by There’s no question Marvel has conquered the cinema business with their endless chain of superhero flicks, one as dispensable as the other. DC Comics in turn is ridiculed for their, well, ridiculous films, such as Suicide Squad, Batman v. Superman or Justice League. But there’s something Marvel lacks and DC Comics has. A trump card. DC Comics has Batman, a.k.a. The Dark Knight. And even though Ben Affleck’s Batman is not that bad there’s nothing that could save a film like Batman v. Superman and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luther. Eisenberg was great as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network but poorly cast in this role, that was poorly written, too. At the end of the day there’s still an unimpeachable truth: DC Comics owns Batman, and Batman owns Marvel. Well, they used to. Back in those days when superhero movies were actually really good.
Tim Burton’s take on the Dark Knight (Batman 1989) was a splendid film in its own regard. It created a world detached from the comic books and therefore a version of Gotham City that was special, interesting and even more importantly, plausible. It is difficult to make a Batman movie that pleases comic book fans by reinventing practically everything. The films that followed, some of them unfortunately best forgotten, prove this point. They’re neither hot nor cold, they’re a stylish mix of pretty much everything and so overdone they couldn’t possibly appeal to anyone. Still, some of the features of Gotham City have been reused later, most notably the English neo-Gothic Wayne Manor.
What Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer conceived was an entirely new approach to both the idea of superhero movies and Batman. For the first time the comic books are referenced and honored, not considered creative ballast. Devoted fans will easily identify the comic books that inspired the film in countless shots. This is not a bad thing at all. Here, it all comes together. The Gotham City we see is heavily based on its 1999 counterpart during the No Man’s Land story arc, when DC Comics for the first time in their history presented an actual map of Gotham City that indicated the locations of important buildings, institutions, parks, bridges and, of course, Arkham Asylum and Wayne Manor. Suddenly, Gotham City comes to life. It is not New York City at night anymore, a comparison that is void anyway after the 1990’s and 2000’s gentrification process changed the face of the city so drastically and turned it from a historical melting pot into a theme park for “better-off” people.
Arkham Asylum is key to everything that followed. In the comics, it has attained a cult status and following. Readers are regularly devouring stories revolving around this madhouse and its even more psychotic history and inmates. Grant Morrison and Dave McKean made it even more popular in 1989 with their one-shot Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Stylistically, this is a masterpiece that depicts perfectly how the asylum doesn’t cure madness but foster it, and even more how the Joker seeks to drive Batman into insanity and essentially make him realize that he’s “just one of the boys.” Discovering the asylum’s history, the Dark Knight descends into madness – to finally prevail just so. This ambiguity and association is crucial. If you look at the No Man’s Land map, you notice that Arkham Asylum is located on an island north of the city, barely accessible and isolated. Wayne Manor is situated on the other side of the bay, within city limits but just as remote. In Batman Begins, though, Arkham Asylum is transferred into the Narrows, a true melting pot but also a deprived area for the working class, underprivileged, immigrants, misfits. Hit hardest by economic decline, the Narrows epitomize where Gotham is at its worst – but also at its finest. The people fight against misery and refuse to be changed by their environment. Bruce Wayne is different. His gradual transition from privileged boy to angry young man to Batman is triggered by the world that surrounds him, essentially the world his family helped to create.
The Wayne family provided for Gotham. They built affordable means of public transportation and fostered economic rise, and still they couldn’t prevent that people were taken advantage of, and that crime organizations led by the likes of Carmine Falcone refused to give up on their business. Batman is a direct product of this. A world that can’t be saved, inhabited by people that refuse to change. Bruce Wayne decides to travel the world and learn what the other side looks like. Privation is key to this. By understanding people that have nothing, he learns to give himself to a higher cause – even though it is difficult to tell where to draw the line between selfless knight and angry kid on a personal crusade. This period of travel and training with a secret organization in Asia was derived from Dennis O’Neill’s and Dick Giordano’s original story The Man Who Falls and this was wisely chosen. Suddenly, we don’t have to try and understand where Batman’s abilities and strong will are coming from. Seeing him train with Henri Ducard, who also instills in him a very unique philosophy and world view, we understand Bruce Wayne and Batman. This is most remarkable when he’s asked to execute a man for stealing in order to finish his apprenticeship. It can only be assumed that all his predecessors have obeyed, but not Bruce Wayne. His decision to not kill is metaphorical. It is where he draws the line between those he fights, which is sometimes a blurry line, and also where he implies his personal hope to save Gotham. The League of Shadows is later revealed as a secret organization pulling strings and burning down cities for centuries, with Ducard, actually known as Ra’s al Ghul, being their master. But burning down cities and destroying their history is a bad attempt at destroying all heritage good and bad. And Bruce Wayne wants to preserve the heritage of Gotham City, that is intertwined with that of the Wayne family and himself.
