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The Film
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Is Rachel Dawes meant to be portrayed as a strong crusader of justice or a blind idealist in over her head? While the former seems to be the interpretation most fans wanted, the writing and Holmes' acting enforce the latter.
- Mr. Earle, the CEO who takes over Wayne Enterprises after Thomas & Martha's deaths can fall victim to this. Is he a Jerkass Regent for Life for refusing to hand the company over to Bruce; or is he justified in not handing the company over to Bruce, as young Master Wayne was pronounced dead several years ago and has no experience in the business world? Indeed, none of Bruce's public behavior lends itself to implying he's responsible enough to run the company.
- The film itself isn't wholly clear on whether Joe Chill is a Sympathetic Murderer: besides that his desperation was driving him, was the reason he couldn't look an adult Bruce in the eyes a sign of his penitence, just plain cowardice, or a mixture? And did he really claim that Thomas Wayne "Begged. Like a dog", or was that simply Falcone cruelly twisting the knife to try and break Bruce's resolve? On the flipside, the film does make clear that while Bruce's inability to forgive him isn't wrong, his attempt at vengeance for catharsis isn't an acceptable option.
- "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." Justified loophole to Batman's one rule, or a cruel decision that equals the same as murder?
- Was Ducard really R'as al-Ghul the whole time, using the man in the temple as a decoy? Or did he inherit the title from him after his death?
- And You Thought It Would Fail: Sam Hamm, who wrote Batman (1989), felt that a Batman origin story wouldn't work as a film.You totally destroy your credibility if you show the literal process by which Bruce Wayne becomes Batman.
- Base-Breaking Character: Rachel Dawes. Is she the moral center of the film and justified in not dating Bruce until his time as Batman is done, or is she a preachy character who seems to be in love with an idealization of Bruce, not the real man (and vice versa – Bruce is in love with an idealization of Rachel but not the woman herself)? This only upped with The Dark Knight.
- Broken Aesop: Bruce Wayne, in his training to become Batman, is ordered to kill a criminal that the League of Shadows arrested, but he refuses since he decided he will not be an executioner. The moral is If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!, but to escape the temple without having to kill the criminal, he intentionally burns the whole temple down, presumably killing many people there, maybe even the criminal he was ordered to kill in the first place.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: Henri Ducard is actually Ra's al Ghul. Anybody who has read the comics would know that Liam Neeson physically resembled Ra's more than Ken Watanabe, which was only furthered by how his beard was styled. Even if you didn't read the comics, it would be pretty jarring to have a big name like Liam Neeson playing a minor character from the beginning of the film.
- Designated Hero: As Honest Trailers pointed out, Bruce commits a lot of crimes in his pursuit of justice, including arson (burning down the League of Shadows dojo), vigilante interrogation, property damage (the aforementioned dojo arson, as well as many cars and buildings with the Tumbler), manslaughter (the people that died in the fire, including the fake Ra's al Ghul), and Murder by Inaction (leaving the real Ra's al Ghul for dead). This is something that is thankfully rectified in the sequels.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Joe Chill seems to get this a lot, with many saying he deserves sympathy points for not actively enjoying his needless murder of a boy's parents in front of him, even going so far as to call the deaths an accident. Even if that could apply to Thomas, which, granted, is debatable, Martha's death was anything but unintentional.
- Epileptic Trees: When this movie first came out, many theorized that the blond boy played by Jack Gleeson was going to become Robin in a later film (with the evidence pointing him being Jason Todd). Of course, this would later be Jossed by Christopher Nolan, who claimed he was never going to put Robin in his movies.
- Fight Scene Failure: Watching this film after its two sequels (and Inception), it's glaringly obvious that Christopher Nolan was still getting the hang of doing fight scenes. The major action sequences are okay for the most part, but the early fight between Bruce and the League of Shadows is quite awkwardly shot and edited.
