Here's how any great franchise should start: with care, precision and delicately wrought atmosphere.
Batman Begins (2005)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:42
Fresh:26
Rotten:16
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: Brooding and dark, but also exciting and smart, Batman Begins is a film that understands the essence of one of the definitive superheroes.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for intense action violence, disturbing images and some thematic elements.
Runtime: 2 hrs 21 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:Jun 15, 2005 Wide
Box Office: $205,197,285
Synopsis: Genius of mystery and intrigue Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO, FOLLOWING, INSOMNIA) helms this prequel to the Batman films based on the DC Comics series, explaining how Bruce Wayne (Christian... Genius of mystery and intrigue Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO, FOLLOWING, INSOMNIA) helms this prequel to the Batman films based on the DC Comics series, explaining how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale)--the billionaire prince of Gotham whose parents were killed in an alleyway mugging--transformed into the crime-fighting superhero. With flashbacks to his privileged childhood, young Master Wayne, as he is called by the butler Alfred (Michael Caine), develops a terrible fear of bats when he falls through the backyard garden into a hidden cave. As a young adult, Wayne lives among the League of Shadows, a martial arts group in the mountains of Asia. His leaders Ra's al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) teach him strength, endurance, and--unfortunately--evil, against which he naturally rebels. Returning to Gotham and reinstating himself as a dapper socialite and the rightful heir to his parents' enterprise, Wayne quickly devises his secret identity, commanding help from the gadgetry expert Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). With one eye on his childhood playmate Rachel (Katie Holmes)--now a beautiful woman and dedicated lawyer--and the other on his mission to save Gotham from criminal corruption, Batman makes his fledgling debut. But when the blue-blooded mastermind Dr. Crane (Cillian Murphy)--who steals every scene with chilling menace--taints the water system with a hallucinatory substance, Batman realizes he has met his first true opponent. An attitude of grave seriousness elevates BATMAN BEGINS above more cartoony Batman movies, as Nolan crafts a dark drama that thrives on sci-fi intrigue. Bale strides into the role with grace, adding refinement that is seldom seen in action-oriented films. And while the action scenes explode with high-tech glitz and fast-moving thrills, they are evenly placed among sequences of plot and character development, making for a complex and satisfying viewing experience. [More]
Starring: Christian Bale, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman
Starring: Christian Bale, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Lucy Russell, Sara Stewart
Director: Christopher Nolan
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenwriter: David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan
Producer: Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Larry J. Franco
Composer: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for Batman Begins
For all the hype about exploring Batman's damaged psyche, Nolan and Goyer haven't added much beyond a corny opening in which he falls down a well and is attacked by bats.
If you love Batman, then Batman Begins will the best Batman movie ever made. On the other hand, if you love Batman movies, Batman Begins may leave you wondering where the Joker went.
A confidently original, engrossing interpretation, with a seriously thought-through (but never self-serious) aesthetic point of view that announces, from the get-go, someone who knows what he's doing is running the show.
Apart from the lumbering pacing and embalmed tone, the movie is densely forested with oaken dialogue, wasteful in its casting...and incoherently over-edited in its action sequences.
Director Nolan remains true to his own vision, which is largely that of the original Batman comics. As a result, Batman Begins has a unity not often found in these extravaganzas.
Is it too much to ask that the action sequences not be monotonously, narcotizingly dull?
If comic books must be a staple of our movie diet, please let them be as thought-provoking and thrilling as this.
For all the effort and expense that went into this salvage job on an old, abandoned property, I would have preferred that Batman -- now past 66 years old -- be given his pension and sent on his way.
Batman Begins is a remarkable movie. In making it, Nolan swept aside not only the other Batman films but the whole over-burdened shelf of previous super-hero flicks.
Here's a legend sometimes proved true: Sharp writing and thoughtful directing make the oldest tales seem new.
Bale, in his first venture into superhero status, hits just the right balance between Bruce's uncertainty and the intensity of his alter ego. Besides, Caine and Freeman elevate any project in which they appear.
A ponderous, deeply unironic psychological portrait with such a pervasive sense of gravitas that it borders on self-importance.
Christopher Nolan has gone back to basics, jettisoning both the silliness of the TV incarnation and the gothic and fetishist elements of the '90s version. This is a hard-core, down-and-gritty origin story.
Say goodbye to 'pow' and 'zowie.' Say hello to a level of raw excitement that at times makes Batman look like a predator for justice.
What makes this Batman so enjoyable is how the director Christopher Nolan arranges familiar genre elements in new, unforeseen ways.
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