That slow-burn success allowed Nolan the chance to come back and blow the entire world away with his second Batman film. However, the strength of Nolan's vision and a traditional superhero boss battle with the third act twist helped a bigger mainstream audience discover and appreciate the film on home video. Katie Holmes remains one of the bigger examples of miscasting in superhero movies (hence why she was recast later), and Bale's Batman voice and stiff-neck suit were also in need of improvement.īatman Begins' non-linear storytelling in its first act, and "grounded, real-world" vision of Batman threw a lot of viewers when it hit theaters ($373.7M worldwide on a $150M budget). Like Burton before him, no one really expected great things of a Nolan Batman film – and few were pleased when the English director assembled a mostly UK cast of actors (Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson) to play iconic DC Comics characters.
Pictures)Ĭhristopher Nolan stepped into the dead husk of the Batman movie franchise as a relatively unknown indie movie director with an eccentric storytelling signature.