BATMAN BEGINS 20th Anniversary special with David Goyer

We're celebrating 20 years since the launch of the Dark Knight trilogy with BATMAN BEGINS co-writer David Goyer! It's a deep dive into everything that made the movie special and changed the pop culture landscape forever! Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 0:57Josh Horowitz?

  Batman does not appear until after an hour into the movie. I mean, like Warner Brothers had to be in a very interesting spot because you can't fathom a studio saying, sure, let's wait for half our running time before we see our hero in costume.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we, no, and they were not happy about that.

• 1:16Speaker 04

  Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now.

• 1:23Josh Horowitz?

  Hey guys, it's Josh and welcome to another edition of Happy Sad Confused. Happy 20th birthday to one of my favorite movies, Batman Begins. And we are celebrating with writer David Goyer. That is the main event on the podcast today. Thank you guys, as always, for checking out the show. If you're listening or watching, I appreciate you. Before we get to the main event today, as always, a reminder, check out all of our stuff. Early access, autographed merch, all sorts of cool stuff on our Patreon. Patreon.com/happy sad confused. I mention it every week because it is important to keeping this train running to let us make more of the cool stuff we do week in and week out. And I appreciate you guys for even checking it out and seeing if something makes sense for you. Patreon.com/happy sad confused.

• 2:08Josh Horowitz?

  Okay, let's talk about Batman. What a, what a job I have when I get to just talk about Batman. Um, so I was looking at the calendar and I saw the 20th anniversary was coming up for one of my favorite movies. Favorite Batman movies, favorite movies, period. I love Batman Begins so much. I don't need to tell you about Batman Begins, but you, but just to contextualize a little bit, this was of course Christopher Nolan. Joining the big leagues. I mean, obviously Memento was huge and then he did Insomnia, which was his first studio movie, but then. Being given the keys to the kingdom of Batman and then delivering like he did. Casting Christian Bale in this iconic role.

• 2:47Josh Horowitz?

  Liam Neeson, Killian Murphy. I mean, there are five, as I say in the conversation, I think there are five Academy Award winners in this cast. And I think three other Oscar nominees. Cast the hell out of it. It is such a well told story. And David Goyer is a huge part of that, as, as huge as anyone outside of Christopher Nolan. He got story credit for this. He is a co-writer on the film. And look up his resume. David Goyer has done it all. Having written so many comic book projects, but also even currently right now, you can check out Murder Bot, which he's an EP on. Sandman and Foundation, three ginormous shows right now with David Goyer's major credit on it.

• 3:26Josh Horowitz?

  This was a great deep dive into Batman Begins from its inception, from how it began, from how they determined what villains to use. The casting, the reception. If you love Batman, if you love Batman Begins specifically, you're about to enjoy the hell out of this conversation. I guarantee it. Forty-five minutes of Batman going in your ears and eyes right now. Enjoy my conversation with the one and only Mr. David Goyer. Mr. David Goyer, it's good to see you, man. And for a very good occasion, almost 20 years to the day. Batman Begins. Feel like 20 years, two years, a thousand years? How are you feeling, man?

• 4:03Speaker 03

  On one hand, it feels like I can't believe it's been 20 years. On the other hand, when I think back to what was going on in my life back then, it feels like another century. So, uh, yeah, 20 years and then perhaps like another three years prior to that when we started it.

• 4:23Josh Horowitz?

  Of course. Right, right. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today. These are the almost my most fun kind of conversations because like I didn't get a chance to obviously do the junket at the time and dive in and now with some some distance, we can really dive in hopefully in a fun way. Um, first, I mean, like we've talked before about many accomplishments in your career. Like where does where does this one stand for you? Does this one have a special place in your heart in terms of how it all came together?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, Batman Begins, um,

