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Improving the Foundations: Batman Begins from Comics to Screen Julian Darius Sequart Research & Literacy Organization (Edwardsville, Illinois) Copyright © 2005, 2009, 2011 Julian Darius. Batman and related characters are trademarks of DC Comics © 2011. Kindle edition, January 2012. First print edition (as Batman Begins and the Comics), September 2005. Second print edition, July 2009. Revised second print edition, November 2011. All rights reserved by the author. Except for brief excerpts used for review or scholarly purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including electronic, without express written consent of the author. Cover by Kevin Colden. Design by Julian Darius. Interior art is copyright © DC Comics; please visit dccomics.com. Published by Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. Edited by Mike Phillips and Richard Bensam with Amy E. Dean. For more information about other titles in this series, visit Sequart.org/books. Material in this volume has previously appeared, in part and in previous editions, on Sequart.org. Contents Introduction Using this Book On the Second Edition Acknowledgements Batman’s Comic-Book Origins, Appropriation, and Year One Detective Comics #33 (November 1939) Batman #47 (June-July 1948) Detective Comics #226 (December 1955) Detective Comics #235 (September 1956) Batman #208 (January-February 1969) Detective Comics #457 (March 1976) The Untold Legend of the Batman (July-September 1980) The Dark Knight Returns (February-June 1986) Year One (March-June 1986) “The Man Who Falls” (1989) Unproduced Attempts to Film Batman’s Origins Batman Triumphant Batman: DarKnight Batman Beyond Darren Aronofsky’s Batman Movie The Aborted Bruce Wayne TV Series Frank Miller’s Year One Screenplay The Wachowski Brothers’ Year One Proposal Superman Vs. Batman Joss Whedon’s Year One Proposal Batman Begins Begins Act One: Flashbacks and Training Act Two: Becoming Batman Act Three: The War for Gotham Erasing Burton: Batman Begins, Realism, and the Anxiety of Influence Reception and Box Office Performance Reception Box Office Performance Further Reading Books on Batman Begins Comic Books / Graphic Novels Online Reading About the Author Also from Sequart Research & Literacy Organization Introduction Upon its release, the verdict on Batman Begins was overwhelmingly positive: fans and critics alike declared it not only a fine film in its own right but the finest Batman film ever made. This was no small feat. While the previous Batman film franchise ended in the late 1990s, after the poor critical reception of 1995’s Batman Forever and the near universal condemnation of 1997’s Batman and Robin (both directed by Joel Schumacher), we must remember the success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and, to a lesser extent, 1992’s Batman Returns. 1989’s Batman, in particular, won critical acclaim and is fondly remembered. It helped launch Tim Burton’s career into super-stardom, spurred merchandising success for the character, and brought many new readers to comic books. Not to mention the two Batman movie serials produced by Columbia Pictures in the 1940s,[1] the campy 1960s Batman TV show that spawned a theatrical film in 1966, and the various animated versions of Batman, including straight-to—DVD movies and 1993’s theatrically-released Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Yet Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins has not only been hailed as superior to all of these films but is likely to remain the definitive cinematic look at Batman’s origins – if not the definitive Batman origin in any medium – for some considerable time to come. Batman Begins also spawned a certain sequel – one that redefined the comicbook blockbuster movie. Most fans and critics praised 2008’s The Dark Knight as superior in turn to Batman Begins, and it more than doubled the original’s box office take. A lot of factors contributed to this success, but one was certainly the respect accorded Batman Begins, which sold briskly on DVD and attracted large audiences when aired on cable. Batman Begins built the foundation for The Dark Knight, and the original did the hard work of establishing the characters that the second film could then use in a more explosive, unfettered storyline. But Batman Begins isn’t just the forerunner to The Dark Knight. It’s arguably the superior of the two: a more controlled film than its more popular sequel. More than any other cinematic appearance by the crimefighter and his supporting cast, Batman Begins carefully grounds Batman in reality, painstakingly establishing the character in a realistic milieu and in a story featuring a classic three-act dramatic structure. It may not be as fun as The Dark Knight, but it remains a major film in its own right. Given all of this, it is just and right that we should take the time to examine the film and its comic-book inspirations. Screenwriter David S. Goyer offered his expertise as a comics fan