Why ‘Batman Begins’ Still Contains The Best Sequel Tease Of All Time

Batman Begins perfected the sequel tease, by before Marvel’s Iron Man and left audiences excited about a confrontation between the Dark Knight and the Joker.

Today is the 15th anniversary of Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins. The relative success of the acclaimed and buzzy Chris Nolan-directed origin story spurred an entire sub-genre of studios taking somewhat known IP and giving them “gritty” origin stories. Just because audiences liked Batman Begins didn’t mean they wanted the same treatment for King Arthur or Robin Hood or Han Solo. Ironically, Batman Begins was barely a hit, earning $371 million on a $150 million budget. It was the $1.004 billion success of The Dark Knight which Hollywood attempted to emulate, even if breakouts like that are the exception rather than the rule.

Nonetheless, The Dark Knight was only a hit because audiences really dug the serious but unapologetically pulpy, witty and exciting Batman Begins. It earned a sequel, and it damn well earned its crowdpleasing sequel tease, which revealed that Christian Bale’s Dark Knight was about to meet the Joker.

One of the reasons Batman Begins wasn’t a monster hit, aside from potential audience caution over Batman & Robin eight years earlier, was the absence of marquee movie stars and villains. Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson and Michael Caine were, at best, added-value elements. Bale was a cult favorite thanks to the likes of Newsies, Empire of the Sun and American Psycho, but he wasn’t a “butts in the seats” draw, nor was relative newbie Cillian Murphy (two years after 28 Days Later).

Moreover, Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul, while quite well-known to comic fans (and those who consumed Batman’s various animated adventures), were nowhere near as popular as the likes of Joker, Riddler or Catwoman. Nolan’s commitment to comparative realism meant that the costumes were noticeably less flamboyant and comic book-faithful compared to the 1989-1997 franchise.

For most consumers, the biggest pre-release selling point of Batman Begins was “Oh, it’s another Batman movie,” and that it was only barely a hit under ideal circumstances should have served as a warning to copycats.

Batman Begins opened amid rave reviews with $48 million over the Fri-Sun portion of its $72 million Wed-Sun debut. At the time, I considered it slightly disappointing, since the likes of X2 and Spider-Man were posting $85-$114 million domestic debuts. But the film legged out, earning $207 million domestic ($293 million adjusted-for-inflation) amid a crowded summer season. Nonetheless, its sheer quality left fans dizzy with anticipation for a sequel.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in the film’s epilogue, where Bale’s Caped Crusader and Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon, as the two discuss the perils of blowback and escalation while Jim reveals an unusual piece of evidence found at the site of a robbery/homicide. “Like you, he’s got a flair for the theatrical,” Gordon states as he turns up a blood-spattered joker playing card.

It’s worth remembering that audiences cheered, roared with approval and/or giggled with glee not because of the mere idea of another Batman/Joker movie. Audiences chose to get nuts because Batman Begins was a terrific action drama, and the idea of The Joker rampaging through this specific Gotham City, matching wits with this specific version of Batman and James Gordon in this specific cinematic incarnation of the Dark Knight was downright thrilling.

Hollywood tried to replicate the success of Batman Begins with other action-centric IPs. Most failed, and (by default) the teases weren’t quite as effective. Think Rachel McAdams monologuing, to the point of parody, about that diabolical Moriarty was at the end of the quite good (and successful) Sherlock Holmes. Recall young Peter Pan and young James Hook joshing about how they’ll be friends forever at the end of the lousy/doomed Pan. Shudder at the “we spent the whole movie doing set-up, but we promise to give you what you wanted next time” franchise-starters like Artemis Fowl, Jem and the Holograms and Fantastic Four.

Attempts to replicate that excitement proved impossible because the anticipation was specific to the quality of that first Nolan-directed Batman movie. The tease worked because the movie, a well-liked and entirely self-contained character-driven action drama, earned it.

It wasn’t just an abstract promise of a character you know and like showing up in the next go-around. It wasn’t an end-credits tease arbitrarily revealing that Frank Langella’s Skeletor had survived his death plunge in Masters of the Universe. It wasn’t a mid-credit teases, like Young Sherlock Holmes, revealing that the presumed dead baddie was A) alive and B) now going by the name Moriarty.

It was a specific promise that, if the movie was a hit, this successful incarnation of Batman would face off against a version of the Joker who would be uniquely suited to this version of the Batman mythos. Yes, Marvel did the same trick three years later with Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury showing up to tease what would become the MCU.

Once again, that post-credits tease only worked because it came at the end of an otherwise stand-alone Iron Man movie and it came at the end of a well-reviewed and well-liked Iron Man movie. The notion of seeing additional Marvel heroes played by known actors in this specific world established by Jon Favreau’s Iron Man was not an abstract tease but a specific (there’s that word again) hook based on a successful first movie and earned audience trust and goodwill.

That extra ingredient, the earned goodwill and the promise of “more of this thing you like” is what separated the MCU from the flock. But Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins, while perfecting the reboot and saving the comic book movie from years of non-Spider-Man/X-Men mediocrity, did it first and did it best.