To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises on Blue-ray I started watching the trilogy from the beginning a couple of days ago. I would say Christopher Nolan, as of right now, is the best director in Hollywood. Even from watching Batman Begins I can see the genesis of his talent starting to grow.
One of the best things Nolan does with this "reboot" of the Batman franchise is to establish Batman as a flesh and blood character basically ignoring the superhero part of him for the first hour of the movie. I mean Batman doesn't even show up fully in costume until over an hour into the movie, doing that takes great faith in the storyline and a huge set of balls. What a great hour it is of establishing Bruce Wayne as a character.
Who would have thought the origin of Bruce Wayne transforming into Batman would have been this interesting? Even though it's basically not really more than an extended training sequence still Nolan uses this as a means to explore the origin of Wayne's character: what drives him, what he fears, how he learned how to fight. Through all of this we come to know the person of Wayne like we've never known him before. Being a true comic nerd who has read many Batman stories this was a thing of beauty to behold as I got to know Bruce Wayne minus the Batman cowl for the first time in my life.
I also like how Nolan establishes Bruce's dad as not just an image in Bruce's life but infuses Bruce's dad with enough character and life that the audience has a really good sense of him as a person. This is established not just in scenes with young Bruce and his dad but also with other characters and how they talk about him. By doing all of this Nolan gives the audience a solid foundation for who Bruce's father is. So we feel the effects of his death and fully understand why Bruce leaves his wealth and Gotham behind to try and figure out what kind of person he is without his father to guide him. We also get to see how his father death's affects Gotham. When he's alive visually Gotham city is bright and clean. The dialogue supports this as his dad is striving and trying to make Gotham a better city with his wealth and when he dies visually Gotham goes dark, dirty and the criminals come out to play. Then Nolan goes Godfather on the audience, by this I mean that when Brando's Corleone dies his presence is still felt throughout the movie(s) the same effect happens here with Bruce's dad. Even though he physically dies, his presence is still felt in every frame as Bruce struggles to come to terms with who he is and who he has become because of his father's death. I also have to give credit to the actor who played his dad, Linus Roache, who does a magnificent job of acting with the small amount of screen time given to him.
This choice of casting Roache as Mr. Wayne brings up another aspect of Nolan's film making: casting. He is the best casting director I've ever seen and always seems to choose the right person for the right part no matter how small the part. He has done this time and time again in every movie I've seen from him and even down to such parts as a person just standing there. I see these actors there and I think to myself I wouldn't have gotten anyone else to play that part. I also like how Nolan has faith in character actors versus the big bright money sucking stars. I've always thought character actors were much better at acting than the major Hollywood stars. They bring a real workman type approach to a part versus the bright lights, starry eyes of huge movies stars. Batman Begins proves this statement absolutely true. Gary Oldman totally immerses himself into the role of Gordon. I mean he even looks like Gordon from the comic book. Morgan Freeman is amazing as Lucius Fox more or less the Q for Bruce Wayne. Michael Caine is truly amazing as Alfred. I think the one thing Nolan has done by using these character actors is that every scene has an authenticity to the acting that wouldn't have been there if "these" actors hadn't been the ones acting. It's truly a pleasure to watch them on screen acting.
Another thing Nolan is great at is pacing. There is never a wasted scene in the movie, even if the scene is of a skyline of a city, I never feel that scene is wasted. Because he's using those skyline scenes to establish the city as big and real, something the previous Batman movies didn't do as the city felt more like a set or a caricature of a city. Nolan's Gotham feels real and becomes a character in the movie. I remember looking at the time as this movie was playing. There was over an hour left and I was like wow that's a lot time but then when I looked up later there was like 15 minutes left in the movie and I was like wow the time just flew by.
The last thing I want to talk about is how Nolan turned multimillionaire Bruce Wayne into a blue collar, journeyman superhero and make me believe him to be this blue collar grinding hero despite the fact he has enough money to just buy a hotel after walking into it. Nolan uses some visual scenes to show this: Bruce Wayne grinding out his Batman darts on the grinder; Bruce Wayne spray painting his Batman uniform black; Bruce Wayne first starting out using a black ski mask as a cowl; visually seeing the large, purple bruises/cuts on his body shows the pain and torment is body is going through. Even his Batmobile is not a finesse sports car but is one large grinding vehicle called the Tumbler - even the name has its roots in blue collar mentality.
Truly not just one of the best superhero movies made but one of the best movies made.
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