of
computer-generated imagery. He dismisses
Hollywood's convictions about 3d as the
way to attract modern audiences to the
theater presenting an alternate argument
for larger 2d formats like IMAX that are
capable of staggering clarity. 
This aspect of his artistic profile is why
the release of a new Christopher Nolan
film was regarded as such a cultural event.
His methods simply gave his films
the kind of weight and gravitas we
Accord two monuments. 
Batman Begins is the first instance of this, harnessing
the full power of a nine figure budget
and putting it all up on the screen in a
way that would popularize the concept of
the dark and gritty reboot.
Cinematographer Wally Pfister returns
for his third collaboration with Nolan
capturing the action on 35 millimeter
film in the to 35 to 1 aspect ratio 
and coming away with an Oscar nomination for his trouble.
Deep wells of inky shadow
low-hanging clouds have been penetrable
fog and torrents of rain conjure up an
appropriate film noir look that's less
the third man and more Blade Runner 
in its rendering of a dystopic urban landscape.
Nolan packs his story with
epic compositions and soaring camerawork
further peppering his signature
helicopter aerials throughout to find
Batman's majestic silhouette amidst
Gotham's towering spires. A color palette
of earth and metal tones further grounds
Batman Begins aesthetic and realism while
immediately differentiating itself from
prior cinematic iterations of the Caped Crusader 
while Nolan actively avoids
replicating the frenetic handheld camera
work typical of action films at the time,
he works with editor Lee Smith to bring
a chaotic quick cut approach to the
film's action scenes. 
Especially in fights that aim to convey Batman's
master of hand-to-hand combat as an
unstoppable and disoriented force
building out a barrage of street justice
in handy bite-sized form.
The challenge of reinventing Batman goes
much further than overhauling his iconic
cape and cowl.
It also means redefining all the other
little things that make Batman, Batman.
Wayne Manor, the Batmobile, his grappling hook 
and the fantastical theatricality
of his villains amidst a myriad of other aspects.
As a very intimidating task but
production designer Nathan Crowley
proves up to the challenge, reinforcing
Nolan's grandiose vision of a cinematic reality.
All of Batman's gear is based
off real military tech in some capacity.
The Batmobile referred to within the
film as the tumbler is completely
overhauled into the bastard love child
of a Hummer and a Lamborghini. And the
sheer size of practical sets indeed
spanning the size of multiple city
blocks would require one of the largest
aircraft hangars in the world to house them in.
Composing team Hans Zimmer and
James Newton Howard tackled the
unenviable task of following Danny
Elfman's Batman theme one of the most
instantly recognizable music cues in
recent film history.
But their efforts result in a score 
that obliterates our musical memories of dark
knights past and provides the 
necessary lift for Nolan's interpretation sore
Zimmer and Howard are excellent
composers with highly celebrated
individual careers so they're pairing
here must've seemed very unusual in theory.
In practice their partnership an idea
brought to the table by Zimmer when
Nolan initially approached him proves quite inspired.
Reflecting Batman's
fragmented psyche with a bifurcated
approach that sees Howard tackling
dramatic sequences was sweeping strings
and mournful brass instruments while
Zimmer feels the action with an urgent
orchestral staccato and atonal
electronic rhythms inspired by flapping
bat wings.
The square has since become widely recognizable and imitated in the
wake of the success of the larger Dark
Knight trilogy so one could be forgiven
for failing to remember just how
visionary it truly is. 
It's so radical in its
adherence to the story's key themes and
willingness to experiment that is
something of a minor miracle that Warner
Brothers ever allowed it anywhere near
their most prized property. Batman Begins
and the larger Dark Knight trilogy
 is not content to simply detail the
exploits of the iconic hero as he Rob's
of Gotham fighting crime. It aspires to
something greater
using its pulp framework to explore
heavy ideological concepts.
Indeed Batman Begins often plays
like a Law School thesis paper
masquerading as a summer blockbuster.
While this has an unintentional side effect of forcing its
characters to contort themselves into
unwieldy idea delivery machines rather
than sound like living breathing people
the overall effect is nonetheless one of
profound resonance that must have felt
quite relevant at a time when news
headlines were dominated by overreaching
surveillance measures and the
controversy of a pre-emptive war. 