- Genius Bonus: In this version of Batman's origin story, the reason young Bruce and his parents are in central Gotham on the night the latter get shot, is to see an opera. The opera is Mefistofele, and since the story of this opera concerns the battle by between good and evil for a man's soul, it's eerily prescient. In the film, young Bruce – scared of the devil costumes and intense music – asks to be taken outside, where his parents are promptly mugged and killed. Therefore, the ideas of demons, death, and illusion are firmly linked in the boy's mind from then on.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Henri Ducard mentions his wife was taken from him. In 2009, Liam Neeson's wife, Natasha Richardson, died in a tragic skiing accident. For contrast, see Hilarious in Hindsight.Ducard: Once I had a wife… my great love… she was taken from me.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: In one scene, Henri Ducard, a mysterious badass who can take on a dozen men without breaking a sweat, has no qualms about killing to do what he considers to be right, and who happens to be played by Liam Neeson, tells Bruce his tragic backstory. Ducard explains:Ducard: once I had a wife… my great love… she was taken from me.
- It Was His Sled: Henri Ducard is actually Ra's al Ghul, to the point that The Dark Knight Rises treats it as a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
- Magnificent Bastard: This incarnation of Ra's al Ghul, Henry Ducard, is every bit as magnificent as his original counterpart and a major figure in Bruce Wayne's transformation to Batman. Ruthlessly devoted to a world free of corruption, Ducard sets the eyes of his League of Shadows on the city of Gotham, which he sees as disgustingly decadent. Taking advantage of greedy drug-runners, Ducard uses flowers by the mountain of the League's base to synthesize a powerful hallucinogenic that gives nightmarish visions, intending to use it to destroy Gotham. Keeping his plan hidden from the city police and Batman for much of the film, Ducard has his men steal a water vaporizer and infects the hydro lines with his toxin in preparation for making the chemical airborne and causing the civilians to tear the city apart. Burning Wayne Manor to the ground, Ducard loads his device onto a fake SWAT truck, releasing the inmates of Arkham and his fear toxin on the Narrows island, overwhelming the police force before trying to use Gotham's monorail to infect the city's main water supply and cause chaos throughout it. Although facing clear death after being defeated by Batman, Ducard nevertheless chooses to calmly accept his fate and his influence still lingers as his daughter returns to finish his work.
- Narm Charm: Batman's "SWEAR TO ME" line in response to "I swear to God" is simultaneously hilarious yet also awesome if only because of the delivery.
- Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: It's not too hard to figure out that Henri Ducard is the actual Ra's al Ghul. After all, why would they cast A-list actor Liam Neeson for such a seemingly minor role?
- Moral Event Horizon:
- The League Of Shadows crosses this upon actually dispersing Crane's fear toxin. Their claims earlier on that Gotham was beyond saving could have been interpreted as a Secret Test of Character, and if not, there was nothing in the movie that could rule out them being convinced otherwise… and then when they explained their means of destroying it, there was nothing to rule out that they could have been talked out of THAT. But once they actually went through with said means of destruction, they were definitely beyond redemption like they claimed Gotham to be.
- Falcone crosses it by having a female assassin disguised as a reporter ice Joe Chill and, when Bruce Wayne confronts him about it, taunts him about the death of his parents before eighty-sixing him. When Bruce returns as the Batman, the special treatment he accords to Falcone (using him as a prototype Bat Signal) is satisfying.
- Chill gunning down Martha Wayne simply for screaming, and the murder of the Waynes in general; while the film still works to humanise him somewhat, it also makes clear that his actions are unforgivable and even Chill himself openly acknowledges this.
- Older Than They Think:
- The Scarecrow attempting to poison Gotham's water supply with fear gas? He also tried that in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Dreams in Darkness".
- Scarecrow seeing a demon Batman after being dosed on his own fear gas also happened in Batman: TAS, specifically his debut, "Nothing to Fear".
- Batman's cape becoming a glider was something that was previously done in Batman Returns.
- Questionable Casting:
- Averted with Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow. Jonathan Crane is traditionally portrayed as a lanky, ugly man (That's even where the name comes from!), so having pretty boy Cillian Murphy play him can be jarring for comic fans. However, it works and arguably Crane's insanity is even more disturbing when covered up by a pretty face.
- Katie Holmes as Rachel. Not that she does a bad job per se, but rather that she looks way too young to sell the hardened career woman seeking justice that she's supposed to be. After all, Rachel is supposed to be around 30, but in 2005, Holmes was still in her mid-20s, and she is a woman that is Older Than She Looks to begin with.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Take a close look at the little kid who talks to Batman, and who Rachel saves from the Scarecrow. Poor little Jack Gleeson, you have no idea how much people are going to hate a certain future character of yours.
