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This year is the 20th anniversary of Batman Begins, the first film of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. Batman Begins intentionally had a much darker and more serious tone than did Batman and Robin, which many critics ridiculed for its campy and humorous tone, a choice that most audiences greatly appreciated.

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Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Hello everyone and welcome to Movie Goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the KB Radio Network. I am your host Kevin Reed and this is a very exciting episode, at least for me. This is an episode that has been four years in the making. Four years because this show has existed for four years and of course I love to talk about I love to talk about films that I'm excited about, that I love, that I just adore, that I put on the upper echelons. Every now and then, we'll discuss films that weren't so high on my list, but it kind of fits the topic that we're talking about. But I've been waiting. I've shown great, great restraint from talking about these particular films. And we're only talking about one, but... Batman in particular because if anybody has been around me for at least five minutes at any point of their life you know that I am the greatest Batman fan on earth I love that character that is my favorite superhero of all times I love Bruce Wayne I love Batman I love the lore I love his road gallery I love the vast majority of those Batman films live action or animated it doesn't matter i love batman now do i consider batman the greatest superhero of time of all time no he's not the greatest but he's just one i connect with and the funny part about it is as i get older i connect more with joker than i do with bruce Wayne Batman, but that's besides the point. That's my, uh... That's my mental health coming into play there. But overall, I absolutely love Batman. What makes Batman my favorite character is the mere fact that he stands toe-to-toe or alongside some of the greatest superheroes of all time. He stands side-by-side with gods, man. Superman being one. The Superman is the most powerful being in the universe. And he stands toe to toe with Superman and doesn't care. You know, he stands toe to toe with Wonder Woman, who is literally a god and don't care. The Flash and the rest of the Justice League, Martian Manhunter and so on and so forth. And he's just a normal guy. He's, well, I say normal. He's more of the peak of human ability. You know, he doesn't have super strength, but he's the strongest human being. on earth because he pushed himself to be that strong he knows multiple forms of martial arts because he trained himself he is super intelligent you know the dude is a just a phenomenal human being but as far as being a metahuman or a uh superpowered individual or he fell into a vat of toxic waste and he developed these powers or was uh struck by a comet No, none of that. He's just a guy with billions of dollars and the time to play, you know, the time to play with y'all. And so that's why I absolutely love Batman. You know, his attitude, you know, his confidence is top notch. And we had gotten to a point in cinema history when it comes to comic book films and come. comic book adaptations of this character where the character has had became laughable you know we started off on a good foot in 1989 with batman that starred michael keaton that was directed by tim burton phenomenal film is it flaws in that movie yes you know does it hold up well in 2025 and there are portions of that film that is kind of dated you know but it's still an enjoyable film and it's still uh played homage to that character perfectly i felt and michael keaton still stands as one of if not the best bruce wayne batman portrayal in live action to this date and it continued on in batman returns and i thought that was you know pretty good around the time that it came out but Once again, as I got older, I realized that that movie is actually the better of the two Tim Burton Batman films with Michael Keaton. I thought that film was really good, really, really good. And it holds up a little better than Batman holds up. You know, I actually enjoy Batman Returns a lot more. And I enjoyed it back then when it came out. I ran to the theater opening night, you know, me and my cousin. We went to go see it that night, that Friday night when it premiered. Then we started drifting into this weird territory. Now, mind you, in the late 90s, mid to late 90s, comic book films weren't what we know today. MCUs and the DC films and stuff like that. There wasn't a lot of love and attention given to these comic book films. So when we did get... And they weren't back-to-back. We didn't get three comic book movies in a year. You know, we weren't blessed like that. And have two Disney Plus shows and, you know, shows coming out on Max from the DC Universe and stuff like that. We are just to the point now where people are questioning, are we oversaturating with comic book adaptations? But back in the 90s... You know, he was few and far between. And so we took what we can get. So after we got Batman Returns, Tim Burton left, Michael Keaton left, and Joel Schumacher came in and got arrested. So he's a very good director, a very good filmmaker. If you don't believe me, just go back through his filmography. Don't let his legacy be those two. batman films that he directed because the man did more than that he he directed uh the lost boys you know he directed if i'm not mistaken car washed and i could be off on that but i think he did but he's directed some really good uh uh flat liners and uh uh saint elmo's fire i believe he he directed some really good films in his time even after the batman films he did uh falling down