to director Christopher Nolan. Goyer had actually written comic-book scripts for DC Comics (including issues of Starman and JSA); he had also written and directed motion pictures based on other comics properties, including the trilogy of films about the Marvel Comics vampire hunter Blade. (When Batman Begins premiered, he was also working on film treatment for the DC character Flash, though this failed to pan out.) Faithful in spirit to the Batman mythos of the comics, Batman Begins succeeds in large part because of its knowledge of the 70 years of writers and artists who had worked on Batman in the past, slowly refining the character and his origins. Several elements, from Bruce Wayne’s corporate role to his public persona as an irresponsible playboy, were widely familiar to comics readers as essential parts of the character, yet had never been seen on film. Deeply resonant critical arguments about super-heroes, long familiar to comics readers, also find a place in the film (such as when Gordon in the conclusion talks of “escalation” and predicts the emergence of eccentric criminals in response to Batman’s presence). Yet despite all these borrowings, from the literal to the thematic, Batman Begins wisely does not require any previous knowledge of Batman. This book analyses Batman Begins, paying particular attention to the comicbook material that the film borrowed or changed. For the uninitiated, this book may serve as a guide, opening up the world of the Batman comics in an approachable way. Those already familiar with Batman will find many details about the comics’ ties to the film that they didn’t know or realize. But analysis in this book isn’t strictly limited to the film’s connections to the comics. This book takes the movie apart, looking at how it works. Batman Begins is a precise bit of machinery, and every part has meaning within the whole. Those parts were fashioned after comic-book models, but it’s how they fit together that most distinguishes the film. And all readers, regardless of their knowledge of comics, will benefit from a consideration of the film’s structure and its many thematic (and even philosophical) resonances. Using this Book There are times, in the following pages, in which I will criticize as well as praise certain elements of Batman Begins. No film (nor any other work of art) is perfect – and that discussion, even including debate about these imperfections, aids our understanding and appreciation. In places, I have had to condense description of other texts to save space in a book that is, after all, about Batman Begins. This simply isn’t the place to recount every single comic-book story showing Batman battling the Scarecrow, for example. My apologies in advance to those whose favorite stories are omitted. In the scene-by-scene annotations that follow, I have divided the film into acts and scenes – and sometimes even sections of scenes. These divisions are, to varying degrees, arbitrary. After all, the term “scene” comes from theatre and, as applied to cinema, is not at all precise. My own such divisions of the film are not intended as definitive, but rather as necessary and convenient references. On the Second Edition I first wrote this book in the summer of 2005, immediately following the film’s release. I had originally envisioned a much smaller work, something around 80 pages. The book grew into more than twice that size. It was published in time for the film’s DVD release, probably the first time in history a critical book on a film appeared so quickly. Since that time, Sequart has grown considerably, and its books have become more sophisticated. This second edition has a new cover, a smoother look and feel, interior illustrations, and a substantially revised text. The chapter on Year One has been the most expanded, and the text is thus able to include references to Nolan’s masterful film The Prestige (made between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and also starring Christian Bale and Michael Caine), to The Dark Knight itself, to changes in the Batman comics since 2005. Acknowledgements I am indebted to those who facilitated my initial feverish writing during the summer of 2005, when I was somehow also teaching college, studying, doing other writing, and dealing with a crashed computer. Sequart staff member Mike Phillips, without whom this book and much of Sequart would not exist, was also essential. So too, for her emotional support during that initial writing, was Nancy Bernal. Thanks also to Richard Bensam, the finest editor I have ever had, for his immense help on this second edition. I would also like to deeply thank my parents, Dr. Peter and Rev. Anne Bukalski, who supported me financially and emotionally during the writing of this book and to whom this book is dedicated. This book remains special to me because, while it was not my first book, it was my first on a cinematic subject. Everything I know about film, I learned from my father, a film professor of some distinction who walked me through