While this exploration of the urban landscapes
relationship to crime and justice Batman
Begins provides an opportunity for Nolan
to fully inhabit the wheelhouse of a key
influence by command, he uses Batman as
an entry point into a philosophical
deconstruction of justice itself what is
justice especially when delivered
outside of the bounds of conventional
law enforcement or the court system. When
it comes to vigilantism did the ends
ever justify the means.
The justice system is just one of many that
Nolan utilizes to tell Batman Begins story,
taking inspiration from HBO's the
wire and detailing how corruption
spreads its tendrils into the various
infrastructural systems that support a city.
This can be seen most immediately
in the villains plot to use Gotham's
water supply as a delivery mechanism for
an inert chemical agent that once
activated causes anyone who ingest it to
go insane with fear
Gotham's transportation system is also
utilized with an elevated subway car
being another delivery mechanism for the
machine that will catalyze Scarecrow's
fear drug upon reaching Lane Tower. 
We also see social systems represented by
diverse economic castes and the varying
appearances of different districts.
Giving Gotham a tangible realistic
quality that eluded Burton or
Schumacher's rather theatrical interpretations.
There's an elegant
modern financial district anchored by
Wayne Tower and inhabited by Gotham's
privileged class. 
While the poor and other undesirables are condemned to
below ground to a seedy Forgotten
underbelly that appears to have been at
one point the street-level Gotham before
was built over by the current one.
There's also the Narrows a densely
populated island of slums and abject
poverty set apart from the mainland home
to Arkham Asylum in the majority of
Gotham's criminal population. 
The inclusion of such a destitute
neighborhood as the setting for the
film's climax contrasts directly with
the mask of privilege and wealthness 
Bruce bears to the public further
illustrating the extent to which he must
depart from a life of luxury in order to
purge himself of his interior demons.
Batman begins exploration of urban
systems and the malleability of the
built environment has come to be 
a prominent theme in his subsequent work
culminating an inception in the Dark
Knight Rises with characters physically
resculpting cities to their own
singular designs. 
A common image throughout Nolan's filmography is that of
 imposing architectural monoliths
brought to rubble by a fundamental weakness.
An aspect of his artistic
character no doubt profoundly affected by 9/11.
Batman Begins establishes this
concede rather literally defacing the
city streets around Wayne Tower by
crashing a runaway subway train into it.
The fact that the Narrows is an island
is also important its isolation from the
mainland becomes a critical flaw when
Scarecrow's fear gas is unleashed
instantly transforming the
island slum into a confined labyrinth of terror.
In an oblique way this aspect of
Batman Begins also hits on the magician
like Puzzle asked nature of his artistic
persona and then it takes something
exceedingly mundane like the subway 
or an urban island and turns it
 into something of a spectacle. 
The same nature also causes him to take what might
otherwise be a fairly linear story and
jumbled up the timeline into a highly
strategic nonlinear order Batman Begins
ostensibly covers Bruce Wayne's long
transformation into Batman from his
first encounter with Bats in  an old well
as a child to his first victory as the
vigilante and finally to the
solidification of his new identity after
saving Gotham from insidious crime
syndicate.
However Nolan doesn't quite tell the
story in that order.
At least not during the first half, we
first meet Bruce as an inmate in a
Chinese prison detailing the
circumstances leading up to his meeting
Ducard and becoming involved in the
League of Shadows. While he trains to
become one of them Nolan peppers in
flashbacks that fill out the backstory
showing how Bruce's parents were
murdered and how his frustration over
being unable to avenge their killer
himself led to his travels abroad. 
The ordering of these sequences is quite
deliberate calculated in such a way 
so to maximize the emotional power of
Batman Begins first half by feeding us
visceral nuggets of backstory that
underscore the context of the scene at hand.
This is what director Guillermo del
Toro was referring to when he calls
Nolan an emotional mathematician.
He evokes emotion by structuring his
stories in a way that's precise and
measured almost to a fault as his
detractors tend to find his films devoid of 
organic warmth akin to the gut level
revulsion of encountering the uncanny valley.