with Michael Douglas, which is phenomenal. um especially now and i know this is the uh uh saying for today but as i've gotten older and i watch falling down and i can relate to that character so much so much but the dude is phenomenal so he he takes over this batman franchise at warner brothers and he does batman forever batman forever is a clear departure from the first two Batman films with Michael Keaton. This time they cast the late great Val Kilmer in the role of Bruce Wayne and he did, I would argue, he did a good job. I know a lot of people hated Val Kilmer's portrayal of Bruce Wayne in Batman and I understand that and I'm not saying this. You can go back, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this on shows in the past, this before he passed away. And so I'm not doing the recency bias thing when somebody dies and you speak fondly of them. I was speaking fondly of him before he passed away. So this isn't that. I actually enjoyed Val Kilmer's performance. The problem I had with Val Kilmer's performance, there was no difference between Bruce Wayne and Batman. He was the same. His voice. You know, his looks, the way he walked, he was Batman when he was in Bruce Wayne's suit. He was the same person. You know, there's no difference. Michael Keaton, there was a difference. Kristen Bell, there was a difference. There was a difference with these characters. Because they're two different people. Batman is crazy. In case you don't know, the dude is insane. You have to be insane to dress up as a bat. and run around Gotham City fighting these insane individuals that he has to fight. But that's the problem I had with it. But besides that, the movie got really colorful, you know, with the neon colors. And I don't know what the direction there, but they were connected to the other films. At least they were trying to connect them. And we got introduced to Robin, who looked like he was about 30 in this film. and it was what it was um it wasn't the greatest thing but it's a far cry far cry from what we got next with batman and robin arguably the worst comic book movie ever made and yes i'm i'm thinking of the fantastic four with miles teller and michael b jordan yes i am i have that in consideration but it's a it's a tight race between those two films as the worst comic book movie of all time it depends on what day you catch me on i may say fantastic four if you catch me tomorrow i may say batman and robin it depends It depends on what mood I'm in. But you can rest assured that those are the bottom two. And since we're talking Batman, yes, Batman and Robin is so bad. I have yet, since I watched that movie in 1997, I have yet to sit down and watch that movie again from start to finish in one city since that movie's release. It's that bad. And I am the biggest... batman fan of all time i cannot watch that movie uh george cooney was criminally mixed miscast uh and they had the audacity to bring him back in the flash and they did it at the end of the movie like that was gonna be a shock cameo that everybody was gonna be talking about the movie was bad as it is but then you bring that on just to put the ice in on top of the cake. They didn't. whatever but that was the worst of all of the batmen um god bless him arnold swartzenegger as dr freeze arnold swartzenegger was the only one who knew what movie he was in he knew it was a silly stupid movie and he gave a silly stupid performance not hating on arnold swartzenegger i'm really ain't and even though it was a bad bad performance it wasn't him it was the movie he fit the movie the movie was just bad it was just all around bad but anywho it was so bad that it just killed all production of batman film pretty much killed all productions of comic book movies up to that point we didn't get anything we didn't get nothing for about three years because it was that bad of a movie and it was even longer for a Batman film That is until 20 years ago this year, to put it more accurately, the time of this recording today. Today marks the 20th anniversary of Batman Begins, the release on June the 15th, 2005. A day that will live in infamy. Reason being, I believe that this film, Batman Begins, speak uh pretty much started or or laid the template for a lot of foundational comic book films to come on after you know i don't think we get the mcu without batman begins we don't get the uh man of steel without batman begins you know and so on and so forth because You think back in 2008 when Iron Man came out, Iron Man was kind of grounded and serious to a degree. You know, it still had his Marvel flair, but it was taken seriously. And Batman Begins is the first comic book movie to come out that really took itself seriously. Now, you can make an argument for Blade. Blade did take itself seriously. You know, that first Blade was... very very serious very serious but the reason i say batman because of the mainstream appeal everybody knew who batman is and was but nobody knew blade was a comic book movie you know until after the fact i think i don't think a lot of people were hip to the knowledge that blade was a marvel character but you know if you're not in the know but it was it is definitely a marvel character. character that they still are trying to get off the ground over at marvel studios but um this film took itself seriously and batman you know this is a far cry from what we got in the 1960s with adam west you know this isn't a campy version of batman is it even the tim burton batmans with michael Keaton, as dark and moody as they were, they were more... They still were more comic book-y. They still had a little camp to it. um not as much as the adam west batman of course but it was still campy to a degree but it was enjoyed and it definitely is a far cry from what joel schumacher gave us in batman forever and god forbid batman and robin