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today's episode of the director series is brought to you by tailorsound after the completion of insomnia nolan used his newfound access to studio resources to develop an ambitious project on the life of howard hughes. the film would purportedly have starred jim carrey as the reclusive billionaire if he hadn't scrapped it following his

discovery that martin scorsese was about to embark on shooting the aviator with leonardo dicaprio. it was around the same time that he learned warner brothers was looking to make a new batman picture.the property was one of the studio's crown jewels. but had lain dormant ever since joel schumacher effectively bludgeoned it into a coma with 1997's batman and robin.

a two-hour consumer products memo masquerading as a movie. various pitches had already been made by other such high-profile directors as darren aronofsky and spanned a wide range of ideas from schumacher's continuation of his run with a third film titled batman triumphant to a live-action adaptation of the animated television series batman beyond.

the closest any of these pictures came to reality was aronofsky's own riff on the iconic batman year one graphic novel. which explored batman's origins and early forays in a crime-fighting from the perspective of the feature gotham city police commissioner jim gordon. aronofsky stake would have dramatically reworked some of the most

iconic aspects of batman role to the point that executives ultimately got cold feet and abandoned his vision. nolan like many others of his generation had grown up adoring the caped crusader in his surrounding universe of villains. so his interest in the vacant director's chair was more or less a foregone conclusion. he was interested however

in making a quote-unquote comic book movie. indeed he made no effort to conceal his lack of knowledge with the medium. rather he was interested in building the character of batman with what he called a cinematic reality. giving the story the weight and gravitas of a real-life event. his initial pitch meeting with warner brothers apparently

lasted a mere 10 minutes but so confident in his vision of a realistic superhero film was he that the executives cast aside their doubts about his relative inexperience as a studio filmmaker and handed over their most valuable piece of intellectual property to his control. nolan's next move would pave the way

for his eventual reputation as a hollywood trendsetter. he did away entirely with the continuity of the previous tim burton and schumacher films opting to reboot the story from square one so he could tell it his way with no compromises or obligations. rebooting a failed franchise has now become the go-to trick

for frustrated development executives, especially those assigned to the spider-man franchise. so it's easy to forget just how grand breaking of an idea this was in the early 2000s. this decision combined with the fact that money was essentially no object, allowed nolan to envision a boundless gotham city against wish he could stage an epic

story exploring batman not just as a character but as an idea. ridley scott had always served as a chief influence in nolan's artistic development, and scott's seminal classic blade runner became a key reference and imagining a new kind of cinematic gotham. a living breathing city densely populated by diverse subcultures desperately in need of a hero.

whereas gotham city had generally been understood in previous iterations to be a fictional version of manhattan, nolan modeled the soaring architecture of his gotham after chicago the city in which he'd spent a great deal of his upbringing. with its deep ties to the colorful history of organized crime and

bureaucratic shadiness, chicago would prove an inspired fit for nolan's grandiose vision of a once great city mired in corruption and decay. by grounding the action in a tangible place he could inject the necessary gravitas into his story while immediately differentiating his gotham from the crumbling art deco spires of burton's

gotham or the garish day glow labyrinth of schumacher's. developing a project as high-profile as batman was so many rabid fans angling for a big scoop naturally required a high degree of secrecy. a requirement that dovetailed quite harmoniously with nolan's own showman like penchant for strategic opaqueness.

he adopted stanley kubrick's late career practice of working from home. developing the story in his garage with a small team that included returning production designer nathan crowley nolan's producing partner and wife emma thomas, and seasoned superhero genre screenwriter david s goyer. in deed nolan and company were so insistent on their veil of secrecy that warner

brothers executives had to travel to them forced to read the script on nolan's couch in an effort to prevent unwanted copies from leaking. when the necessities of the pre-production process finally required him to send out physical copies of the script he did so under a fake title. the intimidation game to avoid any

unwanted scrutiny. this unconventional process while admittedly unwieldy, ultimately proved fruitful empowering him with a dream cast and crew and a budget in the hundreds of millions to help realize the majestic vision he would come to call batman begins. christian bale essentially beat out every eligible actor in the business for the title role

by formulating his approach based on what seems now in retrospect the obvious concept of the characters dual nature. far from the elegant and the shirt playboy embody by michael keaton, val kilmer and george clooney. bale's bruce wayne is a tortured young man whose psyche was profoundly fractured by the murder of his parents when he was a small boy.