• 4:53Speaker 03

  well, first of all, it's for a variety of reasons, my favorite film of the trilogy. And, um, it's certainly in the top three things I've ever worked on in my career, things that I'm the most proud of. Uh, it's, it's also an instance, which is so rare in Hollywood, where, where everything lined up right and played out the way it should. And it almost never happens that way. So the whole thing was very dreamlike and and magical.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  And it was a, obviously an incredibly influential film in terms of the superhero genre, comic book genre. Uh, it, it very much put Chris, I mean, he, obviously he hadn't made films prior to that, but it, it catapulted Chris and myself and really everyone involved into, you know, a whole other level. So, um, and then personally for me, it was just this culmination of my life's journey. Uh, as a comic book reader, growing up in Michigan and and very much having been weaned on

• 6:15Speaker 03

  even before the Miller Batman's sort of Denny O'Neal, Neil Adams stuff. And, and, um, so the whole thing was just a surreal experience to have.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  To sort of port myself back to what it was like when I was 11 years old, you know, going to the local comic book store, writing letters to, you know, Marvel and DC and then flash forward where I was involved in participating in making this sort of seminal movie that changed Batman and that changed comic book movies.

• 6:56Josh Horowitz?

  So you alluded to this a little bit. I want to give folks that weren't maybe around or aware at the time, a little context of where everybody was at the time. So Chris, you mentioned, right? Has Memento. He's just coming off of Insomnia, which is kind of his first big studio film. Does fine, but then he's given the keys to Batman where a few years removed from Batman and Robin, which kind of like over indexed on kind of the pop

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Adam West Batman.

• 7:22Josh Horowitz?

  Right. You're in the throes of your Blade trilogy. I think you're about to go off and direct actually Blade Trinity. And the comic book movie world is in an interesting spot. The Spider-Man movies are going, so those are successful, but we're pre MCU. Give me a sense of like, with all that context, so Chris comes to you and we talked about this a little bit on our last conversation, but give me a little more info on like your reaction when he comes to you, what those initial conversations were and what you, what you thought of what he said to you when he brought this up.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, eight years prior had been the last Batman film, Batman and Robin, which was fairly or not the most kind of maligned of, of, of those four films and there was a perception. Well, even when Tim Burton's Batman came out, that was darker and more serious than people had expected. But then the movies progressively.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Got closer and closer and closer to the Adam West version, which was the public's general perception of what Batman was.

• 8:27Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  And in the intervening years, it just so happened that I was, happened to be personal friends with a lot of the people who had attempted to make the next Batman movie. I was friends, I mean, I still am friends with these people, but I was friends with Mark Protasovich, who'd written a fifth Batman movie that was supposed to be the next Schumacher film. We had talked about that and I was friends with Boaz Yakeen, who had written, I think, a Batman Beyond script. And I was friends with Andrew Kevin Walker, who had written a Batman Superman. And, and so I was kind of sitting on the sidelines every once in a while, having a

• 9:09Speaker 03

  meal with these guys, hearing about these, these, these next Batman films that had all stalled. And, and, and I think at one point, there was even an attempt to do an R-rated Aaron Off. Batman Year One.

• 9:24Josh Horowitz?

  Yep.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  And, and so I was just sitting here and kind of on the sidelines, watching all these Batman movies get developed and then, you know, fall into development hell. And, and I just had assumed, I'd heard that Chris might be developing a new Batman movie. And, and I remember telling my agent, well, it's never going to get made. It's just, there, it's, it's just.

• 9:56Josh Horowitz?

  Brilliant writers. These are like no slouches. The people you're talking about are like A-list writers.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  None of those guys could, could get it made and, and these other filmmakers and, and it's just sort of mired in, in all this stuff.

