The year was 2003, and Batman was at his lowest ebb. After Tim Burton’s two films in 1989 and 1992 successfully reinvented the Caped Crusader on the big screen, something seemed to have gone awry. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever (1995) endured a difficult production, and a critical mauling. Batman & Robin, kicking the silliness quotient into overdrive, may have been a future camp classic, but was a present-day disaster: plans for a sequel titled Batman Unchained had been put on ice, Mister Freeze-style.
Enter Christopher Nolan. The man who would quickly become the foremost blockbuster filmmaker of the 21st century was, at the time, still something of an unknown quantity, with just three features to his name: Following (1998), a micro-budget, little-seen indie; Memento, a fiendishly inventive hit, still made on a budget of less than $10m; and Insomnia, a moody Al Pacino thriller. Nolan had yet to direct a big, tentpole blockbuster, and was, by his own admission, “no comic book expert”. Nonetheless, he was able to talk his way into directing the film that would become Batman Begins.
