The finest superhero origin story since Superman

Rating: 8/10 (29 July 2012)

Back in 1997, when the Batman franchise was given a thorough anal-raping and given cinema AIDS by director Joel Schumacher with the preposterous Batman & Robin, fans and audiences alike were left wondering if there was any hope left for one of the darkest and most complex 'superhero' characters in the comic-book world. Come 2005, up to this point, British director Christopher Nolan was still a relative maverick, having made indie breakthrough Following (1998), the mind-bending critical hit Memento (2000), and the solid re-make Insomnia (2002). Few realised that they were about to witness a re-defining of not only comic book adaptations, but blockbusters themselves.
We first meet Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a Bhutanese prison, where he is approached by the mysterious Ducard (Liam Neeson) who offers him a chance to learn to fight with the League of Shadows, a generations-old group that punishes criminality with an iron fist. As he trains, we learn about Wayne's childhood, where after falling into a well and developing a phobia of bats, witnesses his parents' murder. Returning to a Gotham believing him dead and in a state of utter tutmoil, he turns to faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and Wayne Enterprises' weapons developer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to turn him into a vigilante crime-fighter and a symbol of a stance against crime. He finds his childhood friend Rachel (Katie Holmes), the assistant district attorney, caught up in a scheme ran by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) to get mob boss Falcone's (Tom Wilkinson) thugs off with insanity pleas.
Tim Burton's once-definitive Batman (1989) made the mistake of having the film's villain The Joker engulf the majority of the film, keeping Michael Keaton's Batman almost in the background. Nolan knows that this is Batman's story, and wisely keeps the focus on Bale's anger-fuelled, guilt-ridden, and honourable leading character. In the hands of Nolan, Batman's origins are given the complexity it deserves, shifting back and forward in time to reveal more pieces to his jigsaw. This is no wise- cracking, tights-wearing Batman; when we meet him, he is giving a bunch of prison thugs a thorough beating, snapped legs and all. With the hugely talented Bale in the role, his character is given the weight it deserves - this is Nolan's world, and it is violent, real, and usually p*****g down with rain.
As the norm since this film's release, Nolan has managed to gather a hugely-talented ensemble cast (and mainly British). While there is no obligatory main villain that may be a problem in anybody's else's hands, Nolan has instead given us a criminal ring for Batman to fight, from Wilkinson's ruthless crime boss, to Murphy's genuinely unsettling Scarecrow, who likes to fire his hallucinogenic poison in his victims' faces before donning his 'mask' (leading some some fine trippy moments). There is also Ra's Al-Ghul (Ken Watanabe), who plans to destroy Gotham along with Neeson's Ducard by infecting Gotham's water supply. With Gary Oldman's cop Jim Gordon, and Holmes' Rachel Dawes also in the mix, it may seem dangerously over-supplied with characters, but Nolan knows fully well how to handle such a large cast, tying their stories together with fine precision.
Having seen The Dark Knight (2008) and eagerly anticipating The Dark Knight Rises (2012), this admittedly pales in comparison, being that The Dark Knight was a phenomenal leap forward in big-budget film-making and an iconic film that will no doubt be remembered as one of the best of its decade. Also, the action scenes here are quickly-edited and shaky to the point where it is hard to tell what is happening, but Nolan would step up in confidence with the film's sequel and the proceeding Inception (2010). But as superhero origin stories go, this is probably second only to Superman (1978), and a welcome kick up the arse for one of the most enticing comic-book heroes in existence.
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