• 10:08Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  And, but the thing that I, and, and the irony too, is that it, it appears that, that, that Batman was a consolation prize for Tim, for, for Chris, rather, that, because he'd been developing Troy. And then at some point Troy was shifted away and given to, I think it was Wolfgang Peterson. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and, and so I, and, and I think Wolfgang Peterson had been developing Batman, Superman. Superman. So I think they did a swap and that was meant to be the consolation prize, I guess. And, and Chris was not Chris Nolan at the time, so I thought he was immensely talented

• 10:51Speaker 03

  and I knew him a bit socially, but I didn't think it would be successful or it would get off the ground. And the thing that I hadn't counted on was A, the sort of the pressure within Warner Brothers to get a new one going finally. And that B, the acknowledgement, and this is a rare opportunity when this happens within Hollywood and Warner Brothers, that Batman was broken. That, that something drastic had to be done, something different. And so, uh, it was sort of like the right time, the right place, because when we came

• 11:36Speaker 03

  in, what we were pitching was the exact opposite of Batman and Robin. Grounded as opposed to The conditions were right for Warner Brothers to be open to that at the time. Yep. And, um, when Chris first approached me, uh, I said I was too busy and secretly I didn't think it would get off the ground. And I remember I was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and we had a long conversation, an hour, an hour and a half. Just, he said, well, hypothetically, and I spitballed a lot of ideas and I think I mentioned the Scarecrow and, and Raj Agul and I, I was in particular, um,

• 12:19Speaker 03

  I really wanted, I just thought that one should use some villains that hadn't been used before to also signal to the world that we were doing something different. And so I remember going down the list of villains for Chris that I thought were still sort of tier A villains, but that hadn't been used and the ones that were interesting and whatnot. And I said that I-

• 12:48Josh Horowitz?

  That's a Catwoman and Joker off the table because they were just in mind so well.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  All of them, because I just said, we have to do something different.

• 12:56Josh Horowitz?

  Yep.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  And then I said, but I don't want to do it. And so incredibly, this kid who had dreamed of doing all this stuff, I passed on. What was it? And then, I don't know, it feels like three or four weeks later, Chris talked to some other people and he called back and he said, I've talked to some other people and I really feel it should be you, you know, working with me on this. And I was, you know, really flattered and we ended up working on it together. He already wanted to do an origin story and we were both intrigued with everyone, everyone

• 13:41Speaker 03

  had seen versions of like, you know, Joe Chill killing the parents and then the bat crashing through the window, but no one had seen, well, how did he get all those skills? And even, even Frank Miller's year one starts with him returning to Gotham City, having been away for a year or two, and it doesn't really talk about what happened during that period of time. So the other thing that's really interesting, when you're adapting something that's very well-known, whether it be a comic book or a novel, is narrative gaps-

• 14:15Josh Horowitz?

  Yes.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Are really enticing because that's, that a narrative gap is an opportunity-

• 14:20Josh Horowitz?

  Yep.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  To do something really interesting.

• 14:29Speaker 00

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• 14:57Speaker 01

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• 15:30Josh Horowitz?

  It is fascinating. Look, guys, I watched it again the other night. I've seen it so many times, but like even just clocking the fact that Batman does not appear until after an hour into the movie. I mean, this speaks to exactly what you're saying. Like Warner Brothers had to be in a very interesting spot because you can't fathom a studio saying, sure, let's wait for half our running time before we see our hero in costume.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we, no, and they were not happy about that.

• 15:58Josh Horowitz?

  I can't imagine.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  I mean, but it was, it was twofold. The first, the first thing that we felt, we, we felt that, no disrespect to the actors that had played Bruce Wayne prior to this, that as, as moviegoers in a lot of these superhero movies.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  We were always just kind of twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the character to get in the costume and for the movie to really begin. And so we said, well, why, why is that? And I think because unconsciously, a lot of work was put into sort of realizing that the hero, but not the man or the woman behind the mask.

• 16:40Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  And so we knew fairly early on that we needed to have the audience fall in love with Bruce Wayne and that we needed to have, we talked about this, an amazing action sequence, as amazing as something from Indiana Jones, that involved Bruce Wayne and not Batman. And that if we, you know, we just said, pretend Bruce Wayne is James Bond, or Indiana Jones, or whomever, if we can do a sequence that is just incredible and heart pounding, and he doesn't have the mask on, then, then people won't care whether or not he has the mask on. That'll just be the added sauce.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  And so that's how we came up with, you know, that massive escape from, you know, Raja Ghul's temple and them sliding down the ice and, you know, almost, all of that came from that. And, but even with that, I remember we did a chart and we did Donner Superman and we did some of the other Batman movies and, and we clocked the minute into the film that the characters had put on the costumes. And we weren't that much farther than that, you know?