As Nolan's filmography has grown
there indeed appears to be a formula for
how he structures his stories for
maximum emotional impact one of the most
evident products of this formula is the
specific manner in which he ends most of
his films writing an emotional wave
conjured by cathartic montage and
swelling score before smash cutting to
the film's title which is usually 
the first time we actually see the title itself on screen 
Batman Begins marks the
first time that Nolan employs this
formula a choice that's quite apt for
the subject matter and in particular the
closing scene at hand. 
The film naturally accommodates other
thematic fascinations of Nolan's both
established and emerging Batman Begins
continues a tradition scene and all of
his work since following by positioning
the protagonists as profoundly flawed.
Admittedly this has always been a core
aspect of the character since its
creation by Bob Kane in 1939 but
previous Batman pictures mostly chose to
overlook it in favor of his heroic qualities.
Nolan's Bruce Wayne is a man
haunted by a horrible tragedy and
desperately in need of a guiding purpose in his life.
 His solution to dress up as
a bat and fight crime then requires an
intimidating amount of philosophical
reflection in order to combat the sheer
psychosis of the idea. 
Even then Bruce knows his quest is doomed he's well
aware that no amount of crime-fighting
can bring his parents back or heal a
psychological wounds yet he can't help
but become utterly consumed by his
desire for justice. 
advice about theatricality a bit
Nolan's sartorial fascination with
functional style finds plenty of
opportunity for indulgence in Batman
Begins not just in the various utilities
of the batsuits design but also in the
amount of screen time he allocates to
the discussion of what the suit means on a symbolic level.
Finally Batman Begins expansive almost
operatic scope allows Bruce to be seen
traveling the world before settling back
in Gotham. Whereas previous Batman films
never left the city limits. Nolan would
bring the same globe-trotting
sensibility to a subsequent work
orchestrating his story so as to require
frequent travel to exotic locales 
that helped to convey a larger-than-life scale.
As his career has grown his
travels have extended beyond 
the confines of earth itself
venturing to entirely new worlds in
inner cellars outer space as well as the
lucid unconscious of inceptions inner space.
Batman Begins has its sights set
on far more modest horizons employing
the dramatic and almost alien vistas 
of Iceland as a stand-in for the majestic
Himalayan mountains of Asia. 
All this led up to what was easily the most ambitious
film of Nolan's still fledgling career.
His ability to convey scale had grown
from followings modest back alley
origins to that of a sweeping overview of 
an entire city under siege. 
His self-confidence as a director evidenced
by his refusal to storyboard or sit in
video village during the production of
insomnia enabled him to execute his
vision with inspiring clarity while
further bucking long-established studio
filmmaking practices. Indeed he felt that
every shot was so vital to telling his
story that he dispatched with the second
unit all together gathering every single
action beat establishing shot or insert
himself.
Well not without his fare share of criticisms Barman Begins debuted 
in summer of 2005 to very positive reviews.
Many of which claimed that the
Caped Crusader had finally been done
cinematic justice the film also
established Nolan's enviable ability to
create box-office juggernauts. 
Earning three hundred and seventy three million dollars 
in worldwide receipts. 
Far from simply being just another summer
blockbuster Batman Begins has proven
highly influential causing a chain
reaction of events so being felt 
across the cinematic landscape nearly 15 years later.
Hollywood's trend of comic-book adaptations,
had truly begun with the
success of Bryan Singer's x-men in 2000.
But Batman Begins showed the world that
these properties could be something more
than just escapist fare they could be
legitimate forums in which to explore
complex social and political issues.
Furthermore it pioneered the now stale
trend of rebooting a dormant or fail
property as a way to restore its
freshness. Indeed Casino Royale and the
Daniel Craig era the James Bond series
was a direct reaction to Batman Begins.
For the Nolan faithful who had already
seen the light with memento the massive
success of Batman Begins only reinforced
our convictions in his formidable
technical skill set and narrative dexterity.
The character of Batman became
for many an entry point is at the
burgeoning directors particular style of filmmaking.
In one fell bat swoop Nolan
had gone from indie maverick to the
biggest VIP on the Warner Brothers lot.
Well on his way towards a destiny as a
director who would revolutionize and
revitalize old fashioned spectacle
filmmaking for a new generation of
audiences around the world. 
The Hollywood Machine demanded a sequel and quickly
but a return trip to Gotham was an
unknown one's itinerary just yet.
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