Batman Begins Comic Influences

[BatmAngelus]

Fine contributions, as always, Silver Nemesis.

We should probably put the Batman Begins and Dark Knight comic book influences articles as features now, as well as update The Dark Knight Rises one with screencaps, now that the whole trilogy is available on DVD/Blu-ray.  I imagine these are all going to be huge, but we're bound to get even more readers if we release a major "Comic Influences on The Dark Knight Trilogy" series.

[thecolorsblend]

Fine contributions, as always, Silver Nemesis.

We should probably put the Batman Begins and Dark Knight comic book influences articles as features now, as well as update The Dark Knight Rises one with screencaps, now that the whole trilogy is available on DVD/Blu-ray.  I imagine these are all going to be huge, but we're bound to get even more readers if we release a major "Comic Influences on The Dark Knight Trilogy" series.

Not sure if this has been done yet but there is some interest in this.

[Paul (ral)]

Fine contributions, as always, Silver Nemesis.

We should probably put the Batman Begins and Dark Knight comic book influences articles as features now, as well as update The Dark Knight Rises one with screencaps, now that the whole trilogy is available on DVD/Blu-ray.  I imagine these are all going to be huge, but we're bound to get even more readers if we release a major "Comic Influences on The Dark Knight Trilogy" series.

Not sure if this has been done yet but there is some interest in this.

Not done yet - I also need to get the features section improved to make them all a lot more accessible.

Where is the interest?

[thecolorsblend]

Not done yet

I wasn't trying to put pressure.

I also need to get the features section improved to make them all a lot more accessible.

Fair enough.

Where is the interest?

Been trading messages with some dude on Facebook. He wanted a link to whichever blog/site ripped off all BatmAngelus and Silver's stuff, re: Chris Nolan's Batman films. I wanted him to see the oh-riginal stuff and pointed him to these forums but he's apparently too good to be bothered cruising forums to find this stuff. Lazy prick. Lucky I didn't leave him to his own devices after that little remark. In any case, I linked him to the TDKRises feature (which is awesome, btw; great job, guys!) and that seemed to mollify the jerk for at least a while.

[BatmAngelus]

This is now a feature, thanks to Silver Nemesis for editing everything together:
http://www.batman-online.com/features/2016/3/6/comic-influences-on-batman-begins-2005

[Paul (ral)]

Brilliant article. You guys did another amazing job!

[Silver Nemesis]

Credit has to go to Ral and Nycteris too, both of whom contributed references to this feature.

One thing I'd like to point out about this analysis that's different from the others is the fact that most of these comics were specifically cited by either Nolan, Goyer or Uslan back when the film was in production. With the other features, we usually had one or two confirmed influences while the rest were merely conjectural. But here, I'd say over half of the references we documented were openly acknowledged by the filmmakers back in 2004 and 2005. I thought that was an impressive detail worth noting.

[thecolorsblend]

Batman #500 is cover dated October 1993. I know it well. I bought both editions of it when they came out. Batman Begins came out (in the US) on June 15, 2005. I know that well too because I saw it the day it came out.

But somehow, I never noticed this connection before.















Don't have a very good explanation for that either. And yet, the sequence of events is so similar to what happened near the end of Batman Begins that you're hard-pressed to claim that it's a coincidence.

You've got Batman duking it out with The Big Bad aboard a runaway/out of control elevated train, the lead car gets detached from the other cars by an explosive, the lead car flies off the tracks to crash into a building and The Big Bad lays defeated.

I have to admit that's a pretty specific series of events.

Apologies for only posting pages from Batman #500 but I don't have any relevant screenshots from Batman Begins. Maybe someone else can fill those in? If nothing else, hopefully I've provided a starting point.

[Silver Nemesis]

We posted the following visual comparisons in the site feature in 2016.

Batman swinging onto the train through the window.

One of the combatants smashing his opponent's head through another window.

A hero uncoupling the carriages using an explosive projectile.

And finally the derailment.

Nolan obviously read Knightfall, as evidenced by its influence on TDKR, so I'm confident these similarities are deliberate.