My Personal Connection to Batman Begins

It's a well known fact that Christopher Nolan revived the Batman franchise from near extinction after the debacle that was Batman and Robin. Nolan's take was a more grounded and realistic portrayal of the dark knight and frankly, that's probably the best way to have approached it. Considering nearly every hero and villain in the DC universe has near God like abilities, Batman is the only one who is human and, in many of their eyes, that is his only weakness is that he is simply a man. That is, those that haven't yet gotten to know him really well. They soon learn not to mess with him after that. If anything, that's what always made Bruce Wayne/Batman such a compelling character to me is that very reason. Here is a guy who pushes the limits of what a human being can do, both physically as well as technology wise. He really is a knight, with a suit of armor and armed with weapons of choice of his own design. In a world surrounded by Gods,

Enter myself. Batman Begins opened at the time I was going to the New York Film Academy's six week summer program. It was great because I was honing all of the techniques that would help me to discover my voice and, for the first time, I was working with actual cameras. 16mm black and white cameras, yes, but still, I was behind a camera and I was getting to block all of the scenes and plan out the shots. It was a dream come true and in the city that never sleeps? Oh, yeah, I had inspiration all around me. I grew up fantasizing about giant cityscapes like I'd seen in Blade Runner and The Fifth Element and I was finally in my element (Star Wars prequels don't count, that was animated CG crap, I want models, dammit!!). Everything they say about how cool New York is was true, I couldn't turn a corner without seeing something I'd seen in a movie somewhere. You wanted some kind of special food at 3 AM, there was a restaurant open somewhere. You wanted a store that specialized in some obscure past time? There was about ten of them.

Oh yeah, and remember how I said you couldn't turn around any block and not see something you saw in a movie? Well, when you grow up watching Ghostbusters and your first two days there, you walk through Central Park and come right out in front of Dana Barrett's apartment building? You better believe I had just become five years old again. I even found their headquarters, too, which, after a couple of weeks, became my mission to find. Spent the whole trip tracking it down.

The reason I'm going on and on so much about my first trip to New York is because of how much of an impact it had on me. I was in a filmmaker's paradise, I was making short films in one of the greatest cities and every day was a new adventure, be it a creative one or whether or not I had to get between a drunk guy and some girls in the hostel I was staying at. (Yeah, ask me about that one some time.) While I was there, I took in a few movies here and there and let me tell you, this was an experience that I wasn't used to. I was used to getting in your car, driving down the street to your local cineplex, parking and going into a building dedicated simply to the theater itself. The theaters in New York, however, are like any other business in that they are part of the building, so for me, it was like those theaters that used to be part of a mall. Still pretty cool, though.

I'd taken in a couple movies while I was there: Land of the Dead, War of the Worlds, Howl's Moving Castle, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Crash, Fantastic Four...yeah, gotta take the good with the bad, I guess. But then our class decided to wait in line for the new Batman movie. At this time, the only good Batman movie to compare it to was the Tim Burton version from 1989 (die hard Batman fans will make a good case for Batman: Mask of the Phantasm...and I am one of them). So we went in, not expecting too much. Yeah, Christopher Nolan made Memento which was brilliant and Insomnia was pretty good, too, but how would he do with his first big budget franchise film? And Christian Bale? I mean, yeah, he was amazing in American Psycho and Equilibrium was pretty cool, but could he carry an entire film?

Needless to say, I was blown away from scene one. This was the Batman I grew up with! The Batman that didn't kill, the Batman that hated guns, the Batman where the person who killed his parents was some random street thug...AND NOT THE JOKER!!!! (Even when I was nine, I thought it was too convenient that Tim Burton made The Joker kill Bruce Wayne's parents.) Yeah, there were a few liberties taken, Ra's Al Ghul training Bruce Wayne,  Rachel Dawes...existing, but they made as much sense as the liberties taken with the Lord of the Rings trilogy: some sacrifices needed to be made to make it translatable to the big screen. So, yeah, I was on a high when I came out of the movie. This wasn't just a great superhero movie, this was a great movie. Nolan downplayed the comic book aspects just enough to make it feel like a real movie. I had just seen probably the best superhero origin story ever made. Forget Superman, forget Spider-Man and DEFINITELY forget Tim Burton's Batman. (I have so many issues with that movie.)

But I wasn't prepared for what I felt next. Leaving the theater, it was about 10:45, 11 PM at night and if you've ever been in a city late at night, you know the sepia glow the street lights give off. So I had just come out of a movie where Gotham looked like a real city blanketed in sepia street lights and here I was leaving the theater into as real city blanketed in sepia street lights. Holy shit, I had just stepped out into Gotham! It was a surreal experience! I remember looking up at the skylines and imagining, what would it be like to base jump off of them. Seriously, I wanted to go buy a basejumping suit right then and there. There was probably a store open for it, too. Still, I walked the city streets, riding high off of my Batman Begins trip and still continuing it in the real world.

That would be one of the many memorable moments that I had in New York City while I was there for those six weeks. I had seen a movie that had blown my mind and I was able to leave the theater and still feel it surround me as if it were real. I will never forget that experience and from that moment on, I was a die hard devotee of Nolan's version of Batman.

Oh, and I would go on to see it two more times while I was in New York, too. Making my movie tally nine movies seen in the theater in New York City. Nine movies in six weeks. Man, I miss my youth.