Why Batman Begins is the Best Superhero Movie Ever

Welcome back to Why It’s the Best, ComicBook.com’s ongoing column explaining why a given TV show, Movie, Comic, and more, is the best of its kind. In today’s column, I am arguing definitively why Batman Begins is the best superhero movie ever. In future columns, I will argue definitively why another is (in the past, I made arguments for various TV shows and films – find our full archive here). Think of this as debate class, and today, I’m pro-Batman Begins.

But that’s an easy task, since Batman Begins is the best superhero movie ever.

What You’re Watching

On June 15, 2005, Warner Bros reintroduced moviegoers to Batman, one of their two most popular and premiere characters. It had been eight years since the Caped Crusader was last seen on the big screen, after Batman and Robin set records for lowest box office haul and lowest critical success (an abysmal 11% on RottenTomatoes.com) in the character’s film history. With the then-small-time director Christopher Nolan and his team of writers at the reins, the movie (as the title suggests) extended Batman’s (Christian Bale) origin story beyond the simple “parents gunned down in an alley” legend that everyone already knew. It also marked the start of a trilogy that would see nominations and even victories at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs, and others throughout its three-film run.

What Makes Batman Begins Unique

Never before had a character and film distanced itself so drastically from a previous iteration. After the campy (at best) Batman and Robin, a reboot of the film franchise was necessary, but few knew just what to expect. Borrowing heavily from celebrated comic book stories like “Batman: Year One,” the film sought to bring a darker, and more grounded approach to Batman’s film repertoire. Batman Begins didn’t just show Batman’s origin either, but rather focused heavily on Bruce Wayne. In a world full of comic book movies like Blade and the X-Men, who don’t have secret identities, and even the first couple of Spider-Man films, which didn’t develop Peter Parker as much as his alter ego, Batman Begins set the new standard for how the superhero comic book movie should, well, begin.

Why It’s the Best

Despite the eight-year gap between Begins and Batman and Robin, The Dark Knight’s iconic pointy ears and cap didn’t appear on screen for almost an hour. It was daring, and the perfect way to tell the audience, “This is a new character, in a new world, and anything you’ve seen before doesn’t matter anymore.

But just wiping the past from peoples’ minds wasn’t enough. The thing that Batman Begins did better than anything that came before it (or since), was the way it made you care: Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Lucius Fox, and even Ra’s al Ghul where fully realized, complex individuals. Even the character of Rachel Dawes, who famously had two actresses in the series, had pivotal moments that shaped just who Bruce Wayne was, and more importantly, who he needed to become. Jim Gordon, meanwhile, represents not just someone for Bruce/Batman to work with, but a symbol of hope for what Gotham can become (a symbol passed on to Harvey Dent, and finally to John Blake in the second and third film, respectively).

The tendency, when talking about these films, is to group them all together, or to give The Dark Knight, the second movie and host to the Academy Award-winning performance by Heath Ledger as The Joker, the nod as the best. However, it’s Batman Begins’ blending of genres, and its willingness to be different, that not only set the stage for what was to come, but proved that you can only be the best once.

Batman Begins built, for viewers familiar with the mythos and those new to the character alike, a legend, but also a relatable character who struggled. Neither Bruce Wayne nor Batman were symbols of perfection. Batman struggled in the film to find his footing, to figure out how to work both within and without the law. Bruce likewise struggled – with fear, with the difference between vengeance and justice, with how to pretend to be an uncaring playboy when it clashed with his true mission.

It wasn’t (just) the darkness, or the way the movie took itself seriously (or “too seriously” as Scarecrow said) that made the movie great. It was also that it was just close enough to a version of our own world to let us understand what was happening. Sure, the average viewer wasn’t going to toss on a costume and fight twenty ninja after seeing the movie, but they could see the love in Thomas Wayne’s eyes while he said, “Bruce, why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.” Heck, even Captain America took that quote in a way and made it a theme for its own hero and film!

And that’s the film’s real success. It’s not just that it revived Batman, or influenced other superhero films to follow it cues, but in used superheroes as a tool to explore real themes, like the nature of fear and the difference between vengeance and justice. It told the world that superheroes weren’t just about two costumed jerks exchanging blows and quips – they were about an ideal, and a truth – something that really hadn’t been explored in the preceding decade or so of superhero films.

The Final Word

Batman Begins was revolutionary in many ways. While it embraced its comic book roots with scenes directly out of the pages of DC’s mythology, it also maintained a level of realism just enough to make you think maybe this Batman could exist in our world. It’s something Nolan figured out in a similar vein to Superman: The Movie‘s “You Will Believe a Man Can Fly,” and while the Marvel Cinematic Universe that came after gave their world and their explorations a lighter tone, there’s no question they at least partially followed the trail that this film blazed. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale’s Batman is easily the lens that future Batman films will be examined through for generations to come. And that is why Batman Begins is the best comic book movie ever.

Do you think Batman Begins is the best comic book movie ever? Think another film is more deserving of the title? Let us know in the comments!