The Complicated Legacy of Batman Begins

quote:

---

Ten years after Christopher Nolan reinvented the superhero movie, studios are trying to emulate its darker mood without seizing on what really makes it special.

---

quote:

---

[T]his is the complicated legacy of Batman Begins: Nolan’s film allowed that superhero franchises could exist with one foot in the real world, and inspired legions of imitators to do the same. Some, like the James Bond franchise rebooted around Daniel Craig, followed that thread beautifully. But others seemed to assume that it was a cynical sense of bleakness that made Batman Begins special. The reality, as it turns out, is much more complex, and much more indebted to Nolan’s unique vision.

---

quote:

---

Warner Brothers is currently preparing a huge slate of similar comic-book adaptations along Nolanesque lines, but trying to emulate Batman Begins' success just by adopting its darker mood won’t work. So much of what makes the movie unique is Nolan himself, and his meticulous attention to detail. . . Batman Begins was able to justify such detail because it didn’t have to worry about the future—Warner Bros.’s intention wasn’t to plan out a series of sequels and spinoffs, but to re-invest audiences in a brand that had gone awry, giving Nolan the chance to re-create the character from the ground up. . . Warner Bros. picking Nolan to revitalize Batman was hailed as a risky gambit, and it succeeded largely because the director was granted free rein to create a world free of franchise possibilities or other heroes lurking on the sidelines. His Batman was a bizarre apparition in a recognizably human world of cops and gangsters who’d never contended with a masked hero before. As simple as that sounds, there may never be a superhero film created along those lines again.

---

quote:

---

"The filmmakers who are tackling these [WB] properties are making great movies about superheroes; they aren't making superhero movies," the Warner Bros. president, Greg Silverman, told The Hollywood Reporter.

It's a nice sentiment (and a jab at the visual sameness of the Marvel franchise), but it might only work when the intention is just to make a one-off film. Even Nolan's The Dark Knight, which was a sequel to Batman Begins, was made with no specific future in mind (by all reports, the director had to be heavily coaxed back to even make a third entry). Zack Snyder's Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice is cursed with that unwieldy title because it has to bring Batman into Superman's world and lay the groundwork for the Justice League by introducing several other heroes, including Wonder Woman and Aquaman. In comparison, Batman Begins has but one simple task: get the audience on board with its main character. It's a triumph the superhero films of 2015 are seeking to repeat, but amidst Nolan's success, the simplicity of his original pitch has been forgotten.

---

quote:

---

It was a revolution.

---