the hoarse growl he adopts as batman is the object of frequent parody now but bales choice to differentiate the speaking voices of bruce wayne and his alter ego came as something of a revelation in nolan during the casting process. immediately setting bale apart from the pack of candidates. bale brings his signature commitment to the role fully inhabiting the character and mind body

and soul to arguably create the definitive screen version of the iconic hero. as a newly orphaned son of a billionaire industrialist and philanthropist bruce grows up in his parent's mausoleum like mansion his every need and desire attended to by his caretaker and butler alfred. in his first of several collaborations with nolan esteemed of british actor michael

caine also creates a definitive version of the character giving his young charge the necessary warmth and support he needs to one day take over the reins of his late father's business empire wayne enterprises. whereas prior batman movies had audiences simply counting the minutes between the caped crusader's crime-fighting forays,

nolan makes the radical choice of delaying a first glimpse of bruce and folk bat regalia until the halfway mark. instead he traces bruce's formative years as his restless desire for justice, prompts him to drop out of college and travel the world giving himself a first-hand education in the nature of crime so that he can deliver said

justice himself. after landing himself in a chinese prison he is approached by de card. the urbane and charismatic face of a vigilante syndicate known as the league of shadows. liam neeson proves an inspired choice in the role becoming a firm yet compassionate mentor to bruce while dispensing a sage advice and virtuous platitudes that slowly

revealed their inherently malevolent nature. he presents himself as an underling to ken watanabe role as al ghul the enigmatic and sphinx-like figurehead of the league of shadows but appearances can be deceiving and bruce's refusal to complete his final test the execution of a common thief brings his ideological compatibility with decard into urgent question.

ducard lessons nevertheless proved influential when bruce returns to gotham and begins to formalize his own vigilante identity. of all ducard's teachings bruce's biggest takeaway is that he is more powerful as a symbol than as a man a key concept of nolan's vision that would fundamentally inform the remainder of the trilogy. for bruce

that symbol takes the form of a bat inspired by a formative moment of fear from his childhood. combining his flinty determination for justice with the night bottomless technological resources of wayne enterprises at his disposal, bruce sets out into the night as batman intent on eradicating the cancer of organized crime that has infected the

gotham police department with corruption. batman's will to act inspires clandestine partnerships with a cop named jim gordon and bruce's childhood friend rachel dawes. guys will swear in court to being thrashed by a giant bat we've got falcone at the scene renowned for his many villainous turns gary

oldman initially seemed an unusual choice to potray gordon the only decent cop in a police force besieged by compromising corruption, but he would deliver a brilliant performance that cuts straight to the core of the character. the character rachel dawes played by katie holmes is an original creation of nolan's with no comic book counterpart.

she's an ambitious district attorney and the love of bruce wayne's life stretching all the way back to their childhood. as such she is the only person besides alfred who can penetrate his veneer of american psycho style narcissism and nonchalance to access the broken little boy at bruce's core deep down you may still be that same great kgs

the batman universe has always been known for its rich world of well-developed allies and enemies a grand tradition in which batman begins easily follows. in his performances wayne enterprises r&d had lucius fox, morgan freeman takes one of the most underappreciated characters in batman comic role and transforms him into one

of the property's most indelible personalities and a key ally on par with gordon or alfred. by supplying grease with the gear he needs to function as batman he becomes analogous to q from the james bond series and a vital tool for nolan's to ground batman's fantastical tech in the real world. nolan is gracious enough to give freeman

his own character arc as well as his own nemesis in the form of the smug chairman of the wayne enterprises board and yet another nod to blade runner's key influence on the picture. momentos mark boone jr. embodies of the gotham pd shameless corruption escorted slovenly partner flass. while tom wilkinson's

carmine falcone serves as the refined face of the city's organized crime epidemic. with this appearance here as the psychopathic psychiatrist dr. crane killian murphy would join kane and bale as a recurring collaborator in nolan's larger body of work. crane of course is better known by his supervillain alter-ego the scarecrow

a rogue who employs fear as a weapon imposing terrifying hallucinations on his victims. like ra's al ghul scarecrow is one of the more fantastical villains of the batman canon and doesn't necessarily lend himself to a grounded cinematic reality. but nolan creates a highly effective adaptation while staying true to the characters comic roots his ability to incite fear seems

not from a supernatural source but from a chemical that he's weaponized into a spray that paralyzes his targets with debilitating waking nightmares. whereas prior batman films chosen villains first and forced the script to twist itself into narrative pretzels to accommodate their pairing no one avoids marquee villains like the joker or penguin to

