Volume 42
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Sunday, December 19, 2004
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Page 1 of 1
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This is from mtv.com
"Batman Begins" isn't supposed to be just a return to the "Batman" film franchise, but a return to the "Batman" comic book
readers know and love. Screenwriter David S. Goyer said that he wrote "Batman Begins" with those comic book fans in mind. The
question is, which comics?
Batman's story has been told and re-told over the years — even decades. Depending on the writer, characters in the Batman
gallery have somewhat different origins — in one version, Catwoman's alter ego is a prostitute. So how do you tell a story
about Batman's origins when you have so much source material from so many different mythologies, from so many generations?
Goyer knew immediately which Batmans he wanted to reference. Consider it his Batman canon: Frank Miller's noir take on
Batman's early career in "Year One," Jeph Loeb's "The Long Halloween" and its sequel, "Dark Victory" (which was written with
Tim Sale), and Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' 1970s work, which introduced the villain Ra's al Ghul. Those latter comics also
depict a pre-commissioner Jim Gordon as an honest but hard-boiled cop, develop allies like District Attorney Harvey Dent
into fiends like Two Face, and feature familiar but deadly villains such as the Joker, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow. They paint
a picture of Gotham not run by the freakish rogues' gallery, old-school mobsters like Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, but by
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and complicit in this are the corrupt cops on the force.
"There are huge gaps in the origin of Batman that have never been explored in the comic books," he said. "And we get to fill
in those gaps. We're telling a story that has never been told before, not in film, not in television, and to a certain extent,
not even in the comic books."
Batman Movie Countdown
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