The Breakthrough in Action Cinematography: The Batman and Batman Begins

In this essay, I’m going to discuss how the action genre has changed over time by comparing examples from Batman (1989) and Batman Begins (2005). By choosing two origin Batman movies it enables me to show how the two directors, Tim Burton (Batman) and Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins), have chosen to show the same moments of Batman’s origin using their different cinematic visions whilst also consequently showing how the action genre has changed over time. Batman, starring Michael Keaton in the lead role, tells the story of Bruce Wayne early on in his career as Batman dealing with Jack Napier, who during the film becomes the antagonist known as The Joker. The film deals with a young Bruce Wayne witnessing his parent’s deaths as well as his personal life, with his butler/father figure Alfred and his love interest Vicki Vale. Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale in the lead role, mirrors the same story in a lot of aspects, by also showing the story of Bruce Wayne early on in his career as the Batman whilst dealing with other DC Comics characters known as Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul. At the same time, showing a young Bruce witnessing his parent’s deaths and his personal life, with his butler/father figure Alfred and love interest Rachel Dawes.

Around the time period of Batman, Action as a genre was often paired with Adventure, forming a genre known as Action-Adventure. Steve Neale in The Action and Adventure Cinema, talks about how the term has been used ‘to pinpoint a number of obvious characteristics common to these genres and films: a propensity for spectacular physical action, a narrative structure involving fights, chases, and explosions, and in addition to the deployment of state-of-the-art special effects, an emphasis in performance of athletic feats and stunts.’ (Neale in Tasker 2004, p.71). As time went by, technology vastly developed and audiences’ interests changed causing the genre itself to shift towards the form of the genre known in the modern day simply as Action. The plots of these action films ‘place the hero in increasingly thorny, and violent confrontations. Action sequences become the central organizing feature of the genre and violent spectacle becomes the vehicle for expressing character development.’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.394).

‘Action is now a generic descriptor in its own right’ (Tasker 2015, p.1) and this all began in the 80s around the release of Batman with the release of Rambo: First Blood. Action-Adventure films which favoured ‘the light-hearted tone that characterized adventure cinema’ (Tasker 2015, p. 143) began to instead favour the ‘tough approach delivered in gritty action films.’ (Tasker 2015, p. 143). An example of this is the light-hearted tone within Batman, in particular the scene that takes place in the Gotham Museum of Art, in which Jack Napier lures Vicki Vale to the gallery and proceeds to destroy all the works of art, to the tune of ‘Partyman’ by Prince. Jack Nicholson, playing the Joker, brilliantly uses his body language and expressions to dance around the art gallery whilst his lackeys ‘joker-ify’ the art works until Batman comes and saves Vicky Vale. With few hand-to-hand combat fight scenes throughout the film, as well as the Joker’s various attempts to try hinder Batman and the cops, Batman creates a far more light hearted tone in contrast in the confrontations Batman has in Batman Begins, in which the ‘attention that Nolan’s film pays to constructing a realistic origin for all of Batman’s abilities and devices’ (Brooker 2012, p.98) allows Batman to be placed in the ‘increasingly thorny, and violent confrontations’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.394) that Pramaggiore refers too. Christopher Nolan chose to spend a detailed amount of time in the beginning of the film creating the idea for the audience that all these action scenes are realistic due to the intense training Bruce Wayne goes through at the hands of the League of Legends, so ‘when he takes on eight villains at once and overcomes all of them, we understand where this capacity originates.’ (Brooker 2012, p.98). This is more important in the modern-day action film as audiences, especially the younger generations, often contain video game fans. This is due to the boom in the video game industry meaning these audience members have a changed perception of what fights and combat should be like before going into the film compared to the audiences of Action-Adventure films. With the Batman Begins’ franchise later inspiring Batman games for the market.

The intense fight scenes in Batman Begins come across as very realistic due to the major advancements in editing which allow the directors of modern-day action films to create highly orchestrated scenes as part of their action aesthetic. This advancement, in not just editing but also through modes like CGI and special effects, means that the ‘movements of the elements within the frame and the impression of movement achieved via cutting’ became crucial to the directorial goal of achieving the gritty realistic action sequences that are ‘the central organizing feature of the genre’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.394).

Although not necessarily just down to the technology improving, these action sequences, a frequenter in Batman Begins particularly in the first half of the movie when he’s training with the League, rely on rapid-fire editing to keep the audience up to pace with intensity of the scenes. Michael Brandt pointed out how films traditionally had ‘an average shot length of 5.15 seconds, compared to 4.75 seconds’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.195) in modern movies. This suggests, especially in a modern era where action movies dominate the box office, that the audiences like the faster paced scenes now seemingly compulsory in an action movie compared to the slower paced edits of the past and the improvements in the technology filmmakers use to edit is key to achieving this. Although in some cases, action movies instead use slow motion as a way of creating tension for the viewer within the fight scenes. Originally created for Blade, special effect artists ‘pioneered a slow-motion technique called by a number of names, including bullet time and time slicing. The shot is achieved by surrounding the actors or objects with a ring of still cameras that trigger in sequences at a rapid rate. When these shots are projected at a normal rate… the action appears to be slowed down or frozen’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.179) thus creating some of the most iconic moments in action history, in particular the iconic bullet dodge moment in The Matrix.