where it was just it was just two-hour cartoons you know a live action adaptation of cartoons and commercial toy commercials that's what they were essentially and this was a actual film this wasn't a movie this was a film this was a batman that we can see in the real world they use real world locations they use real world scenarios and whatnot yes is it based on a fictional character in a fictional world yes it was is it a film that's asking you to spin disbelief about a man dressing up as a bat. and running around the city fighting crime yeah but i mean it's still but for the most part grounded in reality and it went on to spawn two sequels a part of this dark knight trilogy that christopher nolan gave us and all three of those films are deeply rooted in reality there's no fantastical elements to it we didn't see superman pop up we didn't see green lantern pop up we didn't see Wonder Woman scoop in and It was really a Batman story and a story that I can believe actually can take place. You know what I'm saying? But with all that being said, before Christopher Nolan took the reins, we had a pitch from Darren Aronofsky, you know, who did Requiem for a Dream and later on did Mother and Noah and Black Swan. and uh what's the other one the whale uh with uh brandon frazier uh that won him an academy award he's done a lot of movies i don't know how to describe his films they're they're into they're entertaining to a degree they're very interesting thought thought provoking films and he was going to do a bad they actually went ahead with it i think they greenlit it and was starting pre-production on it if I'm not mistaken. On his version, it was going to be Batman year one, and it was more, it was going to be an adaptation. This wasn't a clear, just beat for beat adaptation of the comic series, but it was going to be just elements of it. I think Batman was a homeless guy. He wasn't a billionaire. Lucius Fox was a mechanic that built the Batmobile form out of a... taxi cab or something i forgot but it was stooped in super realism now don't get me wrong of course i want an element well i wouldn't mind an element of realism in these films this film well batman begins is realistic to a degree like i described before but they found a happy meeting christopher nolan found a happy medium between the comic book world and real realism and gave us this and gave us his complete trilogy. this and for the most part it was good um it was just too real you know it probably would have been an interesting film i'm talking about the darren aroski film that he he was working on i think it probably would have been a decent film but just not a good batman film you know if you got to change a character just completely i mean script them down to his bones it's not that character no more do you know just make a different movie It doesn't have to be a Batman film, but whatever. We didn't get that movie. This is what they settled on. And I'm all for them doing it in the world is better for it in my humble opinion. And so when Christopher Nolan came on board, he was hired to direct a Batman film, an unnamed Batman film. And he brought on David S. Goyer to write the screenplay. and david s gore goyer i mentioned blade earlier he wrote all of the blade films you know let's take away blade trinity because he even directed that but those were horrible but that one was horrible i should say but the first two blades were great especially that first one loved and he was the writer on those he he wrote a few comic book movies around that time and he you know early 2000s late 90s he David S. Gore was one of the top writers in Hollywood so him coming on board to write this film was, I think, money. You know, smart move. And so the decision was made on doing an origin story of the character. We never got a true origin story of Batman. Yeah, we touched in on him with Michael Keaton, but we never got a true story. He was already established as Batman around that time. And so, at least when the movie started. So we didn't get from... infancy stage to him uh brooding on top of a building and we just got him brooding on top of a building and in the opening scene and so to get an exploration into this character and really dive into this character and what makes him tick why what brought him to this moment was an exciting aspect to me and that's what really drew me into uh being Just the most excited I've ever been for a comic book movie around this time and now Christopher Nolan He wanted a sweeping epic. He wanted something like Lawrence of Arabia type Feel and you could tell in some of those shots in some of the scenes that he really went for it here Do you know and Christopher Nolan if you look at his filmography? That's what he do It doesn't matter if it's Batman or the prestige or even Orpenheimer, you know He wants every element. He's such a detail-oriented director. It is phenomenal. I don't know how he does what he does. And me, always wanting to be a filmmaker, always wanting to be a director, I look at Christopher Nolan films, it really just deflates all the air out of my balloon of wanting to be a director because there's no way I can make films like this. these are films that i love and that i inspire to make or have inspired to be make you know if i ever got the opportunity and i see the movies he make and i'm like there's no way you know because my biggest dream is to make a batman film and i could never never make a batman film like this you know even with matt reeves and with the batman as s simple of a concept that is that is a hard film to me and those two directors pulled it off but you really have to understand the character and love the character as much as i love michael keaton's batman and uh tim burton directing those films you can tell tim burton knew nothing about batman and for the most