Batman Films

"Alfred has always been an important character in the Batman universe, but here Michael Caine elevates the dedicated butler to a new level. He is Bruce Wayne and Batman's foremost confidant. He understands why Wayne has become Batman and he helps him to create and initiate his vision. Caine is terrific in the part, undoubtedly the best choice one could imagine. Lucius Fox, who was a slightly different character in the comics, also becomes an integral part of Wayne's crusade. Now we can understand where Batman gets all his wonderful toys and how he learned to put them to their appropriate uses. Gary Oldman is another great choice as James Gordon. This is an early incarnation of the character, before he became commissioner. The character is played very differently from prior visions of Gordon. Here he is a quiet, dedicated cop, one of the few legit men left in a town rife with corruption. Oldman is excellent, and Gordon and Batman have a very nice connection that will serve future films well."

"This is the Batman film you've been waiting for. Batman's evolution into the fabled crime fighter is carefully constructed from the first piece of the puzzle to the chiseled and fierce ultimate evolution. Each part of the process is chronicled with astute precision. Nolan actually finds a way to set-up and explain why a guy runs around in a bat suit. He explains every nuance of the character, from why he chooses the bat as his symbol to why he dons a cape to why he uses the weapons he uses. Nolan leaves no stone unturned. During one sequence, the Batmobile jumps from cityscape rooftop to rooftop. It occurred to me watching this, how exactly does he know that he won't crash through the roofs of these buildings? On the second viewing, however, I noticed something. They thought of that too! Batman has a GPS-like navigation system that gives him info on the rooftops before he topples onto them. By the end of the film, you can try to pick it apart all you want, but you will find that Nolan has covered his bases extremely well, explaining each and every aspect of the Batman arsenal."

"Q: What was your inspiration for the look of Gotham City?"

"Q: This film seems to deal a lot with the underlying issues of what makes Bruce Wayne become Batman. How much of his anger is really under control by the end of this film?"

""Batman Begins" lives up to its title, concentrating mainly on the hero's pre-history. He's trained like a Ninja by a great teacher (Liam Neeson). Later, in a crime-ridden, economically depressed Gotham City, he encounters none of the familiar villains, such as the Joker, the Riddler or Catwoman. They're in the future. The villains who turn up in this early era are normal in appearance, at least by "Batman" standards. Tom Wilkinson plays an Italian mob boss, and he's like any other mob boss, full of threats and resentment, while Cillian Murphy is a perverse psychiatrist, on the mob payroll. On the side of good is Gary Oldman, as a gruff, honest cop, and an assistant D.A. played by Katie Holmes, who, alone among the actors, doesn't quite seem comfortable in her role."

"Bale is the first Batman since Michael Keaton to bring a skewed and somewhat vulnerable sensibility into the psychological equation. Bruce's ultimate decision to become the caped crusader is presented here as a neurotic person's way of channeling his neurosis toward a positive end. Since he knows he'll never stop obsessing about crime -- even his stint in the Asian prison was by way of researching the criminal mind -- he might as well do something positive with his obsession. Keaton suggested these qualities and motivations, as well, but what Bale has that Keaton didn't is a physicality that also makes sense of all the action hero elements. In an early scene, Bruce Wayne beats up a half dozen guys in a prison yard. In terms of direction, it's one of the worst scenes: Nolan, as if uncomfortable shooting a conventional action number, relies on the modern cliches of constant intercutting and of filming so close to the action that it's impossible to see what's going on. But the sequence nonetheless demonstrates that Bale, the most cerebral Bruce Wayne since Keaton, is the most lithe to date. He's physically loose and graceful and looks like what Bruce Wayne pretends to be, a handsome playboy."

"There's some brilliant psychology at work in Batman Begins. The way Goyer and Nolan have crafted this tale, it becomes clear that there is no other possible path for Bruce Wayne other than as Batman. It's not just a conceit that he's going to wear a suit, you will actually understand why he must. Sure, it's not a 100% perfect and literal translation of the comic, but it doesn't have to be. Again, this is not a comic-book movie, just a movie that happens to be based on a comic book. Oh, and it's great."

"Remember how stiff Batman was in those other films? Guess what -- he can finally move his neck! The battles in Batman Begins are frenetic, fast and almost impossible to see clearly"

"As we saw in Burton's films, the portrayal of Gotham is often directly related to the overall take on Batman. Burton's Gotham was like a twisted nightmare come to life. It was surreal -- beautiful to look at, but not an actual city. The Gotham City of Batman Begins, which was filmed largely in Chicago, is a sprawling Metropolis. It looks like a real city, in part, because it is a real city. The altered Chicago is made to look like a vast metropolis, too big for its own good. So large, in fact, that it feels inescapable. Connecting the sprawling city is a commuter rail built by Bruce Wayne's father just short of his murder. It's one of the few noticeable CG images in the film, but the train plays a vital role. Gotham is vibrant and its demise into poverty is explained in the film. This isn't just a version of New York gone bad, Gotham is a city that has been bludgeoned by corruption and crippled by an insidious economical plague. This is a city that has lost the war to save itself. What hope does Batman have?"

