20 Things You Didn't Know About Batman Begins
16. Co-Writer David Goyers Job Was To Be "Comic Book Guy"
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Filmmakers working on comic book properties love to promise geeks that they respect and cherish the source material, and then we get a Hulk movie where Bruce Banner is a mopey guy who fights dogs and hops in the sand dunes. Love his Batman films or hate them, at least Christopher Nolan has always been honest; while he always liked the character of Batman, he has openly confessed that he was by no means any kind of comic book expert, and one of the major reasons he hired Blade scribe David Goyer to help him carve out the script for Batman Begins was because Goyer was a comic book geek hell, had written comics. Nolan presumably felt that a collaboration between a guy who knew his geek history backward and forward and a guy who was a "comics virgin" would be a good balance. It wasnt always an easy collaboration; on Batman Begins, Nolan initially told Goyer he didnt like the idea of Dr. Jonathan Crane wearing a scarecrow mask, didnt understand why the hell Batman's costume had spiked gauntlets or impractically long ears. There were times when that drove me completely crazy, Goyer said in the book The Art and Making of the Dark Knight Trilogy, but it was also great. You want someone to push you, and youre willing to be pushed by Chris because hes so good and cares so much.