part neither did michael keaton because he he said this in interviews which still to this day is mind-boggling to me he had never up to that point never read Any comic book let alone a Batman comic when he was cast But when he got in front of that camera, he got it. He knew the character He knew that Batman is he is the personality Bruce Wayne is the mass and he knew that and Executed it perfectly same thing here when they got to the casting but we get to the casting in second, but Nolan wanted a r-rate he wanted to go really really you know real gritty you know he he didn't want to hold anything back this is where him and warner brothers differed if warner brothers left him alone for the most part in the production of batman begins except for this one little note you know it can't be r-rated because batman is their money maker at warner brothers it has always been since 1989. It's always been. their movie you know this is the one movie they cannot fumble and you want to appeal to adults as well as children you know and that's where they messed up with batman forever and batman and robin they wanted to make make it kid friendly but they made it too kid friendly and you know trying to sell toys and whatnot it was more of a merchandising thing it wasn't a quality of film thing but they wanted a, you know... you can go hard pg-13 but you can't go off you can't go soft off you know so nolan you know he didn't have a problem with this um but he wanted to make the film that he wanted to see when he was 11 years old so he he settled on the pg-13 one of the big inspirations for this film as far as writing the screenplay and what they were basing it on, what source material. It wasn't just over the span of 80 years of comics that they went through. They went to one particular. comic and that was batman the long hollow ring halloween which is arguably one of the best comics you can read if i'll when someone asks me you know i've never read comics you know i want to get into comics i want to read a batman comic in particular which one should i read you know because there's like i said 70 80 years of uh batman comics to read which one should i read Well, I'll tell you. pick up the long halloween the long halloween will if that doesn't hook you it is just not meant for you you know this is the definitive uh batman comic in my humble opinion this is the one that really dives into batman's psyche and whatnot you know and pushes him to limits that no other comic i can remember doing you know and When I found out that this was going to be the inspiration for this film, once again, I'm hooked. I'm hooked in. A very good choice to dive into this world, reboot this franchise with that particular comic book. And Goyer, when he was writing the screenplay, he had the villain Carmine Falcone as one of the main elements. you know, which was also in The Long Halloween. So it all made sense, and he wanted to take a serious approach to the material. And so the writers considered having Harvey Dent in the film because, once again, that's a big part of that comic book. But they held off on that, and that's when they created this new character, Rachel Dawes, which acted somewhat of a substitute to the Harvey Dent character. David S. Goyer, he also, he used a couple of other comic books as well as, you know, templates and has story elements that he wanted to incorporate into this film, Batman Dark Victory, which is a sequel, if you will, to The Long Halloween. I vaguely remember it. It doesn't stick with me like The Long Halloween, but I do, I do. kind of remember it and and we also uh use well i say we like i wrote it but they also use batman year one of course being as though this was going to be an origin story which is also a good comic to uh dive into if you never went read the comics and that was written by frank miller and frank miller i mean the dark knight returns that what more you need to say that comic book seat uh series or graphic novel, I should say, redefined comic books in the late 80s, you know, and it just changed the way you looked at that character, because up to that point, it was the campy Adam West, you know, didn't really take the character seriously until we got to that, so he did Batman year one and man it was you know and i think it was after dark knight returns that he did year one but you know once again it just stapled the the uh seriousness of that character but anyways the other big serious thing while writing this film that was probably going to be on the top of everybody's mind and you know whenever you hear about a batman movie coming out the first thing that comes to your mind up well just It'll be the second because the first thing is who's playing Batman. And the second thing is, well, who's going to be the villain? Everybody's automatic go-to is Joker. You know, you go to Joker because that's his arch nemesis. That's his greatest foe, his deadliest foe, you know, going head to head with Joker. Well, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, they showed restraint. They did something that I... thought was bold and pretty smart at the same time and that is they settled on scale crow and raza goop as the villains of this film and both of those characters characters have not appeared in any other live action batman you know including the tim burton films the joel schumacher films they didn't. appear in the Adam West 1960s television show. These are characters that came after the fact. So they never appeared in live action. They were on the animated series. but never in live action so getting these two characters in live action was um an exciting new touch a different route to go because both of these characters aren't physical threats to batman more psychological and so right off the bat you knew dad no pun intended right off the bat you knew that this