6. Batman Begins (2005)
Batman had been left for dead after the painful Schumacher pun-fests Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Warner needed to do something drastic to bring the franchise back to acclaim, so they gave the reigns of one of their biggest licenses to indie wonder Nolan. He took a genre that, even with its best entries (X-Men 2 and Ramis Spider-Man films), maintained an air of camp unbelievability and brought it down to Earth. He took the approach that had gifted him with success previously and applied it to Hollywoods blockbuster machine. But while Batman Begins has Nolans fingerprints all over it, the film still has some typical blockbuster elements, likely stemming from studio requirements. The film was incredibly revolutionary; origin stories went from a quick ten minutes at the beginning to get the film going (see Ramis Spider-man) to dominating the first film in a series. Although with The Avengers Marvel have stepped away from this, when they were starting their cinematic universe, a lot of their films used Begins as a template. Iron Man may not be dark, but it maintains the realism that Nolan breathed into the genre. What a lot of these films dont understand is that it wasn't just the lengthened origin that made Begins great; it was how the entirety of the plot ties directly into the character. Many other directors appear too afraid to gamble the entire film on their characters beginnings; this summers The Amazing Spider-Man attempted to ape this method, but gave up after the one hour mark, spiralling down into an anticlimactic showdown that related little to the character and his origins.