• 18:01Josh Horowitz?

  Superman, the Donner Superman starts way late. You do not see him for a while.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so we, because that we were ready to prosecute the case with Warner Brothers and said, look at these four movies, you know, here's the amazing, here's Spider-Man, you know, here's the first Batman, whatever it was. That having been said, the first draft of Batman Begins, it was always nonlinear. But the first draft of Batman Begins. Did have a sequence of, of, of that, that happens later in the movie where police are coming in. Uh, and Batman's, uh, up top. I think he's in Arkham or somewhere else and, and you see that famous shot of like the cape spreading down and, and, um,

• 18:47Speaker 03

  him through the stairwell. There was a version that had us actually starting with that. So you saw Batman in the cape almost immediately and then flashback. But very quickly, thank God, we dispensed with that and started with, uh, you know, Bruce in, in, uh, in prison in Asia.

• 19:10Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, I, I will say, I love the whole movie.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Which is shocking. Oh, that was the other thing. The other thing. Sorry.

• 19:15Josh Horowitz?

  Taking him out of Gotham, taking him far into like.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. That was the other big thing is, is there was just a sense that Batman existed always in Gotham, which felt really parochial.

• 19:24Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  And made the world not feel real. And add to that, that so much of Gotham had always been shot like on the Warner's backlot. We just said, my God, we have to get him out of Gotham. And that led to us thinking, well, God, can we just start the movie outside of Gotham?

• 19:45Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  And just start with Bruce Wayne in Bhutan or wherever, or China. And, and how wild would that be? Because instantly you know that you're not in Kansas anymore.

• 19:55Josh Horowitz?

  Right. It, it's my favorite stuff in the film, to be honest, is him and Liam, the training, the, the montage, him on the ice and Liam goading him and saying the, his parents', uh, death is his father's fault is so emotional and so like powerful. And, and that's a credit to the writing. It's a credit to casting up, which I know was a big thing, like, you know, emulating again, Donner and like going for, you have five Academy Award winners cast in this film. I mean, it's, it's remarkable to see. Um, do you have, do you have, I mean, what, when you think of the film, like, do you have a favorite sequence, a favorite scene, a favorite character that you wrote for? What jumps out?

• 20:39Speaker 03

  I mean, I love this stuff in Bhutan as well. It, you know, originally it was meant to be Tibet. And part of the inception for that, pun intended, I had trekked into Tibet when I was younger. And I, we were casting around for where to have Bruce start and, and um, I showed Chris all of my photographs from Tibet. I think I'd been in Tibet for six weeks. Uh, and uh, I believe because of the possibility of releasing it in China, there was sensitivity to that. And so that's how it'd be Bhutan instead of Tibet.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  But um, it's, I never imagined that in some ways, some of my personal experiences traipsing the world would make it into a Batman film.

• 21:32Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  And so, so I have a lot of, uh, you know, the, the temple where Rajagul uh, and Ducard are hanging out is very similar to a lot of places that I visited when I was in Tibet. And, and personally, the run of Batman that I had always enjoyed the most as a kid was the Danny O'Neil, Neil Adams run, and Rajagul was a big part of that. So for all of those reasons, the League of Assassins, which we were forced to change to the League of Shadows.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Uh, but it's fine. Um, it was just all, all the things were sort of clicking into place for me. It was like, it was like the Batman that I had always wanted to see.

• 22:22Josh Horowitz?

  I also find it fascinating, like, you know, the way you guys were able to ground the story and yet still kind of teeter on the edge of comic booky stuff. Certainly towards the end, especially it's, it starts to feel a little comic booky in the best way. You still have like, you know, a hallucinogen dropped into the water and, and it, it gets, it embraces that a little bit more. But like, you don't do the Lazarus Pit. You've never kind of go.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  We talked about it.