Batman is not the only one pretending to be someone else. Ambiguity is a strong theme throughout the film. Ra’s al Ghul, Scarecrow, the idealistic GCPD officer James Gordon, enlisted by Batman himself to help in his fight for the city but compromised by the corrupt system and the love for the family he brought with him to Gotham City, even Rachel Dawes, Bruce’s childhood friend and love interest, they all hide behind fronts to protect themselves, as does Gotham City. It is difficult to understand its identity, since we’ve seen it as a normal city only in the beginning of the film and as a virtual purgatory from then on. Whether Bruce is right to assume it is a place and a people worth saving or Ra’s al Ghul, who wants to keep the balance in the world and destroy it like Rome or Constantinople before is anybody’s guess. The concept is further complicated when Ra’s burns down Wayne Manor and calls it an act of balance as well because Bruce burned his house down before. It is Alfred who tells Bruce the manor is only stone and timber. Another formative moment for Batman.
Ra’s al Ghul takes the microwave emitter stolen from Wayne Enterprises to the Narrows by using the now dilapidated and battered monorail built by Bruce’s parents Martha and Thomas Wayne. It is the same monorail Bruce and his parents rode to the theater where the young Batman felt scared because the performance was reminiscent of his grave encounter with bats when he fell into the dried up well that later takes him to the Batcave when he returns to face his personal demons. All monorail lines intersect at Wayne Tower, as does water and energy supply and pretty much anything else in Gotham City, making it “the unofficial center of the city” for sure. The drug Scarecrow designed, his fear gas, has been submitted to Gotham’s water supply in Arkham Asylum’s basement, and once it is vaporized by Wayne Enterprises’ new gizmo, the city will tear itself apart. In other words, past, present and future are intertwined and connected. Nothing happens without involvement of the Wayne family. This complexity is where Batman Begins stands out. It creates a cinematic microcosm that is self-contained, at the same time doesn’t stress any level of suspension of disbelief. When the fear gas explodes out of the gutters and people start screaming and being tortured by visions of fear, some of them real with all Arkham inmates on the loose, we feel drawn into the Narrows. Doubtlessly, they serve as a metaphor for Gotham City. Why else would Ra’s al Ghul take his secret weapon there, not anywhere else? Any contradicting attempt to justify this given in the film is not only unnecessary but also arbitrary and void. The Narrows carry everything Gotham City is in their heart. The rest of the city often looks as anonymous and exchangeable as the Chicago skyline that is standing in for it. This happens on purpose. There is a disparity between the identity of the Narrows and the slickness of Downtown, where liberal and progressive but disillusioned district attorneys fight corruption and the big business mentality that once built this city but now has become a scourge and almost brought it to its knees.
I won’t kill you…but I don’t have to save you.
Batman before leaving Ducard a.k.a. Ra’s al Ghul to his fate.
The fight between Ra’s and Batman on the monorail and their battle of words inside of this moving metal coffin define Batman’s character even more. Nothing can be done about his convictions. The Batman will ever be an outsider, fighting for those that can’t defend themselves, regardless of the opposition or how hopeless his endeavor is. His moral is thorough, since Ra’s believes he’s got the edge over him because Batman doesn’t kill. But Batman doesn’t have to kill, just decide not to save him. It is freedom of choice perfectly visualized when the monorail derails and shoots into Wayne Tower and destroys part of the foundation, but also kills the master, making Batman the master of his own fate. It’s simply impossible to adhere to the past when you’re building the future. But you have to honor it and Batman knows. At the end of the film we see him and Alfred visiting the ruins of Gotham Manor and Bruce utters his intention to rebuild it as were, adding some changes to the foundation to enhance the Batcave at Alfred’s request. Bruce finds the charred stethoscope his father gave him when he was a kid and showed him how to listen to his heart sounds, a very symbolic ending.
Batman Begins is a work of cinematic art so dense, complex and ambiguous it gives every audience member something to think about that is linked to personal experience. It is also a film that offers countless interpretations and is fun to watch over and over again. Both action and violence are thoughtful and serve a cause, they don’t exist in their own regard. This is exactly how a superhero movie should be done. It’s just sad to see this pristine start of a franchise going widely unreferenced or honored in subsequent superhero installments.