Citizen Kane and any number of other films as I grew up. He also conveyed to me the love of the medium that he acquired as an underpriviledged child in cold Wisconsin. His mother died when he was very young, and his father seemed impossibly distant (snapping his newspaper to stand upright between them when his son asked him a question) before dying himself. His funeral had been a surreal experience, filled with people my father hadn’t known. In those days, they didn’t kick you out at the end of the film and you could stay to watch the same film, again and again, if you liked. That boy, cared for by his teenage sisters, could escape for a few cents into the movie theatre and lose himself studying these films. If he shares something of the orphan experience with Bruce Wayne, it took my young father not to Bhutan but to distant California, where he knew no one, and UCLA’s then-fledgling film program, which he had learned about from a bulletin board. I knew this boy as a depressive but deeply loyal and supportive man struggling to be a better father to me than his father had been to him. He conveyed to me his profound love of film and learning – and I acquired my own love for comics, which were disdained by the academy as film had been in my father’s youth. This book, uniting comics and film to address themes of fatherhood and making one’s self, seems uniquely suited to this familiar mythology. By way of confessing my own bias, we are always our father’s sons. Finally, I also wish to thank the reading public, who made the book a success and permitted this second edition. Few writers have such a luxury. Support from fans, of both Batman and Batman Begins, has made this book – and this dream – possible. Batman’s Comic-Book Origins, Appropriation, and Year One Before all of Batman Begins’s other comic-book inspirations, the whole idea of exploring Batman’s origins in full-length form comes most directly from Batman: Year One, the graphic novel written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. But while Year One is often cited as an influence on the film, it’s also important to look at the depictions of Batman’s origins that preceded it. Such an examination points out how comic-book writers appropriated past stories, expanding upon them according to the standards of the times, often improving them, and filling in gaps or accounting for retroactive addictions to the mythos. This process, common whenever a character or property is handled by many different writers over a long period of time, is a longstanding feature of American comics – and reached a particular creative peak with Batman: Year One. But Batman Begins, in turn, participates in the same process of appropriation, borrowing bits and pieces from various stories in order to make something that is, in turn, longer, larger in scope, more internally logical, and more coherent as a single narrative. When Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939), he didn’t even get an origin. Readers didn’t necessarily demand origin stories at the time: it was the simply coolness of the character and his fantastic stories that pleased. Less than one year earlier, Superman was introduced by a single page describing his infant flight from the doomed planet Krypton and his arrival on Earth; on the following page, Superman was presented already in action with no further delay. This is not to say that major elements weren’t already present in Batman’s first appearance, as written by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane. The very first panel depicts millionaire Bruce Wayne and police Commissioner Gordon. But Batman simply shows up without explanation to confront the story’s criminals. The six-page story ends with the revelation that Bruce Wayne and Batman are one and the same. This was enough on which to hang a story without needing to explain what motivated him, how he trained to become Batman, or how he put together the Batman costume. Detective Comics #33 (November 1939) Batman’s origin wasn’t explored until a two-page introduction in Detective Comics #33 (November 1939), the character’s seventh story. In this version of the origin, most of the later elements were already present: a young Bruce Wayne watches his parents gunned down while “walking home from a movie.” In the first of three panels depicting the mugging, the mugger even tries to take a necklace from the neck of Mrs. Wayne (she lacks a first name here), an element that would be developped later. The young Bruce then dedicates himself to fighting crime, and there’s no reference to him having any caretaker during these years. Bruce is seen training himself, both scientifically and physically – although he does so in a more domestic setting than his later world travels. The sequence concludes with the adult Bruce inspired to invent the Batman identity when a bat flies through his window, seemingly in response to his wish for some image that will strike terror into the hearts of criminals, “a cowardly and superstitious lot.”