was going to be a different Batman. film this wasn't going to be all punchy punchy smash smash this was going to be uh more psychological and once again if you know the batman character that's what he is yes he can fight he's the greatest fighter there is he knows every style of fight you can fight so i would love to see him in action of course and we get a little of that in the film but it was more is more that we're dealing with. with these two characters in particular so that also brought a level of excitement a common idea in the comments is that bruce saw uh zoro the film zoro with his parents before they were murdered murdered and uh nolan explained in an interview that by ignoring that idea which he stated is not found in in batman's first appearance in comics you know it emphasizes the importance of bats to bruce and that becoming a superhero is a wholly original idea on his part and so that taking that element out of it like he was inspired by zoro um and being inspired by his own fears his own uh trauma to become this superhero makes him even greater of a superhero which is genius i believe by christopher nolan uh taking that approach and it is for this reason nolan believes that no other dc characters exist in this universe that this film is set in otherwise uh bruce wayne's reasons for taking up this costume vigilante uh would have been very different they would it wouldn't have been as personal of a journey that he went on in these three films and so that once again great decision you know to set this in its own little standalone universe you know we didn't have to worry about metropolis we didn't have to worry about uh star city and barry allen coming in to investigate something lex luther uh coming to work a merger with bruce wayne and wayne enterprises and all that it is none of that you know it was None of that. This was a... separate thing you know now what made it so genius it could you know you could have incorporated more superheroes into this universe easily easily you know they kept it vague it kept it open to whereas you could do it but it didn't need it it didn't need it you see how the mcu and this is no disrespect to the mcu but i'm saying You see how the MCU has become over-reliant on other superheroes, other characters in that universe, in order for something to be successful? If you don't believe me, why do everybody stay at the end of the credits? Why everybody waits to the end of the credits? You know, because you want to see that post-credits scene. You want to see where this leads to next. Who's showing up next time? What? How is this going to link up to the overall universe? And I do it. We all enjoy it. That's why it's a very successful franchise. I'm not mad at it, but I'm just comparing the two. The MCU relies on the entire universe, whereas this Dark Knight trilogy didn't. It only relied on one thing and one thing only, and that is Batman. So let's get into the casting of that character and all the other characters as well, but mainly on Bruce Wayne himself. And you had to nail this, of course. And I think Christopher Nolan kind of took the same approach that Richard Donner took in 1978 when he was casting for Superman and getting a virtual unknown in Christopher Reeves. You know, Christopher Reeves was working around that time. I think he was on a soap opera. i think you asked my mom she'll tell you but he was working on uh small screen stuff so casting a virtual unknown when they had major stars that warner brothers wanted before the role of superman you know i think clint eastwood and robert rafford and uh others that meant paul newman i think it was a whole bunch of big name stars around that time that warner brothers wanted But Richard Donner wanted this unknown, this something. You know, he wanted the character to be the star, not the star to be the star. And it was smart. And I think Christopher Nolan went that route here. Now, Christian Bale was no unknown by no stretch of the imagination in 2005. Christian Bale had, I want to think, what, it was like the 90s? Well, of course, it would have been the 90s, but I want to say late 80s. um the first time i saw christian bell and that was in that steven spielberg film oh man why is the why is the movie escaping my mind right now shucks but it was a war film but he was young and he was in that stupid disney musical uh newies newsies or something like that and of course everybody knew him from american psycho um the dude the dude was great you know but he was mostly known for playing villains you know i.e american psycho with shaft with uh uh samuel jackson and in other films but as batman it would have been weird but before they settled on christian bell they brought in a number of actors i mean buku actors and some of these names when you go through the list you're like oh man oh man oh man even though i love christian bell in the role i think christian bell did a good job is he my favorite batman no but i did like him as bruce wayne batman i thought he was he was great for these films you know what i'm saying but before mr bell we had a few uh contenders before the rule. One in particular is one Mr. Henry Cavill. He was in contention. And, of course, we all know he later became Superman for Zack Snyder in Man of Steel, which coincidentally was produced by Christopher Nolan. But at first, he went after the Bruce Wayne role for this film. Also in consideration, you had Billy Cutter. You had Hugh Dorley, Jake Gyllenhaal, who I thought would have been incredible. Incredible as Bruce Wayne. I've been champion for him to be in a superhero film forever. I know that he was in Spider-Man Far From Home. He was Mysterio, but I wanted to see him as Batman, man. Because I think Jake Gyllenhaal is a perfect... Bruce Wayne Batman but nonetheless he he didn't get it uh Joshua Jackson lobby