20 years after Batman Begins, I think it's high time for DCU to take lessons from the Christopher Nolan film

Batman Begins, the first chapter in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, turns 20 this year. The movie was released in cinema halls across the US on June 15, 2005 is credited with breathing a fresh life into DC movies after 1997's Batman & Robin ended up being one of the character's most maligned live-action adaptations, both critically and commercially.

After the one-two punch of Batman & Robin and Steel (starring Shaquille O'Neal) in 1997, there were no DC movies on the big screen until 2005's Batman Begins. Therefore, Christopher Nolan is credited with not just reviving Batman on the big screen but also the entirety of DC movies on the big screen. Furthermore, Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy was the only DC theatrical release until 2017's Wonder Woman to enjoy universal acclaim.

However, there's one thing about the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie that's largely forgotten. Batman Begins was considered an average grosser at best. Against a production budget of $150 million, the Caped Crusader reboot made approximately $373.7 million.

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Why did Batman Begins "underperform" despite the critical and popular acclaim?

It is worth noting that Batman Begins came off the heels of Batman & Robin, which is considered an embarrassment by the fans. Thus, it is important to note that Batman Begins, which was a reboot of the Batman franchise, had a long way to go to win back the fans burned out by the 1997 Caped Crusader movie. This might have been the probable reason why the movie barely made a profit.

However, the presence of DVD and positive word of mouth gave the movie its legs, which ultimately helped the studio to see some value in green-lighting the sequel to Batman Begins, and the rest is history. 2008's The Dark Knight went on to smash all box-office records, and comic book movies can be taken seriously and even win major awards.

The third movie, The Dark Knight Rises (2012), also made a billion dollars, much like the 2008 movie. But make no mistake, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises single-handedly making a billion dollars was possible because of the strong foundation that Batman Begins laid down back in 2005.

Thus, the first lesson that DCU should take from this 20-year-old movie is that the studio should not jump to conclusions and course-correct immediately. An acclaimed but average-grossing first entry could help the future movies be major blockbusters.

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DCU should consider relying on word of mouth for once

The biggest issue with the old DCEU is that both Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) are reactions to what came before. Batman V Superman was a reaction to all the complaints that people had about Man of Steel: the destruction of Metropolis. 2017's Justice League was the studio forcefully correcting after the negative reaction to Batman V Superman.

This type of reactive nature was the major reason why the DCEU failed as badly as it did. Nolan was given a chance to fulfill his vision despite Batman Begins' "underperformance," ultimately enabling the other two movies to smash box-office records and earn popular and critical acclaim. The Dark Knight builds upon the previous film, and The Dark Knight does the same over the previous two movies.

Superman looking back at Batman Begins will only be ironic because Nolan has been open about how Richard Donner's 1978 Superman served as an influence.

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1978's Superman was a major influence on The Dark Knight Trilogy:

While Nolan has been open about Superman's influence on his The Dark Knight Trilogy for a long time, the British director went into detail in a 2015 The Hollywood Reporter interview. When the interviewer asked Chris Nolan whether he always wanted to work on a movie featuring the Caped Crusader, the director responded:

"Yeah. It came to me in a very interesting way, which was my agent, Dan Aloni, called and said, “It seems unlikely you’d be interested in this, but Warners is sort of casting around for what they would do with Batman.” It had reached the end of its last sort of life, if you’d like. And at the time, nobody used the term “reboot” — that didn’t exist — so it was really a question of, “What would you do with this?” I said, “Well, actually, that is something I’m interested in.”"

Then, the director went on to talk about how Superman (1978) influenced his trilogy:

"Because one of the great films that I am very influenced by that we haven’t talked about was Dick Donner’s Superman — 1978, that came out. It made a huge impression on me. I can remember the trailers for it, I can remember about Superman the movie, all of that. And it was very clear to me that however brilliant — and it was very brilliant — Tim Burton’s take on Batman was in 1989, and it was obviously a worldwide smash, it wasn’t that sort of origin story, it wasn’t that real-world kind of epic movie; it was very Tim Burton, a very idiosyncratic, gothic kind of masterpiece. But it left this interesting gap in pop-culture, which is you know, you had Superman in 1978, but they never did the sort of 1978 Batman, where you see the origin story, where the world is pretty much the world we live in but there’s this extraordinary figure there, which is what worked so well in Dick Donner’s Superman film. And so I was able to get in the studio and say, “Well, that’s what I would do with it.” I don’t even know who was first banging around the term “reboot” or whatever, but it was after Batman Begins, so we didn’t have any kind of reference for that idea of kind of resetting a franchise. It was more a thing of, “Nobody’s ever made this origin story in this way and treated it as a piece of action filmmaking, a sort of contemporary action blockbuster.”

When the interviewer pointed out the grounded nature of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Nolan said:

"Grounded in realism — grounded in heightened realism, grounded in the degree of realism that we expected at the time from, you know, our action movies, Jerry Bruckheimer action movies and things, that would have realistic textures, you know? So, “OK, let’s do that.” What I loved about Superman was the way New York felt like New York, or rather Metropolis felt like New York. Metropolis felt like a city you could recognize — and then there was this guy flying through the streets. “That’s amazing, so let’s do that for Batman, and let’s start by putting together an amazing cast,” which is what they had done with that film, but which I hadn’t seen done since — they had everybody from [Marlon Brando] to Glenn Ford, playing Superman’s dad, you know, it was an incredible cast. So we started putting together this amazing cast based around Christian [Bale], who seemed perfect for Batman, but bringing him Sir Michael Caine and Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman and Tom Wilkinson. It was just incredible."

Therefore, it is high time that DC takes inspiration from the past classics and allows things to play out over time.

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Have you seen Batman Begins? What do you think about the 2005 Caped Crusader reboot?