"Bruce has indeed wandered the world and had some training. However, that singular purpose often shown in the comics is not evident at first. He is merely rage without direction. It is Ducard (Liam Neeson), who finds Wayne and gives him the training and guidance he needs to get on the proper path. It should be noted that Ducard is never referred to by his first name Henri, nor does he bear a French accent (thankfully)."

"Bale is just right for this emerging version of Batman. It's strange to see him muscular and toned, after his cadaverous appearance in "The Machinist," but he suggests an inward quality that suits the character. Rachel is at first fooled by his facade of playboy irresponsibility, but Lt. Gordon figures out fairly quickly what Batman is doing, and why. Instead of one villain as the headliner, "Batman Begins" has a whole population, including Falcone, the Scarecrow, the Asian League of Shadows leader Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and a surprise bonus pick."

"I admire, among other things, the way the movie doesn't have the gloss of the earlier films. The Batman costume is an early design. The Bat Cave is an actual cave beneath Wayne Manor. The Batmobile enters and leaves it by leaping across a chasm and through a waterfall. The Bat Signal is crude and out of focus. The movie was shot on location in Chicago, making good use of the murky depths of lower Wacker Drive and the Board of Trade building (now the Wayne Corp.). Special effects add a spectacular monorail down La Salle Street, which derails in the best scene along those lines since "The Fugitive.""

""Batman Begins" at last penetrates to the dark and troubled depths of the Batman legend, creating a superhero who, if not plausible, is at least persuasive as a man driven to dress like a bat and become a vigilante. The movie doesn't simply supply Batman's beginnings in the tradition of a comic book origin story, but explores the tortured path that led Bruce Wayne from a parentless childhood to a friendless adult existence. The movie is not realistic, because how could it be, but it acts as if it is."

"And perhaps that quest to ground Batman in a believable world is Begins‘ greatest lasting impact. Nearly every superhero origin story to which the words “dark and gritty” could even vaguely apply is framed in terms of its similarity or dissimilarity to Batman Begins—and from Daredevil to Arrow, Batman Begins has a number of direct descendants within the superhero genre. But Begins was originally favored, and continues to be such a source of inspiration, because of its content, too—not just its structure or its style. Batman Begins cared about making its billionaire-playboy hero someone audiences could relate to, even if he had some serious problems to work through."

"“Like [Frank] Miller’s Batman, Mr. Nolan’s is tormented by demons both physical and psychological. In an uncertain world, one the director models with an eye to our own, this is a hero caught between justice and vengeance, a desire for peace and the will to power,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times. But Nolan memorably made his mark with the death scene that incites Bruce Wayne’s eventual transformation. There’s certainly no shortage of Bruce Wayne’s parents dying in film and television, but Nolan’s interpretation, which builds for a surprisingly long time before Batman appears in full cape and cowl onscreen, has become one of the defining iterations of the sequence, exploring the man behind Batman more so than most films had before. (As the Washington Post‘s Desson Thompson put it, the film had a “thoughtful, methodically structured narrative that works on you for days afterward.”)"