for the role uh David Bari uh Bari Aris from Angel fame uh and Bones he was in consideration at one point um Heath Ledger was in consideration Heath Ledger who just had to wait a couple years and he did end up a Christopher Nolan directed Batman film the Dark Knight when he portrayed the Joker in that film and won an Academy Award nonetheless Unfortunately, he passed away after but yeah, he was in consideration another name That was very very close to getting the role was Killian Murphy Killian Murphy who worked with Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer and also got an academy award uh in 28 days later and so on and so forth uh peaky blinders yes he was in super super uh consideration super super close but didn't get the role but he was so good in the role uh at least in his audition that he did get a role in the film to play jonathan Kane, aka Scarecrow. So he did get a role. But... It wasn't the role that he initially went after Josh Hartnett. He was famously known. Uh, I think um, Christopher Nolan Straight up offered him the role. He didn't have to Audition and then he straight up offered it to him a but Josh Hartnett turned it down He didn't want to pursue it. He didn't want to be typecast. He was also in consideration at one point for Superman. I think it was for Superman Returns with Bryan Singer directing, but he didn't want that either. He didn't want a superhero role. He's later said, you know, recently when he's on his little kind of renaissance of his career, he regrets those decisions. He did not take him. those big roles but i think he did i he fared out all right but i would have liked to have seen him in those you know namely superman i think he would have been a good superman uh batman eh maybe you know i'll have to see him in the cape and cowl to to make that uh determination but it's all good i think they settled on somebody that really fit the role that really jumped into it head first and did a phenomenal job. and that is Christian Bale and Christian Bale when they announced it they announced this right when the machinics came out and in that film you know Christian Bale he always he dives his first into roles you know he doesn't he doesn't cheapen the role at all you know if he got he has to play an anorexic person he's going to be anorexic If he got to be a big-boned person, a plump individual, he's going to be plump. He's not going to get the makeup and all that. He's going to do it. And for the machinists, he had to lose like 100 pounds or something. He had lost a lot of weight, and he was skin and bones. And so when they announced that, and you look at Adam, and you're like, he's going to be Batman? Batman who? He was just small, but he put on a hundred pounds. He hired a personal trainer. He put on a hundred pounds of muscle, and he looked phenomenal physically, at least in that first film. He looked good physically in the other films, but in Batman Begins, he was in phenomenal shape, and it just blew my mind how quick, you know, he put on this muscle before the role. But he did a phenomenal job to round out the cast you had Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth you had Liam Neeson as Ra's al Ghul Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon as I said before Cillian Murphy as the Scarecrow Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. It was just a stellar cast that they put together for this film this film i would i would i would consider probably the best origin story in comic book history live action wise i thought this was phenomenal and i didn't feel this way in 2005. just to be fair and honest with you all i i liked the movie I enjoyed the movie back then, but I did not. feel like it was just this masterpiece of film until maybe after the dark knight and i grew a greater appreciation of it actually it was after dark knight rise because dark knight rises is the weaker of these three films and when i watched them all again all three back to back to back I grew a greater appreciation for Batman Begins because unlike the last two films, it wasn't reliant on the villain. It wasn't reliant on Joker and it wasn't reliant on pain. It was reliant on the story of Batman or the origin story of Batman. You know, unlike the previous or the next two films in the franchise, that posed a bigger... threat to Gotham even though in this film it does but it was more of a to stop the threat against Gotham whereas in Batman Begins it was more of a one-on-one with Batman and Ra's al Ghul or or Scarecrow even though Ra's al Ghul's and Scarecrow's grand scheme was to poison Gotham but therefore first objective was to get rid of the Batman. And so it was a clear focus on Batman, as opposed to the other two films. Now, Joker was... uh joker in the dark knight yeah he was trying to mess with batman but it was more of him messing with gotham city as a whole it wasn't real batman was just one of the uh names on his list should i say and bane bane just wanted to you know he wanted the world to feel his pain more or less Batman Batman was just a a cog in the wheel if you will this this film batman begins was a more was more of a personal journey of batman of bruce wayne and not god and that's that's why i feel this is the better of the three films yes i'm including the dark knight which was excellent excellent film but this was more excellent in my humble opinion and it's slept on it's not talked about as being one of those films you know in the upper echelons of comic book movies that has come out over the past 20 years i think it it deserves its flowers as being the most influential film or at least one of the most influential films of the the last two decades just to go over the cast as i went over a little bit and all i can add is this was perfectly cast nobody was miscast except for one person and that was