• 22:46Josh Horowitz?

  Did you?

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I, I think there might've been a Lazarus Pit in one of the early treatments. Uh, did talk about it and, and, and, and, but again.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Cleaving this sort of Chris's ideology, it was a question of like, was the Lazarus Pit just a ceremony? Or did Ra's al Ghul, Dukar actually rise from it? It was, it wasn't clear.

• 23:16Josh Horowitz?

  Right, well, there's even the cheeky reference towards the end. He talks about is Ra's al Ghul truly immortal? And it's just sort of like there's, you guys kind of address it in your own, in your own way. Um, another thing that like makes this stand apart, especially given where we're at in comic book movies now is there aren't references to Superman or, you know, Green Arrow or anything outside of the Batman world. I mean, you could have easily, you know, mentioned Oliver Queen or Metropolis or something. Was that ever discussed? Were there ever other references outside of Batman lore?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  I'm sure, I'm, I brought up one or two and Chris probably nixed them. But, but we would have a lot of debates about, about. One of the reasons why Chris had me involved is because I was so immersed in the canon and, you know, it was like the Lineman and McCartney thing or whatever it was. You know, I was definitely like the poppier of the two of us. And, and we would debate, you know, I remember

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Chris wondering if we had to have the utility belt and I was a guest. Does it have to be yellow? And I said, I think so. It was like, well, what if we dull it down? And there was a lot of healthy debate back and forth. And I think, I think he arrived kind of at the right place, you know, the right recipe, you know, between all of that. Chris's big thing at the time, which I loved was he just wanted there to be a utility to everything. So that's where, you know, I was talking to DARPA and the memory fabric came from that, you know, you apply an electrical signal to the cape and it becomes rigid. That it all come from my research with DARPA and the, um,

• 25:05Speaker 03

  The Batmobile being this sort of bridging Humvee that came from that. And even there's a moment with that, you know, why does he have the bad airs while there's these

• 25:15Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Sort of like mini cellphone towers, you know.

• 25:18Josh Horowitz?

  Totally. Did, was Harvey Dent ever in the first one? Was, did you consider including Harvey in Batman Begins?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  I don't believe so.

• 25:28Josh Horowitz?

  Okay.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  I don't, he might, he might've been in some of the conversations, but I don't, I don't believe so.

• 25:34Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, one, one of the few characters, like original characters you create is, is Katie Holmes' character is Rachel, right? I mean, that could, again, you could have done Vicky Vale, it could have been Selina Kyle in a different context.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, we talked, we talked about Vicky Vale, there were a couple of other, like Silver Saint Cloud, I think is another character. And Vicky Vale partly was, um,

• 25:59Speaker 03

  you know, taking, again, nothing away from the other movies, but we were saying, okay, this is a different beast. And Silver Saint Cloud just felt like a thing that was too comic booky.

• 26:12Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  But I remember sort of going through the, the roster of potential names and we just, we just didn't find anyone in the canon that made sense and wasn't also

• 26:29Speaker 03

  sort of broke that naturalistic aesthetic that we were attempting to carry off.

• 26:37Josh Horowitz?

  One of the things I love about this film, and it's, it's in your work with Chris, it's also in the work he's written by himself and with others. It's like, there's such great symmetry and callbacks. He loves, Chris loves kind of like a callback to like a theme, a line, a moment. And this one is loaded with them and I love them all. It's like the, the mind your surroundings, why do we fall? Didn't you get the memo? It's not who I am, but what's underneath that defines me.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:03Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, do you remember that? Is that, was that something like that was, I don't know, integral to the conversations? Like, we have to like, set these up to knock it down in the third act.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, I mean, I think that is one of the reasons why

• 27:16Speaker 03

  when, every time Chris and I are working together, I mean, I think we both like that kind of storytelling where you're very clear, you know? One of the things that happened with all the Batman films and even the Superman film was that We identified

• 27:37Speaker 03

  what kind of story we wanted to tell irrespective of the villains before we started. And then we found villains that helps tell that story.

