It feels like forever ago now, but Christian Bale was the new Batman once upon a time. After being cast to play the DC icon inBatman Beginsback in the 2000s, Bale reflected on when he told people about what the upcoming movie involving the caped crusader would be like.
While Christopher Nolan’sBatmantrilogy is now regarded as one of the best superhero adaptations put to screen, it appears not everyone felt such a grounded take on the character would work. According to Bale himself, when he told people what they had planned to do with Batman, he was met with laughs.
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In an interview with The Washington Post, Bale, who stars as Gorr in the newMarvel Studios movieThor: Love and Thunder, said that people laughed at him when he told them that the Batman movie he was going to be in was going to take the character seriously at the time. “I would [tell people] we’re going to sort of do Batman, but take him seriously. I had tons of people laugh at me and just say, ‘well that’s just not going to work at all,’” Bale said. Looking back, Bale definitely appreciates that not only were the naysayers wrong in this case but that the Batman trilogy he participated in aided in how the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to be. “So, it’s wonderful to be a part of a trilogy that proved those people wrong. I’m not certain if it kick-started [the MCU] but it certainly helped along the way.”
The naysayers were proven wrong sinceBatman Beginswas met with unanimously positive reviews, and the Nolan trilogy played a huge part in how superhero movies have become as popular as they are. However, it also goes to show how much different the public’s perception of superhero movies was at the time. The reason why people laughed at Bale was not so much a shot at Bale or the studio as much as it was becauseBatman and Robin, which is widely regarded as the worst superhero movie ever made, really left such a negative impact on the superhero genre that several years later, audiences still weren’t keen on watching another Batman movie.
The fact that superhero movies have become this immensely popular really shows how far they’ve come since the release ofBatman Begins. Though the MCU propped the genre up to the heights it’s at now, they may not have done so had it not been for Bale andNolan’s Batman trilogyshowing studios how to properly make an extensive superhero movie series first. To say that the Nolan Batman trilogy is good wouldn’t do it enough justice. It shows movie studios how to make a superhero movie feel like it was taking place in a realistic setting, which set a template for how Marvel Studios started its cinematic universe.
It is amazing to think that at one point in time, superhero movies were basically a laughingstock in Hollywood. WhileBatman and Robinis the poster boyfor bad superhero movies from the late-1990s and early-2000s, that movie was only one installment of what was a batch of terrible superhero movies to come out around that exact time period. Now there have been some pretty bad superhero movies that have come out since the genre became the box office powerhouse it is now, but the ratio of good to bad movies favored the latter back then. It also serves as a warning that as popular as they are now, that doesn’t mean things won’t go back to what they were before.