The improvements in technology also effected how the action movies used sound within their films. In the time of Batman, studios would ‘fill their products with pop songs in the hope that the songs would generate both publicity and income’ (Wierzbicki 2009, p.209) as shown with the soundtrack for Batman being created by the huge pop star of the time, Prince. However, these ‘Up-to-date pop songs – or vintage oldies or moody jazz, would hardly illustrate automobile chases, spaceship fights and the like’ (Wierzbicki 2009, p.210) that appear in the modern-day Action film, so for this ‘filmmakers en masse tended to rely on orchestral underscores’ (Wierzbicki 2009, p.210) for most of the film’s score.

The changes between ‘Action-Adventure’ to ‘Action’ aren’t huge, but subtle. Although the type of film sound within the film has gone from the pop-song (EG ‘Partyman’ by Prince in Batman) to orchestral underscores (EG ‘Vespertilio’ by Hans Zimmer, the main theme of Batman Begins), the common functions that the directors use sound for are still the same. Those common functions are ‘to establish historical context; to shape the audience’s perception of space; to define character; to shape the emotional tenor of a scene; to distance the audience’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.267). When it comes to the film’s narrative, Action films still follow the same formula, it’s just the plots being told within the films that have changed. Filmmakers still use flashbacks and flash-forwards as a way of manipulating time within the film with flashbacks used in both Batman and Batman Begins as a way of showing a young Bruce Wayne witnessing his parents get killed. This type of narrative is known as Anachronic and is one of the four cinematic modular narratives. The Anachronic narrative involves ‘the use of flashbacks and/or flash-forwards’ (Cameron 2008, p.6). The next is known as Forking paths which is when the narrative is ‘invoking divergent or parallel narrative possibilities’ (Cameron 2008, p.6). The third is known as Episodic and this is when the film is ‘organized as an abstract series or narrative anthology’ (Cameron 2008 p.6) and the final narrative is called Split-screen which is ‘dividing the narrative flow into parallel, spatially juxtaposed elements’ (Cameron 2008 p.6). All these modular narratives are still used within Action films having also been narrative forms for the ‘Action-Adventure’ genre.

Most narratives theories still apply to the action films, in particular to the theories by Todorov and Propp. Tzvetan Todorov broke the narrative process down to five different stages. The film will firstly begin with a state of the equilibrium at the offset and then in the second stage, there will be some form of disruption towards the equilibrium. The film will then show some form of recognition of the disruption before an attempt to fix the problem and eventually a reinstatement of the initial equilibrium to end the film. In simple terms when it comes to applying this, although Batman Begins breaks the mould, its sequel The Dark Knight (2008) matches it perfectly. With Batman keeping order over all of the crime in the city being the beginning equilibrium and then it being disrupted by the Joker’s arrival. Eventually after attempts to fix the problem, the Joker is defeated and the initial equilibrium is restored with Batman keeping order once again. Vladimir Propp believed that narratives followed a strict structure which all contained 8 stock characters which are The Hero, The Villain, The Princess, The Donor, The Helper, The Father, The Dispatcher and the False Hero. This theory applies to both Batman and Batman Begins with Batman himself perfectly fitting the roles of The Hero. The Villain being The Joker in Batman and Scarecrow/Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins. The Father being Alfred in both Batman and Batman Begins. The Princess being Vicky Vale in Batman and Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins. The Helper is Alfred again in Batman and Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins. The fact that both of these narrative theories still apply so accurately to the new form of Action genre shows that even though time has passed and parts of the genre have developed, people are still writing the same stories at their core showing Action as a genre, hasn’t changed completely.

In spite of the fact that you can’t make a full comparison between Batman and Batman Begins due to the two directors having different visions of how they wanted to create a Batman movie. Both films do however, fulfil their genre roles, with Batman clearly being an Action-Adventure film and Batman Begins being an Action film. Batman has the ‘the light-hearted tone that characterized adventure cinema’ (Tasker 2015, p. 143) whilst also having the characteristics Neale talked about to make it an Action-Adventure film with its ‘propensity for spectacular physical action’ (Neale in Tasker 2004, p.71) and ‘a narrative structure involving fights, chases, and explosions’. (Neale in Tasker 2004, p.71). With Batman Begins being an action film, as Nolan often placed ‘the hero in increasingly thorny, and violent confrontations.’ (Pramaggiore 2011, p.394) and the violent spectacle being ‘the vehicle for expressing character development.’ (2011, p.394) as Pramaggiore said was central to the action genre. In many ways, the Action genre has changed over time, whilst not really changing at the same time, more merely adapting to the advancements in technology and the ever-changing interests of their potential audiences, forming the genre as it is today.