katie holmes katie holmes is the one that sticks out to me and i say that because we later get a different version of this character in the second film um from maggie gyllenhaal but in this particular film and i always said just to pause there for a second it would have been awkward if Jake Gyllenhaal would have got cast. As Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, his sister would have been cast as Rachel Dawes. I think that would have been a little awkward. But anyways, that never would have happened. But it was always funny to me that Rachel Dawes was played by Maggie Gyllenhaal after her brother was almost cast as Batman. But anyways, Katie Holmes just did not work for me. and it's it's just i don't know i never really faulted the film for it well let me say let me say it differently i i do fault the film for it because they put it in the film but it's not a character it's in any comic book this was created for the movie and so it's hard to judge it you know they're like well that character isn't like that in the comics it that's not a character from the comics. so you really can't judge it but i'm not a katie holmes fan she's she's bland to me she's bland and everything and you know i just don't she just doesn't connect with me as an actress sorry i i i just i just can't get on board with it and she didn't work in this movie whereas everybody else did everybody else was on the top of everest And she was somewhere in the valley. She was CW, and I know she comes from that ilk. You know, she was on, what show was it? One Tree Hill or something like that? She was a CW actress, and it feels like she was on a CW show. She just did not work in this movie. And that's the only thing that didn't work in this movie. Now, is it criminally bad? No, it's not. But it's just, I don't know. Didn't like the... performance one of the most unique things about this movie that stands out a lot that once again nobody talks about is the score and this score was uh given to us by the great han zimmer and uh james newton howard now these are two different composers and they're working on this one film and for a while i was wondering why because these are two different styles they do two different things and it wasn't until i watched the film twice this is how slow i am as a human being it's mentally it took two viewings for me to realize why there are two different composers on this film one did the score for bruce wayne and one did the score for batman And I always noticed that there was a different tone in the score, you know, that was kind of different, but yet it was blended. It was uniquely done. I thought it was genius. I did I never disliked it But I just thought it was weird that you had these two different Composers and after the second viewing it while I was watching it it clicked It was like dummy ones doing Batman's theme and the other ones doing Bruce Wayne's thing now in later iterations in the Dark Knight and in Dark Knight Rises um i think james newton howard didn't return it was all han zimmer after that but for this it was these two composers and i thought it was once again genius you know this christopher nolan just just doing him man and you know coming up with this this idea to use two different composers for these for this one character who is actually two characters and It helped reinforce the fact that these are two different personalities. These are two different people living in the same body. And, I mean, how can you not be impressed with that level of dedication and detail to a comic book movie? You know, once again, we never, and you can make an argument, we still haven't gotten that level of detail, maybe Black Panther, but even then. You know, I don't think it really spent that much detail to it. As much as you got it in Batman Begins. To explore this comic book character that is quote unquote made for kids or whatever the case may be. But it is genius. I thought it was genius. And this movie is genius. I love the reveal that Liam Neeson is Ra's al Ghul. We got that fake out in the beginning. uh with uh ken ken uh what's it uh watanabe uh who portrayed the decoy uh razagul with the fu manchu and everything and you thought that liam neeson was going to be just a guy that's in the lead of shadows and whatnot but it come to find out he's actually razagul and i thought that was genius you know even though you know for those who are cunning you figured it out pretty quickly but uh for the layman it was a nice twist you know put it they even had the audacity put a twist in here gary oldman who does no wrong in my eyes film wise uh perfectly cast as jim gordon the the batmobile the tumbler i thought was really nice you know i it's arguably one of it's probably my best or not my best but my favorite batmobile now i loved i loved robert pattinson because it was simple it was homemade you know what i'm saying it was it's something that um that i wish i could drive that's one of the more believable ones that i think i can drive that one i can't drive the tumbler i couldn't drive michael keaton's i couldn't i definitely couldn't drive uh val kilmer's or or george clooney's Batmobiles, but this one was, it was like a tank. it was a tank is it you know the royal roar of those engines of it was just beautiful man that's why i love robert pattinson the sound of it was just phenomenal it was like a beast a monster within its own right and uh the tumbler was also amazing i like the suit here a little robotic in the movement it because of the way it restricts um a christian bale but it was a nice suit you know it's hard to nail down a batman suit the only one that actually looked good in live action honestly in my humble opinion was ben affleck's in batman v superman even though the movie had it leaves a lot to be desired but i love the suit i love that suit um this