20 years ago, the comic movie landscape changed… forever. As Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins kicked off a trilogy that would help cement the current age of four-panel cinema, the 2025 movie schedule owes a debt to this franchise. Part of that payment should go to co-writer David S. Goyer though, especially since he was one of the creative forces that fought to protect a factor so important, it still defines the Christian Bale-starring DC movie.
Why Batman Begins Doesn’t Show A Fully Armored Bruce Wayne Until An Hour In, According To David S. Goyer
It may surprise you to learn that Batman Begins’ titular hero doesn’t show up in his own movie until about an hour into director Christopher Nolan’s origin story. As you might have guessed, Goyer and the team behind the 2005 picture had made a decision that Warner Bros. wasn’t very happy with. Discussing that fact during a special Happy Sad Confused episode that celebrates the picture’s 20th anniversary, David S. Goyer shared how the delayed entrance of this particular Batsuit was so important:
They were not happy about that… But it was two-fold. We felt that – no disrespect to the actors that have played Bruce Wayne prior to this – that as moviegoers, in a lot of these superhero movies, we were always just kind of twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the character to get into costume, and for the movie to really begin. So we said, ‘Well, why is that?’ And I think, because unconsciously, a lot of work was put into sort of realizing the hero, but not the man or the woman behind the mask.
Clearly you don’t want to rush into showing Batman too early in Batman Begins; but you also don’t want people to feel like you’re dragging your heels. The latter concern had more weight this time around, as Nolan's Batman went darker than any other movie interpretation. So if the Caped Crusader was going to be staying in the shadows, that meant Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne would need to carry the portion of the picture that saw this become, among other things, a movie to encourage people to get in shape.
One Batman Begins Set Piece Became The Key To Making Both Bruce Wayne And Batman Work
To the Blade trilogy mastermind and his co-writer/director Christopher Nolan, that meant that the billionaire persona needed to get into the action somehow. That angle led to a pretty huge moment of action where Bruce didn’t have wings, Batarangs or armor; just a series of moral choices that led to an explosive resolution.
David S. Goyer continued laying the foundation for the appearance of Batman Begins’ costumed hero, through this next leg of the story:
So we knew fairly early on that we needed to have the audience fall in love with Bruce Wayne, and that we needed to have – we talked about this – an amazing action sequence as amazing as something from Indiana Jones, that involved Bruce Wayne and not Batman. We just said, ‘Pretend Bruce Wayne is James Bond, or Indiana Jones, or whomever.’ If we can do a sequence that is just incredible and heart-pounding, and he doesn’t have the mask on, then people won’t care whether or not he has the mask on. That’ll just be the added sauce. So that’s how we came up with that massive escape from Ra’s al Ghul’s temple, and them sliding down the ice
As anyone with a Max subscription, or one of the many copies that’s brought Batman Begins to various home formats, will tell you, that moment absolutely packs a punch. With Bruce Wayne on the edge of joining Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Shadows, the DC superhero arrives at the point where his “no killing” code is locked into place.
It’s a shame that this decision eventually bit him in the wings down the line, as Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) turned out to be the real Ra’s al Ghul. The eventual showdown between student and master would go on to become Batman Begins’ final narrative-based crisis, leading to a memorable finale. But when it came to convincing Warner Bros., David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan had one final ace up their sleeves, just in case they needed it.
By The Numbers, Batman Begins Wasn’t Doing Anything Particularly Surprising
At this point in the Foundation executive producer’s story, we seem to be at the precipice of locking in what helps Batman truly begin. However, heading into a showdown with studio executives can be unpredictable, and being prepared is always required.
With that in mind, David S. Goyer provided these details on the final gear in the machinery, which pointed out that Batman Begins really wasn’t doing anything crazy:
…We did a chart, and we did Donner’s Superman, and we did some of the other Batman movies. And we clocked the minute into the film that the characters would put on the costumes, and we weren’t much farther than that. … We were ready to prosecute the case with Warner Bros. and say, ‘Look at these four movies. Here’s Spider-Man, here’s the first Batman movie.’ Whatever it was.
It’s wild to think that 20 years ago, as Batman Begins dropped one of the best closing lines in movie history, it set the world up for an even greater return with 2008’s The Dark Knight. After reading stories of alternate history, similar to why Guy Pearce lost out on Ra’s al Ghul, you can of course stream the entire Dark Knight Trilogy, appreciative of how things panned out in the end.
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