• 27:47Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Which I think is the exact opposite of how most comic book films are made.

• 27:53Josh Horowitz?

  That's right.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  We said, we want to tell a story about Bruce overcoming his fears and his biggest fear is growing up in the shadow of his father and disappointing his father and squandering

• 28:09Speaker 03

  these riches. And I mean it in every sense of the word that his father built, you know, the house. That's why we decided to burn down Wayne Manor because he's foolhardy and then he, because of his efforts, literally his father's home burns down, the house that his father built. Gotham burns down. And so that, that was the story we wanted to tell and it was influenced by a story called The Man Who Fell. Uh, but young Bruce falling down the well and, uh, and so that naturally led to fear, which is the scarecrow. And it, and then we talked about, well,

• 28:50Speaker 03

  is there someone in the rogues gallery of Ben that is a patriarchal character? And the obvious one is Roger Gould, because that's, that's the, the

• 29:02Speaker 03

  the function that the Raj fulfills, you know, in the comic books and, and, and so it made sense.

• 29:09Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. Well, let's talk a little on the casting front again, an amazing cast here and there are a lot of famous what ifs to this, to this, uh, group. It's pretty well known, I think by now on Raj that like you, you guys were also talking about a contemporary version of that character, a contemporary to Bruce. And I, and I, from what I, from what I read, what I gather, is Guy Pearce the one that was kind of like also seriously being considered for Raj?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, those are the two. It was Guy and, um, Liam.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  I, I think Chris had.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Sort of narrowed it down to those two. And I remember him calling me and us having a long conversation about which one. And

• 29:54Speaker 03

  and Chris had his own reasons, but I just remember thinking that Liam made a bit more sense because he was older. And I just thought instead of a fraternal, we were telling a story about. You know, Bruce growing up in the shadow of his father. So it just made more sense to me.

• 30:10Josh Horowitz?

  Right. The for, do you remember for Scarecrow, Killian obviously auditioned for for Bruce for Batman. First, do you remember that? Do you remember that screen test, watching that and thinking that he made sense?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  You know, I never saw the, I never saw the Killian one. Um, uh, and I know that Chris had spoken to you, but I don't believe he ever said to Heath. He'd spoken to Heath about Batman.

• 30:34Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Um.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, the screen tests that I saw were were, um.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Christian and, um. Why am I blanking?

• 30:47Josh Horowitz?

  Well, you, we talked about Jake once.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Jake Gyllenhaal.

• 30:49Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  And, um, it's funny because I was, I remember Jake trying to get to me through some people that we knew together. Uh, and uh. Look, it's hard to imagine that they both would have been great. It's, it's hard to undo Christian Bale now because he's in my mind, created like the iconic Bruce Batman.

• 31:16Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. And so do you remember? I mean, obviously Cavill ended up in your Man of Steel, but supposedly Cavill was also in the mix.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  He might have been. I, I, I don't know. I don't know. Generally, Chris would, I mean, we would have the conversations about who might be good. When we were in Chris's office and we were working on script.

• 31:35Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Uh, sort of pie in the sky conversations. And then generally, when it was like narrowed down.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Chris would loop me in and say, what are your thoughts on this or that?

• 31:49Josh Horowitz?

  Do you remember when Oldman came up? Because I mean, he was kind of on that baddie run and that's an exciting shift for him. And again, from what I read and I remember this, I think Chris Cooper was like the guy that you guys, Chris went to at first, which would have been great too.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  It might have been. I remember being very surprised at the choice of, and I wasn't in the meeting when, when Chris met with Gary. I remember being very surprised, primarily because Gary had played so many bad guys. But now that I'm a more experienced filmmaker, I realize that that's, it's really exciting to cast against type. And it's exciting for filmmakers and it's also exciting for the actors.

• 32:31Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 00

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• 33:40Josh Horowitz?