- Linus Roache, who played Thomas Wayne, would go on to play Michael Cutter, King Ecbert and Jeremiah Sand.
- Mark Boone Junior, who played Detective Flass, went on to play to play Bobby Munson.
- Jo Martin is a Police Prison Official.
- Romantic Plot Tumor: One frequent complaint from critics was the handling of Bruce and Rachel; unlike Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man Trilogy films released to that point, or Tony Stark and Pepper Potts a few years later in Iron Man, the movie never digs into why Bruce or Rachel have feelings towards each other, with nearly every scene simply boiling down to Rachel disapproving of Bruce's life choices at a certain point in time. This makes their arc come across as something that has to be taken as a given because it's a superhero movie and the hero must have a lady to be attracted to, rather than showing why these characters actually love each other.
- Sacred Cow: Batman Begins is considered by both fan and filmmaker alike to be the definite origin story for the Caped Crusader, covering every detail necessary to Batman's image. It's really saying something that despite the trend in superhero movies to always start with the orgin story, the next two Batman reboots chose to skip over his early years entirely, with Ben Affleck's Batman being active for 20 years (with a Robin who had since perished) while Robert Pattinson's had been active long enough to have earned Gordon's trust, thwart the Joker and develop a Misaimed Fandom. There are plans for yet another Batman reboot, which has been confirmed to introduce Damian Wayne as Robin, showing that his origins aren't going to be retold any time soon.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- One major complaint about this movie is how the Scarecrow was treated. Despite being built up as a major threat, he gets gassed by Batman and is last seen in the movie getting tased by Rachel.
- There's also a case of They Wasted A Perfectly Good Actor with Rutger Hauer. Given that he is known for playing intimidating villains, he would have been an excellent role for a Batman villain. Instead, he is cast as a rather generic and bland business man character known as William Earle.
- William Earle as a character could have had some solid potential as an antagonist. He could have been used as a mole for The League of Shadows within Wayne Enterprise and feed them information such as The microwave emitter later used to terrorize Gotham which would explain better how the League knew of its existence.
- The character reveal of Ra's Al Ghul was dramatically nifty, but it also pushed the Asian main antagonist into Token Minority territory; it turns out, the real mastermind was never Ken Watanabe but was rather Liam Neeson all along. By the second part of the movie, the disposable Asian figurehead is played by a different actor and says hardly any lines at all.
- Win Back the Crowd: It can't be understated how badly Batman & Robin damaged the Batman brand. Even with the news of an accomplished filmmaker coming on board, alongside a prestigious cast of veterans, and a more grounded, personal take on the property that was a 180 of prior film adaptations, film audiences were still initially hesitant. So much so, that the eventually-maligned Fantastic Four had a bigger opening weekend than Batman Begins, which released a month prior. But word-of-mouth quickly spread about how good Begins was, leading to the film doing an outstanding multiplier of 4x its opening weekend (passing F4 at the box office eventually), and becoming a massive hit on home release. This momentum, on top of the hype surrounding Heath Ledger's performance as the greatest villain in Batman's rogue gallery and his untimely passing, led The Dark Knight to pass Batman Begins's domestic box office in only five days.
The Game
- Complete Monster: Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow, helps Ra's al Ghul by developing the gas needed for his plan, then tests it out on innocent people, having them driven insane and using them as attack dogs. Scarecrow shows no concern when many of his men are infected by the gas and holds hostage the brother of one of his men. When Batman reaches his lair, Scarecrow tries to leave his patients to burn to death. When Ra's starts his plan to release the gas into Gotham, Scarecrow tries to lower the bridge to allow the first few people to be infected into the city to start tearing it apart.
- Cult Classic: As the only console video game based on the acclaimed Dark Knight Trilogy, with most of the actors involved and unique gameplay that went on to inspire a different acclaimed trilogy of video games, it is loved by many as how a Batman movie video game done right.
- The Problem with Licensed Games: Downplayed. Definitely better than most and it had some very unique and innovative ideas for a Licensed Game (plus full participation from its All-Star Cast with the exception of Gary Oldman), but it was still considered average at best, citing simple mechanics and lame-brained AI. On the bright side, it went on to greatly inspire the Batman: Arkham Series, which averts this in every way possible.
- Vindicated by History: The game helped inspire the Batman: Arkham Series, which helps make this game a fan-favorite.