place a focus squarely on batman himself. besides the obvious benefit of using villains never before seen on the big screen, nolan's emphasis on story allows him to create a rather harmonious pairing between scarecrow and ra's al ghul, linking the former's fear spray directly to the latter by revealing its active ingredient to be a mysterious

blue flower that grows in the mountains where the league of shadows has established their temples. this unique pairing also allows the ideological concept of fear to emerge as the central theme of batman begins. a pillar upon which every narrative decision can revolve around. part of what makes the dark knight trilogy so resonant as nolan's ability

to distill each individual installment into a singular unifying theme in the case of batman begins that theme is fear and it doesn't just make for a convenient justification of scarecrow and ra's al ghul's master plot. it's also an entirely appropriate prison to which to explore the genesis of batman himself

in deed batman begins it's the first batman film to truly understand and portray the characters nature as something that strikes genuine fear in the hearts of criminals. finally nolan uses the opportunity to include a few minor cameos that are nonetheless notable in the context of his artistic growth. for instance followings jeremy theobald and lucy russell make fleeting appearances.

the former being a technician for the gotham water board and the latter being the elegant foil of a heated political discussion at a fancy restaurant. game of thrones fans will also recognize the inclusion of king joffrey himself jack gleeson as a small boy growing up in the narrows who encounters batman outside his back porch. if insomnia is majestic cinematography

hinted at no one's ambitions towards classic hollywood spectacle then batman begins makes those designs clear for all to see. nolan is something of an iconoclast in the film industry in that he vigorously bucks modern trends in favor of old-school techniques. he's become a valiant defender of celluloid film

resistant to the relentless advances of digital filmmaking. he endeavors to ground his stunts and set pieces and practical effects as much as possible. where the vast majority of his peers prefer the centrical precision of computer-generated imagery. he dismisses hollywood's convictions about 3d as the way to attract modern audiences to the

theater presenting an alternate argument for larger 2d formats like imax that are capable of staggering clarity. this aspect of his artistic profile is why the release of a new christopher nolan film was regarded as such a cultural event. his methods simply gave his films the kind of weight and gravitas we accord two monuments.

batman begins is the first instance of this, harnessing the full power of a nine figure budget and putting it all up on the screen in a way that would popularize the concept of the dark and gritty reboot. cinematographer wally pfister returns for his third collaboration with nolan capturing the action on 35 millimeter film in the to 35 to 1 aspect ratio

and coming away with an oscar nomination for his trouble. deep wells of inky shadow low-hanging clouds have been penetrable fog and torrents of rain conjure up an appropriate film noir look that's less the third man and more blade runner in its rendering of a dystopic urban landscape. nolan packs his story with epic compositions and soaring camerawork

further peppering his signature helicopter aerials throughout to find batman's majestic silhouette amidst gotham's towering spires. a color palette of earth and metal tones further grounds batman begins aesthetic and realism while immediately differentiating itself from prior cinematic iterations of the caped crusader while nolan actively avoids

replicating the frenetic handheld camera work typical of action films at the time, he works with editor lee smith to bring a chaotic quick cut approach to the film's action scenes. especially in fights that aim to convey batman's master of hand-to-hand combat as an unstoppable and disoriented force building out a barrage of street justice

in handy bite-sized form. the challenge of reinventing batman goes much further than overhauling his iconic cape and cowl. it also means redefining all the other little things that make batman, batman. wayne manor, the batmobile, his grappling hook and the fantastical theatricality of his villains amidst a myriad of other aspects.

as a very intimidating task but production designer nathan crowley proves up to the challenge, reinforcing nolan's grandiose vision of a cinematic reality. all of batman's gear is based off real military tech in some capacity. the batmobile referred to within the film as the tumbler is completely overhauled into the bastard love child

of a hummer and a lamborghini. and the sheer size of practical sets indeed spanning the size of multiple city blocks would require one of the largest aircraft hangars in the world to house them in. composing team hans zimmer and james newton howard tackled the unenviable task of following danny elfman's batman theme one of the most

instantly recognizable music cues in recent film history. but their efforts result in a score that obliterates our musical memories of dark knights past and provides the necessary lift for nolan's interpretation sore zimmer and howard are excellent composers with highly celebrated individual careers so they're pairing

here must've seemed very unusual in theory. in practice their partnership an idea brought to the table by zimmer when nolan initially approached him proves quite inspired. reflecting batman's fragmented psyche with a bifurcated approach that sees howard tackling dramatic sequences was sweeping strings and mournful brass instruments while

zimmer feels the action with an urgent orchestral staccato and atonal electronic rhythms inspired by flapping bat wings. the square has since become widely recognizable and imitated in the wake of the success of the larger dark knight trilogy so one could be forgiven for failing to remember just how visionary it truly is.

