In his and Goyer’s conversation, Horowitz compared “Batman Begins” to Richard Donner’s 1978 “Superman: The Movie,” which also takes its time getting to Superman in the costume. Goyer added he, Nolan, and co. mapped their structure compared to other comic book movies, like “Superman” and Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” to show Batman’s late arrival wasn’t that late.
“We were ready to prosecute the case with [WB],” Goyer explained. He confirmed there was a draft that began with a cold open of Batman on the roof of Arkham Asylum spreading his cape as the police are pursuing him (which happens later in the movie), “but very quickly, thank God, we dispensed with that.”
Reading between the lines of Goyer’s words, you can glean what the root of Warner Bros.’ worry was: No Batman in the first hour of the movie would mean there would be no action in the first hour. However, Goyer and Nolan were aware of that potential problem themselves. To ensure the audience didn’t think Bruce Wayne was boring, they decided to show he could kick ass without a bat costume.
“We knew fairly early on that we needed to have the audience fall in love with Bruce Wayne,” Goyer explained. “We needed to have […] an amazing action sequence, as amazing as anything from ‘Indiana Jones,’ that involved Bruce Wayne and not Batman.”
That action scene ended up being when Bruce escapes the burning League of Shadows fortress. Even before then, though, there are bursts of action, like when Bruce fences with Ducard over a frozen lake. This ensured the audience didn’t subconsciously make the connection of “Bruce Wayne scenes = boring talky scenes, where’s Batman?”
1987’s “Batman: Year One” by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli (one of the major source materials for “Batman Begins”) does something similar. The book has four chapters (“Batman” issues #404-407), but the first doesn’t show Bruce in the batsuit. Instead, the first chapter follows him as he goes out fighting crime without a costume and fails because the criminals don’t fear him. At the end of the chapter, he realizes he must “become a Bat,” and he debuts as Batman in chapter 2. Like “Year One,” “Batman Begins” understood that Bruce Wayne’s origin can and should be an engaging, atmospheric, and action-packed story in its own right, not just table setting for Batman to debut.
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