  Let's talk about the, a couple of things about the ending. I mean, the, the, the, the ending for Raj Agul on that train. You know, you, you've, you've had your experience with, with superheroes who are responsible for the death of people and causing controversy. Was there a big debate about whether like, how responsible he should be? Does Batman kill? Does he let him die? Like what that kind of discussion was for Raj Agul on that train?

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I remember that, um, you know, Chris and I had gone to New York for a few days and met with the editorial board of DC Comics. And we outlined our plans and said, you know, in, in your opinion, what are the kind of stations of the cross that we should hit for a good Batman story? And what are the things that we really should not do? And one of them was having him use a gun. And I could be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure one of them was that he shouldn't directly kill someone out of revenge.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  And, um, and, and I don't remember whether or not, forgive me, this is 23 years ago. That, that was also a concern on Warner Brothers' part, but it felt like that was the way we arrived at that was kind of like the right massaging morally of, of, of how to do it.

• 35:13Josh Horowitz?

  And then to be continued on Man of Steel, which would become a whole other thing.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

• 35:18Josh Horowitz?

  So the, the final scene is fantastic. Gordon and Batman on that rooftop. And really the relationship has been cemented and truly feels like the origin story is complete. And of course you end on this amazing tease, despite the fact that like Chris is very famous for always saying, one movie at a time. I'm not making, I'm not planning something for a sequel. So what was, was there a lot of debate? I mean, that is like teeing up very overtly. This is going somewhere. I guess talk to me through like what, I don't know what the discussion was about that final scene.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  It just felt like what we wanted to hint at was the escalation.

• 35:58Josh Horowitz?

  Yep.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  And and copycats and and Batman becoming a symbol that both positive and negative people would latch on to and that that was the the

• 36:16Speaker 03

  the way to complete the arc. And so we did not know how the movie would do. We did not know that there would be another film. Um, we didn't have necessarily ideas for another film. I mean, we were hoping maybe there would be, but we didn't know. And so we felt, okay, this works. The the reveal of the card works whether there's another film or not.

• 36:42Josh Horowitz?

  All right. Um. So there was no concrete talk at that point about even like, who would be a great Joker? What kind of a story we could tell? You left that. You said, look, we'll talk after this weekend and beyond, and then we can go from there.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  I remember I remember doing an interview after the film had come out and uh was I can't remember who the interview was with and someone said, well, do you have any ideas for a sequel? And I said, not really. And they said, if you had to spitball. And like an idiot, I I spitballed in the interview and that of course became this is what they're planning and and Chris, quite rightly was annoyed because he said.

• 37:24Josh Horowitz?

  Did you? Did you spitball what eventually became Dark Knight at all or no? Was it its own?

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Not really. I I mean, only in the vaguest sense of, you know, I I was spitballing. It was not. It was. That's not what one should do in an interview.

• 37:38Josh Horowitz?

  What do you remember about the reception? It was critically very well received. It was a big hit. But like from your perspective, what did it feel like those that weekend, the weeks after it came out?

• 37:48Speaker 03

  It just felt that we had uh we had turned a corner with Batman and those kinds of films. And the thing that excited me was that people who did not consider themselves to be Batman or comic book fans enjoyed the movie.

• 38:05Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  And um, you know, I remember uh

• 38:11Speaker 03

  I at one point, when I was working on the project, I was engaged to a woman. Uh, we didn't end up getting married and

• 38:20Speaker 03

  we had parted ways and I remember her emailing me.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  She had, she was traveling the world for about four months and she emailed me, she was in Cairo and she saw Batman Begins. And she said, oh my God, I get it now. I get what you were working on. I had no idea. I had no idea. And it was, those were kind of fun emails to get. I just had no idea.

• 38:45Josh Horowitz?

  Do you remember the first time you saw the film complete? The music?

• 38:51Speaker 03

  I do, but prior to that, there was a, a really special screening where, um, uh, cause I was only on the set a few times where Chris and Emma arranged to show me some dailies and some scenes. They were still making the film. So I, I went to one others and they screened about 20 minutes of material for me. And, um,

• 39:19Speaker 03

  I, I, I just left my body, you know, when I saw it because I was just, I saw a lot of the stuff in Iceland and I just, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and, um,

• 39:35Speaker 03

  God, I don't remember the first time I saw the whole movie all the, all the way together, which is crazy.

