It was the Hollywood comeback of the year–by way of Gotham City. The film fortunes of Batman, once the star of the most successful cinematic superhero franchise in history, looked doomed when audiences yawned their way through 1997’s ADD, bat-nippled Batman and Robin. But we should have known we could count on the death-defying Dark Knight to beat any cliffhanger–after all, he survived the camp send-up of Adam West and turned comedic actor Michael Keaton into a credible action hero.
This year’s Batman Begins once again reinvented and revitalized the Caped Crusader by rolling back the clock taking him back to his heretofore unexplored (on film) roots. It also put the panther-esque, Method actor Christian Bale in the Batsuit, filling the cast with a potent blend of A-List performers–including Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson and Gary Oldman–and hot up-and-comers–Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe and the future Mrs. Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes–and allowing a visionary director, Christopher Nolan, treat the subject matter with a completely straight face. Add in a real-world reinterpretation of Gotham and the most muscled up Batmobile to date and Batman Begins emerges the best superhero movie since Spider-Man.
And now Batman Begins is available in a glorious, extras-loaded 2-disc DVD set that brings all of action home and offers a peek behind the Batmask with a plethora of featurettes that show just how the Batman legend was rebuilt and rebooted. Okay, the comic book-panel style navigation menu (featuring a full story, “Inner Demons,” penned by the film’s screenwriter and comic book scribe David S. Goyer) on the second disk is confusing and irritating, but the gems you discover spelunking through it are worth the initial aggravation.
There’s an in-depth look at the real creation of the tank-like Tumbler, a surprising exploration of how the cityscape of Gotham sprouted from a synthesis of the Chicago skyline and computer imagery, and a wry look at how Bale, super-skinny from The Machinist when he landed the part, took Nolan too literally when he was asked to bulk up as big as he could to play Bruce Wayne. There’s even an interesting study of the direct comic book influences on the film’s storyline–which turns into a shameless but still interesting plug for comic superstars Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s new All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder book–a database of Bat-weapons, an MTV parody and still more–including a mini-comic that reprints three key Batman tales that influenced the film’s look and story.
Surprisingly, there’s no commentary track on the film itself, but then again such extras are far better and more insightful after some time has passed (and no one is beholden to play extra-nice with the studio and their collaborators lest upsetting the apple cart for their participation on the inevitable sequels). But otherwise the DVD set is just as muscled up as Bale, and just as dynamic as the Dark Knight himself.
And if all those extras aren’t enough, go even further into the Batman Begins backstory with Hollywood.com’s in-depth coverage of the blockbuster superhero movie of the summer!