it's so radical in its adherence to the story's key themes and willingness to experiment that is something of a minor miracle that warner brothers ever allowed it anywhere near their most prized property. batman begins and the larger dark knight trilogy is not content to simply detail the exploits of the iconic hero as he rob's

of gotham fighting crime. it aspires to something greater using its pulp framework to explore heavy ideological concepts. indeed batman begins often plays like a law school thesis paper masquerading as a summer blockbuster. while this has an unintentional side effect of forcing its characters to contort themselves into

unwieldy idea delivery machines rather than sound like living breathing people the overall effect is nonetheless one of profound resonance that must have felt quite relevant at a time when news headlines were dominated by overreaching surveillance measures and the controversy of a pre-emptive war. while this exploration of the urban landscapes

relationship to crime and justice batman begins provides an opportunity for nolan to fully inhabit the wheelhouse of a key influence by command, he uses batman as an entry point into a philosophical deconstruction of justice itself what is justice especially when delivered outside of the bounds of conventional law enforcement or the court system. when

it comes to vigilantism did the ends ever justify the means. the justice system is just one of many that nolan utilizes to tell batman begins story, taking inspiration from hbo's the wire and detailing how corruption spreads its tendrils into the various infrastructural systems that support a city. this can be seen most immediately

in the villains plot to use gotham's water supply as a delivery mechanism for an inert chemical agent that once activated causes anyone who ingest it to go insane with fear gotham's transportation system is also utilized with an elevated subway car being another delivery mechanism for the machine that will catalyze scarecrow's

fear drug upon reaching lane tower. we also see social systems represented by diverse economic castes and the varying appearances of different districts. giving gotham a tangible realistic quality that eluded burton or schumacher's rather theatrical interpretations. there's an elegant modern financial district anchored by

wayne tower and inhabited by gotham's privileged class. while the poor and other undesirables are condemned to below ground to a seedy forgotten underbelly that appears to have been at one point the street-level gotham before was built over by the current one. there's also the narrows a densely populated island of slums and abject

poverty set apart from the mainland home to arkham asylum in the majority of gotham's criminal population. the inclusion of such a destitute neighborhood as the setting for the film's climax contrasts directly with the mask of privilege and wealthness bruce bears to the public further illustrating the extent to which he must

depart from a life of luxury in order to purge himself of his interior demons. batman begins exploration of urban systems and the malleability of the built environment has come to be a prominent theme in his subsequent work culminating an inception in the dark knight rises with characters physically resculpting cities to their own

singular designs. a common image throughout nolan's filmography is that of imposing architectural monoliths brought to rubble by a fundamental weakness. an aspect of his artistic character no doubt profoundly affected by 9/11. batman begins establishes this concede rather literally defacing the city streets around wayne tower by

crashing a runaway subway train into it. the fact that the narrows is an island is also important its isolation from the mainland becomes a critical flaw when scarecrow's fear gas is unleashed instantly transforming the island slum into a confined labyrinth of terror. in an oblique way this aspect of batman begins also hits on the magician

like puzzle asked nature of his artistic persona and then it takes something exceedingly mundane like the subway or an urban island and turns it into something of a spectacle. the same nature also causes him to take what might otherwise be a fairly linear story and jumbled up the timeline into a highly strategic nonlinear order batman begins

ostensibly covers bruce wayne's long transformation into batman from his first encounter with bats in an old well as a child to his first victory as the vigilante and finally to the solidification of his new identity after saving gotham from insidious crime syndicate. however nolan doesn't quite tell the

story in that order. at least not during the first half, we first meet bruce as an inmate in a chinese prison detailing the circumstances leading up to his meeting ducard and becoming involved in the league of shadows. while he trains to become one of them nolan peppers in flashbacks that fill out the backstory

showing how bruce's parents were murdered and how his frustration over being unable to avenge their killer himself led to his travels abroad. the ordering of these sequences is quite deliberate calculated in such a way so to maximize the emotional power of batman begins first half by feeding us visceral nuggets of backstory that

