As far as Hollywood was concerned, Batman was dead. After Joel Schumacher dug Batman his grave with Batman Forever and subsequently pushed him in and covered the hole with dirt with his dire follow-up, Batman & Robin, the caped crusader looked to be pretty much done for. But then along came British director Christopher Nolan, who - off the back of brilliant movies such as Memento and Insomnia - possessed a unique and uncompromising vision for the Bat Man: grounding him in something resembling "reality." And so Batman Begins stars Christian Bale as a gritty, dark and modern Bruce Wayne, who finds himself trained by a shady organisation known as "The League of Shadows" under the tutelage of a mystery mentor played by Liam Neeson. The gritty world inherent to Nolan's reboot of the Batman mythos brought in a new generation of fans - fans who could appreciate the darker material and the extent to which Nolan goes to explain Batman and his arsenal as if they were grounded in reality; Batman Begins essentially made The Dark Knight cool again.