"In Nolan’s world, Batman isn’t so much a character as an idea. He is a construct that Bruce Wayne creates to galvanize the people of Gotham to improve their rotten lives. His goal isn’t an eternal war on evil, but a targeted campaign against corruption and crime. Most of Batman’s toys were created by Fox for military application. The only thing Bruce adds are black paint jobs. Gordon isn’t so much a piece of expositional furniture as in the previous series, but a partner and confidant for the winged avenger. Only together can they wage war on the mob and clean up the police force. In this Gotham, it takes a village to make a Batman. And that all feeds into the underlying draw of this Gotham. Events and characters have repercussions, because this time the city isn’t a fantasy island. In the previous four Batman pictures, Gotham always went through a subtle or massive reworking. The only major consistency for the urban environment is it was always created on back lots and sound stages. In Nolan’s iteration, Gotham is the scariest thing of all…an American city. Shot primarily in Chicago, Batman inhabits a living and breathing urban jungle. The film still pulls from Batman’s pulpy roots for its backdrop to a point. The initial threat is super-sized organized crime, reminiscent of 1930s gangland. However, Wilkinson’s deliciously broad mobster is soon suppressed by what the filmmakers know really scares us today. The villains are more than just criminals or the madmen of the comics. Scarecrow isn’t a demented gangster like Jack Nicholson’s Joker. No, these are terrorists. The League of Shadows is an ideologically driven organization of non-state actors who want to make a statement by destroying a major American city. You can find that just as easily in a newspaper as a comic book these days. What is Scarecrow’s master plan? It’s to infect the city with a toxin that would literally cause citizens to destroy each other out of fear. In a post-9/11 world, that isn’t exactly a subtle metaphor. Nolan may have originally pitched this as a Batman origin story, but what he made was an unbridled epic reflecting its time. He and Goyer pulled from several comic book sources, most notably “Batman: Year One” and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s “The Long Halloween” and created a protagonist who more closely resembled his modern comic book likeness. This Batman would not kill, was not created by his villains and he was a worldly super-ninja detective. However, even if it still features a guy jumping off rooftops and gliding to our rescue, he now fights bearded fanatics bent solely on our destruction. It is a theme that would only become better articulated in its sequels, but it works just fine in BATMAN BEGINS. This is the movie that brought Batman back from the dead and reintroduced him as the king of superheroes for a whole new generation. It gave depth to Bruce’s problems while also telling a rip-roaring adventure. Even if it suffers from a far too conventional third act, BATMAN BEGINS’ overall approach was anything but that in 2005. It took the franchise and genr to new heights. And it did come in black."

"Nolan asked a very simple question for what would come to define his Batman movie. Why would a grown man dress up like a bat? This is a query that Tim Burton glossed over in 1989, because the world he created didn’t need an explanation. Nolan took a wholly opposite approach. Citing influences like Richard Donner’s 1978 adaptation of SUPERMAN, he wanted to ground Batman, as much as possible, in a world similar to our own. Instead of Batman being a product of a fantastically gothic world, he’d be a man who could justify costume dress-up as a lifestyle choice. To help with the shift, he brought in life-long comic book fan David S. Goyer to co-write the first draft of the screenplay."

""Batman starts stripping away each layer of Gotham crime only to discover a sicker and more monstrous evil beneath, his rancid city simultaneously invokes early '90s New York, when criminals frolicked to the tune of five murders a day; Serpico New York, when cops were for sale; and today, when psychos seek to kill us all at once rather than one by one."

"Batman has a twisted and repressed relationship with Holmes' Rachel (read: Peter Parker and Mary Jane). The idea is frustratingly underdeveloped, but then, he is Batman; he's not going to go on Oprah to profess his love."

"If Bale's superhero and Katie Holmes' assistant district attorney were more romantically inclined in Batman Begins, you could imagine her telling her gal pals, "There's just something about his chin.""

"The idea that Batman has a dark side has had mixed success at the box office. Michael Keaton seemed disoriented and sad, batty rather than dark. The preening Val Kilmer perfected an air of preoccupation, but you suspected it was merely with himself. I spent most of Batman Foreverworried that any moment Kilmer would stop proceedings to ask "Does my bum look big in this?" And George Clooney? Well, George Clooney looked like a man who'd turned up in fancy dress to the wrong house. The latest model, Christian Bale, offers some hope. We've already seen him as a pale screw-up in Velvet Goldmine and considerably more screwed up in American Psycho."

"But Nolan's film gives us an interesting new twist. After 13 years in the joint, this mugger is up for a parole court hearing, proposing to offer inside information that could convict Gotham's biggest villain Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). It turns into a Jack Ruby-style bloody fiasco; Bruce flees abroad to find himself and brood on who the real bad guys are, and winds up thrown in jail in China where he encounters a mysterious sect of righteous assassins, led by Liam Neeson, who propose to instruct him in the vocation of the masked avenger. This is the movie's big influence: a wholesale borrowing from the new wave of action movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Batman's big credibility gap has always been that he is the superhero without superpowers. Nolan's film imports the concept of Asian martial arts to bolster Batman's credentials. Back home, the young corporate princeling works on his new persona, with the help of his butler and confidant Alfred, amiably played by Michael Caine. As Batman, Bale does look quite creepy, especially close up, his mouth and chin transformed into something bestial - with a growling voice that drops an octave when in character. His batmobile isn't the sleek black convertible of old but a chunkier Humvee-ish ride, more suitable for paranoid urban combat and originally designed for the military by the Wayne group's tech maestro (played by Morgan Freeman). Bale brings to this some of his American Psycho performance, a rich loner compulsively assuming a new identity to purge his self-loathing, and indeed ambiguous loathing of a father who failed to stand up for himself. Certainly, the muddy colours of Nolan's visual palette make everything look appropriately dark - and dark is what so many movies nowadays claim to be, perhaps confusing darkness with factor, however, by casting Cillian Murphy as an unprincipled psychiatrist who specialises depth. (I am tempted to say: you want dark? Try the daylit nightmares of Neil LaBute or Michael Haneke.) Nolan certainly intensifies his own darkness-visible in getting obvious villains off on insanity charges, and is involved in a plot to use a fear-inducing poison gas. Murphy, with his uniquely sinister good looks and sensuous, predatory mouth, is the scariest actor I know."