suit it was decent it was all right it got better as the films went along uh when he got different versions of the suit and the dark knight and the dark knight rises but uh this suit it just looked way too bulky and i i don't know it was just like man how does how is he even moving in that suit but um it worked for the most part and uh the other flaw the only flaw i have uh other than the katie holmes casting is the fighting the fight choreography here and you may ask yourself what fight choreography exactly you couldn't see the fight i i you couldn't the way they were editing and cutting around it and i think it's because of that suit i think because uh christian bale couldn't move like he wanted to move in that suit and it restricted a lot of movement and fluidity of that character and they just edited around it and it suffered man that movie suffered for that because that was the only element of the film where I was solely disappointed I wasn't disappointed in Katie Holmes because I knew what I was going to get with Katie Holmes but I was disappointed because I wanted to see Batman just wreck havoc you know fight wise and before that movie came out uh you remember when HBO did these first looks I don't know if they still do them or not at least I haven't noticed it, but they used to do first looks. And they did one on this and they had a whole section where they talked about the fight choreography and I'm watching the guy, the fight choreographer do set up the fighting, the blocking for the fights and all this other stuff. I'm like, man, this is going to be phenomenal because he was like, yeah, we're introducing a new fight style and this, that and the third. I'm like, oh man, this is going to fire. You know, UFC. in a comic book movie and didn't get to see none to the movie we didn't see it man what a let that was i was so hurt by that but you know i i learned to just get over it you know it kind of added to the to the uh mysticism of batman it's kind of like in jaws like for 80 of that movie you don't see the shark but you know what the shark doing you know what the show You know the shark is lurking and you know the shark is causing damage and killing people but you never see the shark and I started looking at it from that aspect of Batman. You never see Batman but you see the aftermath and you see the results of it and whatnot and that's how I looked at it and that's how I grew to accept it but I was disappointed because I wanted to actually see it. I guess the same way people wanted to see the shark in Jaws. uh and steven spielberg intended you to see it but the shark kept man malfunctioning on set but that's neither here nor there batman begins 20 years and it still holds up perfectly as one of the best batman films of all time one of the best comic book adaptations of all time and one of the best origin stories uh adapted onto screen this movie was made for 150 million dollars That was the budget for Batman Begins. And that's the norm now. But back 20 years ago, that was a big budget. They rolled the dice on this movie. And it paid off because it ended up grossing $373.7 million worldwide. Making it a hit and spawning a sequel. Well, two sequels, I might add. The Dark Knight, which came out in... 2008 and the dark knight rises which came out in 2012 uh this is a phenomenal film from a phenomenal filmmaker with a phenomenal cast to add batman begins gets a letter grade of an a minus i love this movie man i really do and i think it needs to be talked about on how influential this movie is how important this movie is When you going off to see Superman in a couple of weeks, when you go to see Fantastic Four in a couple of weeks, when you watch Avengers Endgame and Doomsday coming down the line, and all these great comic book movies that we have been peppered with over the last 20 years, you need to bow down and acknowledge Batman Begins. because without this movie, I don't think we get any of those films because this made. Hollywood this made the critics this made the audience realize that you can make an excellent comic book film that appeals to everybody not just the geeks and the nerds like me who will accept anything up to that point but this movie made you not accept mediocrity no more because after this there was no mediocre mediocre uh comic book movies that people just took and ran with that that's not to say that we didn't get mediocre films after this we got them but people were more vocal about their displeasures with those films and and not only spoke about it online but they spoke about it with their wallets too and so batman begins thank you before taking this genre seriously and giving us such an excellent comic book film 20 years and you haven't aged a day but i would love to know what are your thoughts on batman begins did you enjoy it what was your favorite out of the three was it batman begins the dark knight dark knight rises i know a lot of people are going to say the dark knight and i'm not going to fight you on it i get it. You know, it is an excellent film as well. But I just enjoy this one more. You know when I went back to rewatch. I just enjoyed this so much Especially being a big Batman fan myself, but I want to know your thoughts Email the show KB radio podcast at gmail.com You can also search for the show on all social media platforms just search for the KB radio Network also don't forget about the YouTube channel subscribe to the KB radio network channel and like this video if you don't mind don't forget about the five stars the reviews and sharing this show if you're listening on apple podcast spotify iheart radio wherever you are currently listening to movie goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we celebrate the 20th year anniversary of batman begins want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed