Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan upsets the bat and DC Comics

Batman Begins

Batman Begins was released today, June 15, in 2005, or the first chapter of the trilogy with which Christopher Nolan relaunched Batman in the cinema. Let's briefly review its history.

Editor's note. Origin's stories are generally the easiest cinecomics to do and the ones that are most successful. It's easy to get hold of the audience when you tell how your protagonist gradually discovers the hero of the moment. Whoever looks at him identifies himself easily, pours his personal dreams into that unstoppable ascent towards the triumph of justice - because come on, for each of us personal success and failure are a matter of justice and injustice, let's face it.

And that's why I admire the courage displayed by the director and the production of Batman Begins. It is still a so-called origin story, but there is the pain of choice. It is a more "comic" story than "movie", and it is not so easy to follow the transformation from man to hero with enthusiasm.

Because it is a path full of pitfalls and temptations. You viewer know how it will turn out, that in the end Batman will be Batman. But Nolan's Bruce Wayne doesn't know, he might as well become a mere revenge killer. He is a hero who does not ally himself with the spectator, who keeps him at a distance, and for this reason he is perhaps even greater.

Valerio Porcu

Filippo Rossi.

Known as “Jedifil”, he was born on February 14, 1971 in Rovigo and lives in Trieste. He is one of the top Star Wars experts. Creator and President of Yavin 4, he directs and produces Living Force Magazine (Italy Award 2013 and 2016 as the Best Italian fanzine of Science Fiction. He is part of the Tolkien group Éndore.

Filippo has written The force is with you. History , symbols and meanings of the Star Wars saga, an exceptional critical text on the saga conceived by George Lucas And just a few days ago “Super”, a critical and analytical effort dedicated to the 80 years of Superman, is available.

You can follow Filippo on his personal website.

Batman begins

DC Comics film and television production of the modern age is varied, even if quality and ambition are hiding. The exception is the extraordinary production and success of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight, a celebrated, independent and accomplished film trilogy.

It's an expressive and conceptual hurricane. DC Comics is shocked. This new kind of Batman comes after Tim Burton's dark, circus genius, and Joel Schumacher's phosphorescent rubber nipples; a double danger from opposite directions that the English director transforms into an opportunity to start over from scratch. He reinvents and adopts the best known comic book character.

If Burton (special edition box set) is an American-style Federico Fellini, Nolan is a European-style Stanley Kubrick. The Dark Knight trilogy begins on June 15, 2005 with an intense and subtle, powerful and profound film. Sometimes convulsive and not very spectacular, by choice of the director.

Do you want an adult film with moving moments about a beloved cultural icon? Do you want a Big Bad Plan, which for once stands up and is not thrown out there? Do you want a superhero story that is finally believable and lived? Do you want exciting quotes and references to the myth in comics? Here is Batman Begins. Warning: it is not very funny and when the action begins you understand little.

Adult work about a cultural icon, in full evolution. The impact is alienating. Christopher Nolan satisfies the open-mindedness of the viewer.

The evolution of the superhero

This Batman begins with a trend like Richard Donner's first Superman, 1978 (and even cites some scenes from it) , see the very first appearance of the hero in costume): the first analytic part and in crescendo, with the spotlight on the slow and difficult awareness of the protagonist; second part of action, with the protagonist who finally reveals himself and puts into practice what he has learned.

But, the first difference with Donner's seminal Superman I: in this Batman I by Christopher Nolan, a first part evocative is followed by an extraordinary second part which, however, is not very spectacular and clear in the formal impact of the action. A defect? Perhaps, but fortunately it is not fundamental: the film has its truest meaning in the symbolic and successful portrait of a man and his social environment.

The director's goal is not pure spectacle: when arrives at the masked hero changes the point of view, passing from that of the protagonist Bruce Wayne to that of the criminals he wants to scare. So for Nolan (Inception, Interstellar) the plastic poses with the super-brand in sight are no longer important, but the urban shadows from which fear and degradation arise; blatant war choreographies like ballets are no longer important, but the contagion and danger of true violence. A little fun is lost but the desired depth is acquired.

Here is the second difference from that classic Superman, perhaps the decisive one: that was a sunny and dreamy ironic super-fairy tale. This Batman is a complex, challenging, painful philosophical and moral apologue. And on this high level, Batman Begins is even preferred.

The Night Rider

Beautiful soundtrack, precision in dramatic construction, skill in handling the numerous characters played by actors in part (the cast is among the best ever proposed in the cinema), varied and personal taste in the environmental portrait ... qualities that contrast perhaps the only defect: the frenetic and sometimes disturbing editing.

At the second viewing the few doubts are they vaporize like the water of Gotham City in the light of the full moon: the cinematic frenzy is wanted by Nolan, it is not a trivial mistake. The film is dense but clear in his story. The original and engaging rhythm, alternating between slow and fast, with funny moments like flashes of light in the dead of night. So many memorable characters that shine illuminated by an extraordinary protagonist.

The Batman of 31-year-old Welsh Christian Bale (The Prestige, American Psycho) is scary, beautifully scary. He is a fragile and very human Bruce Wayne, who in the second half becomes unrecognizable in the costume. The of him is a Batman that works, although not as imposing and adamant as in modern comics. The Bat-Bale is more purely gothic and noir than burtonianly dark.

He is the son of both the Batman of Dennis O'Neil & Neal Adams' seventies comic rebirth and the eighties signed by Frank Miller, and of Batman originally from 1939, the pulp and violent one of the writer Bill Finger (his, more than the cartoonist Bob Kane, who later “comicized” him). The inspiration is The Man Who Falls by O'Neil and Dick Giordano, a story that in 1989 portrays the life of the classic Wayne before the bat.

Nolan therefore combines the archetype of Golden Age comics with comic reinterpretations modern and post-modern; but it adds to him, innovates and renews. A nightmare, terrible, diabolical, very violent 2005 Batman; yet ethical. As overwhelming as his Bat-mobile “tumbler”.

Christopher Nolan is as always masterful in signing such a personal and precise work from material and figure so well known and exploited. The film is splendidly choral but, at the same time, Batman-centric.

The conscience of the executioner

The story is excruciating, beautiful and problematic: it insists on the difference, minimal and abysmal, between Justice and Revenge. A very current and appropriate theme, both for the importance in itself and for the strong links with the truest myth of Batman.

In an insistent, profound and sincere way, the film courageously questions Western society ( Gotham City, "his greatest city": New York?) And the arrogant and self-righteous decadence. Bruce Wayne is then the common man who invents himself a hero to defend the hope of the redemption of an entire modern civil system, against those who want to destroy it, purify it with brute force, in the name of an ancestral moral nihilism.

From this point of view, Bruce / Batman is a hero we feel close to, in his continuous struggle not to fall into temptation: that very human temptation which is to fight Evil with an even greater evil - the path of ethical Damnation. Always and, also and above all, today.

It is not just a (dry) question of facing and defeating fear, for Bruce / Batman: it is above all finding a sense to do it. True courage is needed there: in the clash with the magnificent and ambiguous Henri Ducard / Ra's al Ghul, the fascist villain of a statuary Liam Neeson (Anchorman 2, Gangs of New York), it is then the undervalued woman-magistrate Rachel Dawes (the surname is similar to dawn, "dawn") of tender Katie Holmes to become the hero's fundamental consciousness. When the likeable Lucius Fox (by Morgan Freeman) and Alfred Pennyworth (by Michael Caine) are respectively the arm and the mind; and James Gordon (by Gary Oldman) her heart.

Rachel is in fact philanthropy and trust in others, not misanthropy and contempt for her miseries. Compassion learned with hard work, not easy and bestial revenge. Humility, not pride. Hope that comes from the abyss, not despair fruit of haughtiness.

The Bruce, indeed the Batman of a charismatic Christian Bale, knows it within himself; but like everyone, most of all, he has to learn it. And he succeeds with a very human effort. This is a beautiful and difficult lesson: straight from the black yet pure heart of the greatest Western nation, but which today has value not only for it.

Simulated fathers and evil twins: Batman

The conceptual union between Batman and Ra 's al Ghul, between superhero and archenemy, is unprecedented. The antagonist here is not the nemesis born of the hero (as in Bat-Burton I, 1989) but the hero born of the nemesis, because hero and nemesis pursue the same objectives but with different means. Critical analysis of Vendetta / Giustizia, ie awareness and ethical choice of the protagonist.

Regarding ethical choice and nemesis, Ducard / Ra's al Ghul and Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow (by Cillian Murphy) are the versions dark alternatives of the hero: Ra's has the same objectives albeit deviated and extreme, the Scarecrow the same methods albeit deviated and extreme.

In fact, the Scarecrow is "born" from the Ra's Shadow Sect as happens to the legend Batman: They are Gotham's privileged sons whom Ra's chooses and uses for his own purposes - destruction of the city for misanthropic revenge, which would underlie an ambiguous philanthropic evolution.

Bruce / Batman is chosen by Ra 's al Ghul as weapon of mass destruction against the city, but loses it and fails to use it; then the villain later chooses and takes, this time with success, the more malleable but crude and crazy Crane. Which in fact is not part of the Sect of Shadows, yet.

Bruce / Batman, therefore, in his mission to save the city first faces his own alternate and dark version (Crane / Scarecrow); then he confronts his putative and dark father (Ducard / Ra's).

Seen from Bruce Wayne's point of life, this magnifies the character and creates unprecedented bonds between the characters. Batman wins against these dark versions of himself and his father not only thanks to the continued support of his "real replacement father" (Alfred), but also and above all thanks to the moral teachings of Rachel and the memory of his real father Thomas Wayne, doctor philanthropist and not misanthropist - beautiful figure: the stethoscope scenes in flashback, symbolic and moving, sign the film.

The last help for this new Batman comes thanks to the concrete proof that purity and honesty still exist in Gotham, albeit hidden. He is Sergeant Jim Gordon, the incorruptible light of hope in the darkness of the city. The Batman / Gordon duo at the end of the film is pure cinematic enjoyment. Gary Oldman made the most beautiful Dracula in cinema: not bad as a meta-cinematic link with this other bat of the night ... After all, even Liam Neeson was the mentor and Jedi Master par excellence in Star Wars: Ducard / Ra 's is a dark Qui-Gon Jinn.

The hero beyond the super

Nolan, from 2005 to 2012, will come to tell about Batman and a few other DC Comics characters without addressing the concept of superpowers. His three films are placed in a pseudo-realistic context. The example of the villain Ra's al Ghul, a character gifted in comics with alchemical abilities and a practically immortal life, applies; he is transformed into a normal, albeit ambitious, bomber. He is stripped of all supernatural suggestions.

Nolan takes the superhero genre and, in three films, models it in other film genres such as noir or action. With the character of the protagonist, lacking extraordinary abilities, he obviously has an easy game; on the other hand, all the antagonists of the three films are variations of the contemporary and very current figure of the terrorist.

Batman Begins is the authorial interpretation of Batman, not epic but intimate. It shows off philological research, frenzied rhythm, layered writing, cryptic style, restrained spectacularity. It is a dark and detective film, absolutely not "magical" like Tim Burton.

The setting is not the timeless Gotham City portrayed in the 80s / 90s quadrilogy, but a true contemporary city. The absolute symbol of the creative course is Ra's al Ghul. Actor Liam Neeson, eliminating the magical Well of Lazarus and remaking his Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in a dark post-Star Wars Episode I version, proposes the extreme version of the same titular hero: he becomes an ultra-Batman, a destructive terrorist far right social media.

Nolan is often called "the Kubrick of 2000" for his highly personal and admired directorial vision, which moves away from the comic book-masterpiece to approach the grandiose moral cinematographic apologues of a rationalist, almost Enlightenment mold . The resounding critical and public success of the tripartite Batman is so strong that it imposes its style on the ambitious blockbuster DC. Causing an evident expressive short-circuit, given the distance from the realistic story of the publishing house that has always played between science fiction and fantasy mythology.

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