The Nolan Fans Awesome Scale: Batman Begins

Christopher's 2005 reboot of the Batman franchise that tells the origins of how Bruce Wayne became Batman.

How Awesome was Batman Begins?

100% Awesome
82
39%
90% Awesome
75
36%
80% Awesome
37
18%
70% Awesome
10
5%
60% Awesome
1
0%
50% Awesome
1
0%
40% Awesome
1
0%
30% Awesome
0
No votes
20% Awesome
0
No votes
10% Awesome
1
0%
0% Awesome
1
0%
 
Total votes: 209

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A lot of superhero films get compared to TDK as though that's the level to reach in the superhero genre. But as far as I'm concerned I still haven't seen another superhero film as good as Begins that wasn't a Batman movie. I don't see how anything can reach TDK status when Begins hasn't been reached yet. You gotta crawl before you can walk.

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anonymity wrote:A lot of superhero films get compared to TDK as though that's the level to reach in the superhero genre. But as far as I'm concerned I still haven't seen another superhero film as good as Begins that wasn't a Batman movie. I don't see how anything can reach TDK status when Begins hasn't been reached yet. You gotta crawl before you can walk.
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There's no TDK without BB.
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Batman Begins got me invested with the character in a way that no other depiction of the character in any medium of entertainment has ever done before in the past, not even the 90's animated series.

One of the greatest scenes in the movie (and any film, for that matter) is the party scene where Bruce has to shift into drunk mode in order to convince the guests to leave his house in order to protect them.

Even though I was fully aware of Bruce's intention in this scene, I still felt uncomfortable watching it... for all the right reasons.

I felt legitimately uncomfortable for the guests in this scene and could easily put myself in their place because Bale's performance was so thoroughly convincing.

What adds to the texture of this scene, is the conversation Bruce had earlier with Alfred:

Alfred Pennyworth: If those are to be the first of many injuries to come, it would be wise to find a suitable excuse. Polo, for instance.
Bruce Wayne: I'm not learning polo, Alfred.
Alfred Pennyworth: Strange injuries a non-existent social life, these things beg the question as to what exactly does Bruce Wayne do with his time and his money.
Bruce Wayne: And what does someone like me do?
Alfred Pennyworth: 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.

This paints a subtle, yet vivid picture of how Bruce feels about the class of people he associates with during the day in order to maintain his false persona, and you can tell he doesn't have as much fun with it as Alfred would like him too. So how much of this:

"
Bruce Wayne: No, really. Uh... There's a 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.
Fredericks: That's enough, Bruce.
Bruce Wayne: Mm... I'm not finished. To all of you, uh, all you phonies, all of 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."


...is actually an act?


This, along with may other brilliant moments in the film, are what makes this movie a cut above the rest of the genre and one of the top 5 most influential films of the 21st century!

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I believe that throughout the trilogy, the philosophic discussion on the neture of a mask is a kind of metaphor for the identity of the artist. His distance from his own creation. The role she plays in his life. In fact, Batman begins is more closely in terms of style and subject to the "portrait of an artist as a young man" than to superheroes movies. This is Christopher Nolan's journey in film theory. Bruce Wayne loses his faith in world values ​​at a young age. He is looking for himself. He finds a remote Avant-garde secret society that conducts a war of terror against Western society. The roads split violently when he decided to dedicate his life not to war but to subversion. Helping from the inside, only secretly. To that end he adopts an identity. A certain symbol. When asked which symbol, he answers:

"Something lemental, something terrifying."

The identity he chooses is that of a bat. is That of an ancient and nostalgic fear that has been following him from early childhood. Think of it this way - all those people who draw, sing, photograph, write, all those artist, what drives if not their deepest fears? Their most terrible pains? ... which results from inevitable adolescence, from the disillusionment of the innocence of eternal childhood? Isn't the symbol of their inspiration, is, in fact, allegorical, their own fears? The shield they put on front of the world. The armor, the mask..

"if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can not stop you, then you become something else entirely."

Bruce Wayne is the man. Batman is his art. His way of inspiring people, his way of trying to fight the evil that is going on inside him.

"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can not do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol ... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting."

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