By the time The Dark Knight, and especially The Dark Knight Rises, rolled around, the Warner Bros. marketing team had become quite adept at selling Christopher Nolan’s modern take on Batman. The striking imagery of these films, combined with music cues composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, was enough to solidify an “epic” atmosphere that audiences couldn’t get enough of. These Dark Knight installments didn’t need to intertwine with mainstream music tastes to get people’s attention. The sonic world of these titles was more than enough to captivate the public.
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Back in 2005, though, when the prospect of Nolan and Christian Bale doing a Batman movie was still a risky proposition, Warner Bros. had to go in a different direction marketing Batman Begins. This meant embracing traditional ideas, and music choices that would’ve been unthinkable for any future Nolan movie. Specifically, one Batman Begins TV spot tried to really lure the “cool kids” to multiplexes everywhere by deploying the Nickelback song “Someday.”
What Is This Batman Begins Nickelback Commercial?
In an amusing harbinger of that ill-conceived ABC Family broadcast commercial, this ad for the initial Batman Begins theatrical release emphasizes the relationship between Bruce Wayne (Bale) and Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes). The piece begins with “Someday’s” instrumental chords strumming on the soundtrack as Rachel intones how Wayne’s journey to train in faraway lands led to her losing hope. By the midway point, Chad Kroeger’s vocals pierce through the soundtrack just as Bale suits up as Batman while Rachel looks out a window mournfully as she rides a train alone.
As the commercial winds down, footage of Rachel riding in Batman Begins’ version of the Batmobile is shown, with Batman reassuring her that she’s safe now. The title comes on-screen as footage of Batman carrying Rachel away to safety plays out against text informing viewers of the film’s release date. It’s a strange commercial on several fronts, even beyond juxtaposing Nolan imagery with Nickelback music. For one thing, this ad is clearly a product of old-school studio executives thinking that the only way women could be interested in a Batman movie is by emphasizing the romance.
Bizarrely, this atmosphere was not communicated in a Batman Begins ad set to a Celine Dion or Natasha Bedingfield song. Instead, this “romantic” commercial is set to Kroeger hollering about “Someday we’re gonna be alright/But not right now.” The sensibilities of a Dove Women’s Shampoo commercial have collided with the musical inclinations of an Axe Body Spray ad, leaving Batman Begins as a casualty. What makes this commercial even more ludicrous, though, is how pairing Nickelback with a big comic book movie TV spot did make some sense in 2005 given what kind of films their music had been associated with.
[RELATED: Batman Begins Caused Controversy Upon Release (But It Changed Hollywood)]
2000s Comic Book Movies LOVED Nickelback
Eons before “Photograph” memes ran wild on the internet, Nickelback was ubiquitous in 2000s cinema. Titles ranging from Clockstoppers to Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen used their ditties, while movies like Date Night deployed Nickelback needle drops in their respective trailers. 2000s superhero movies were especially infamous for resorting to the band’s music. Within 14 months across 2003 and 2004, Daredevil and The Punisher both featured Nickelback songs in their respective runtimes.
Kroeger, meanwhile, belted out the original song “Hero” for Spider-Man, complete with a music video heavily utilizing footage from that Sam Raimi feature. Given how it was practically a prerequisite for 2000s superhero movies to dabble in Nickelback, we should probably all just be grateful Warner Bros. didn’t force Nolan to craft a Batman Begins fight sequence set to “Rockstar.” By the late 2000s, Nickelback’s omnipresence in American cinema had declined, which ensured that no marketing materials for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises would be paired with this divisive rock band’s music.
Considering Nickelback’s often tormented reputation in pop culture, it’s staggering to consider how one Batman Begins commercial briefly paired the band with one of the most revered superhero movie sagas of all-time. Still, that kind of oddball pairing was somewhat inevitable with both mid-2000s movie marketing norms and Nickelback’s dominance of that era’s superhero films. This needle drop may seem like “A Hollywood horror” to Dark Knight devotees, but the Warner Bros. marketing team made “it all right” with the music choices on the marketing for the two Batman Begins sequels.
Batman Begins is now streaming on Netflix.
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Image courtesy of Netflix