"In this retelling of the story, Bale's Bruce Wayne is the son of an idealistic American billionaire, an FDR-style patrician liberal who withdrew from the day-to-day running of the family corporation to practise medicine and donate vast sums to establishing a proper public transportation system for Gotham: a gleaming new monorail. As a child, Bruce remembers riding on this train with his parents, instead of in a limo, but Nolan neatly contrives that it is this monorail which, in the denatured and decadent city of Wayne's adulthood, is the scene of Gotham's operatic Armageddon."

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."

"[slurring] Everyone? Everybody? I want to thank you all for coming here tonight and drinking all of my booze. No, really. That's the thing about being a Wayne: that you're never short of a few freeloaders like yourselves to fill up your mansion with. So here's to you people. Thank you. [takes a drink] Um, I'm not finished. To all you phonies, you two-faced friends, you sycophantic suck-ups who smile through your teeth at me: please leave me in peace. Please go! Stop smiling. It's not a joke. Please leave. The party's over. Get out. [party guests leave, revealing Ra's al Ghul's men]"

"They told me there was nothing out there, nothing to fear. But the night my parents were murdered I caught a glimpse of something. I've looked for it ever since. I went around the world, searched in all the shadows. And there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge... Me."

"Michael Gough - Alfred Pennyworth"

"Remember, I came in when the audience was disturbed by Danny DeVito as the Penguin, and then Michelle Pfeiffer — which was still fabulous and maybe a little too S&M for some people."

"We got to be back home [filming in Burbank] so that made me happy. It was quite the cast with Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito and everyone. It wasn't as satisfying to me when I saw it, but maybe that’s because the bar was set so high on the first one. I think I only watched it one time. I knew we were in trouble in talks for the third one when certain people started the conversation with 'Why does it have to be so dark?' 'Why does he have to be so depressed?' 'Shouldn't there be more color in this thing?' I knew I was headed for trouble and that it wasn't a road I was going to go down."

"I think the studio just thought it was too weird — they wanted to go with something more child or family-friendly. In other words, they didn't want me to do another one."

"I think I upset McDonald's. [They asked] 'What's that black stuff coming out of the Penguin's mouth? We can't sell Happy Meals with that!'"

"I just have all these memories of her — letting a live bird fly out of her mouth and learning to use the whip and jumping around rooftop sets in high heels. The work and just the performance were very, very impressive."

"Cristi Conaway - the Ice Princess"

"Andrew Bryniarski - Charles "Chip" Shreck"

"Vincent Schiavelli - the Organ Grinder"

"Pat Hingle - Commissioner James Gordon"

"Christopher Walken - Max Shreck"

"Michelle Pfeiffer - Catwoman/Selina Kyle"

"Danny DeVito - The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot"

"Michael Keaton - Batman/Bruce Wayne"

"The Bat. The Cat. The Penguin."

"[when she and Bruce Wayne realize each other's secret identities] Oh my God...does this mean we have to start fighting?"

"[to Penguin, rejecting his advances] I wouldn't touch you to scratch you."

"[falls into the back of a dump truck filled with gravel.] Saved by kitty litter... [looks at the burn mark left by Batman] Bastard."

"[after saving a woman from a mugger] You make it so easy, always waiting for some Batman to save you. I am Catwoman. Hear me roar."

"I don't know about you, Miss Kitty, but I feel so much yummier."

"[to crowd] But it's human nature to fear the unusual."

"[fighting Batman] You're just jealous because I'm a genuine freak, and you have to wear a mask!"

"They wouldn't put me on a pedestal, so I'm laying 'em on a slab!"

"[addressing his penguin army] My dear penguins, we stand on a great threshold! It's okay to be scared; many of you won't be coming back. Thanks to Batman, the time has come to punish all God's children! First, second, third and fourth-born! Why be biased?! Male and female! Hell, the sexes are equal, with their erogenous zones BLOWN SKY-HIGH!!! FORWAAAARD MARCH!!! THE LIBERATION OF GOTHAM HAS BEGUN!!!!! [the penguins start deploying]"