underscore the context of the scene at hand. this is what director guillermo del toro was referring to when he calls nolan an emotional mathematician. he evokes emotion by structuring his stories in a way that's precise and measured almost to a fault as his detractors tend to find his films devoid of organic warmth akin to the gut level

revulsion of encountering the uncanny valley. as nolan's filmography has grown there indeed appears to be a formula for how he structures his stories for maximum emotional impact one of the most evident products of this formula is the specific manner in which he ends most of his films writing an emotional wave conjured by cathartic montage and

swelling score before smash cutting to the film's title which is usually the first time we actually see the title itself on screen batman begins marks the first time that nolan employs this formula a choice that's quite apt for the subject matter and in particular the closing scene at hand. the film naturally accommodates other

thematic fascinations of nolan's both established and emerging batman begins continues a tradition scene and all of his work since following by positioning the protagonists as profoundly flawed. admittedly this has always been a core aspect of the character since its creation by bob kane in 1939 but previous batman pictures mostly chose to

overlook it in favor of his heroic qualities. nolan's bruce wayne is a man haunted by a horrible tragedy and desperately in need of a guiding purpose in his life. his solution to dress up as a bat and fight crime then requires an intimidating amount of philosophical reflection in order to combat the sheer psychosis of the idea.

even then bruce knows his quest is doomed he's well aware that no amount of crime-fighting can bring his parents back or heal a psychological wounds yet he can't help but become utterly consumed by his desire for justice. advice about theatricality a bit nolan's sartorial fascination with functional style finds plenty of

opportunity for indulgence in batman begins not just in the various utilities of the batsuits design but also in the amount of screen time he allocates to the discussion of what the suit means on a symbolic level. finally batman begins expansive almost operatic scope allows bruce to be seen traveling the world before settling back in gotham. whereas previous batman films

never left the city limits. nolan would bring the same globe-trotting sensibility to a subsequent work orchestrating his story so as to require frequent travel to exotic locales that helped to convey a larger-than-life scale. as his career has grown his travels have extended beyond the confines of earth itself

venturing to entirely new worlds in inner cellars outer space as well as the lucid unconscious of inceptions inner space. batman begins has its sights set on far more modest horizons employing the dramatic and almost alien vistas of iceland as a stand-in for the majestic himalayan mountains of asia. all this led up to what was easily the most ambitious

film of nolan's still fledgling career. his ability to convey scale had grown from followings modest back alley origins to that of a sweeping overview of an entire city under siege. his self-confidence as a director evidenced by his refusal to storyboard or sit in video village during the production of insomnia enabled him to execute his

vision with inspiring clarity while further bucking long-established studio filmmaking practices. indeed he felt that every shot was so vital to telling his story that he dispatched with the second unit all together gathering every single action beat establishing shot or insert himself. well not without his fare share of criticisms barman begins debuted

in summer of 2005 to very positive reviews. many of which claimed that the caped crusader had finally been done cinematic justice the film also established nolan's enviable ability to create box-office juggernauts. earning three hundred and seventy three million dollars in worldwide receipts. far from simply being just another summer

blockbuster batman begins has proven highly influential causing a chain reaction of events so being felt across the cinematic landscape nearly 15 years later. hollywood's trend of comic-book adaptations, had truly begun with the success of bryan singer's x-men in 2000. but batman begins showed the world that these properties could be something more

than just escapist fare they could be legitimate forums in which to explore complex social and political issues. furthermore it pioneered the now stale trend of rebooting a dormant or fail property as a way to restore its freshness. indeed casino royale and the daniel craig era the james bond series was a direct reaction to batman begins.

for the nolan faithful who had already seen the light with memento the massive success of batman begins only reinforced our convictions in his formidable technical skill set and narrative dexterity. the character of batman became for many an entry point is at the burgeoning directors particular style of filmmaking. in one fell bat swoop nolan

had gone from indie maverick to the biggest vip on the warner brothers lot. well on his way towards a destiny as a director who would revolutionize and revitalize old fashioned spectacle filmmaking for a new generation of audiences around the world. the hollywood machine demanded a sequel and quickly but a return trip to gotham was an

unknown one's itinerary just yet. now today's episode was sponsored by tailorsound.com if you need sound design for your short film, short project, commercial, music video, they do affordable sound design on line and to get 15% off your next order just type in hustle, anywhere in the post your brief section. they are a great resource for filmmakers trying to get quality sound design at an

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