Warner Bros. actually thought that Nickelback was the best band to advertise Chris Nolan‘s Batman Begins, if you can believe that. Indeed, back in 2005 when Batman Begins was released in theaters, Nickelback was also at the height of their popularity, having released the best-selling album, All The Right Reasons that same year. Naturally, with the band so immensely popular at the time, Warner Bros. picked one of their most popular songs (“Someday”) to use as promotion for their new Batman movie. Given everything we now know about Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, this old Batman Begins TV spot seems like serious bait-and-switch advertising.
Videos by ComicBook.com
A friendly reminder that THIS is a TV spot that was edited and shown pic.twitter.com/AmzeedSEor
— Haydn: That Dork who stans Elizabeth Dookie (@Haydn_E99) July 11, 2020
Yes, this Batman Begins TV commercial look ridiculous now, in retrospect, but in the mid-2000s it probably made a whole lot of sense. Until fans saw Batman Begins, no one imagined the kind of new vision of Batman that Christohper Nolan was crafting. In fact, interest in a new Batman movie from a (then) little-known director (Nolan); an English actor who had mostly done indie or prestige films (Christian Bale); not to mention the stink of Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin) still smothering the franchise.
With all that going against it, Batman Begins needed all the help it could get to draw a crowd for opening weekend. So, Warner Bros. decided go with a different approach. Katie Holmes was a known face thanks to Dawson’s Creek and films like Go, and Wonder Boys; as you can see, this Batman Begins commercial looks like it would be perfect to air on The CW, and help spark interest with that Dawson’s Creek crowd.
In the end, Christopher Nolan had to jump through these studio hoops to get The Dark Knight Trilogy off the ground; however, after that film was successful, Nolan didn’t have to worry about any kind of pop-rock or hip-hop themed commercials for The Dark Knight. The Batman Begins sequel got to be as weird and creepy in its advertising of Heath Ledger’s Joker as Nolan wanted to be – and we were all better for it.
The Batman will continue the franchise on October 1, 2021. Hopefully Warner Bros. and Matt Reeves have a marketing campaign in place that they’ll still be proud of a decade and a half later.