• 39:41Josh Horowitz?

  You've, you've, this film has been very influential. I mean, in, in a thousand different ways and like we've seen it in the comic book genre. We've seen it outside of the comic book genre. I mean, like I remember like Casino Royale came pretty a couple of years later and everybody was like, this is in a good way. It's Batman Begins for, for Bond. I mean, did you immediately clock the influence of this film in the subsequent years?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Sure. Because what would happen is the same thing that happened after Blade is I would go on, on these meetings. Three or four months after the film had come out. And suddenly, everyone was talking about how, oh, you know, we want what you did for Batman Begins, but for this character. It became a, we want the Batman Begins for X. We want the Batman Begins, which was, which meant, I guess, this sort of restructuring, you know, re-expression, back to the basics. Casino Royale was very much viewed as

• 40:42Speaker 03

  the Batman Begins for Bond. And, and a lot of films were made and or attempted made that way. And then I had the same thing with Blade, which is like, oh, we want, we want to do what you did for vampires, but with werewolves or, you know.

• 40:58Josh Horowitz?

  Were there, are there any wrong lessons, you think, that any films took from?

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course, because the wrong lesson is, is you can't chase the fad. Because by the time you get the movie made, it'll be three or five years from now and the conditions that the world is in could be completely different. And, but that's, Hollywood is always reductive active that way is they just, oh, now everything's going to be Batman Begins, the Batman Begins version of something. Or with The Dark Knight, it's, it's gonna be The Dark Knight, but we're gonna make The Darker Knight, or The Even Darker Knight Still, or The Even, which is why, um, you know, it will be interesting now to see like the gun version of Batman come out,

• 41:43Speaker 03

  which will probably be a very different version and, and probably a welcome version, because now there's been 20 years of really dark Batman.

• 41:52Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, between you guys and what Matt did, obviously, it almost feels like it's time for an interesting pendulum shift back towards Adam West.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Which is why people have said, how do you, you know, how are you reacting to the trailers? I've not seen the film yet for the new Superman film, and I love them. And it's not Man of Steel at all.

• 42:11Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  But, and it, it, because I came from that world, it would not have occurred to me to use crypto. But when crypto shows up, I've just got a big grin on my face.

• 42:23Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. But crypto would have had no place in vibe of what you were doing. It wouldn't have, it wouldn't have worked.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:30Josh Horowitz?

  So where are you at? When we last spoke a year or two ago, we talked comic movies, which were such a big part of your filmography, especially in kind of the first section of your career. And you were kind of like, I did what I did. I'm very proud of it. I'm in a new kind of part now. Are you more receptive now? I know you were like cheekily talked about Blade recently. Like, where are you at?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  I'm pretty much still not in a comic book Blades. I mean, I've got,

• 43:00Speaker 03

  you know, I'm an executive producer of Murabot, which is out right now, and Foundation coming back on July 11th, and Sandman, which is comic book, coming out July 3rd. But

• 43:14Speaker 03

  I think that's probably, I've got a new project that I'll be going to market with next month. It is not comic book. It's still genre, but not comic book. But, look, I, I go back and forth on, all the time on, you know, oh, they should have Goyer do the new Blade. They should have Goyer do the Blade. Part of me thinks it would be fun, but part of me thinks, I did so far that definitive Blade, and it's a mistake. And I remember Chris advising me not to work on the Affleck Batman, just because it's like, it's confusing. You know, we did one. Just stick with that.

• 43:58Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. What do you make? I mean, we were talking about Blade a couple of years back. This is like the most plagued, like, I don't know why they can't crack this. This is insane.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  I don't either, because in my mind, I think Blade is a relatively simple story. It's not complicated. And I always think about, when you embark on a movie like this, you have to distill down, what is the promise of the movie? Right? So the promise of Blade, a new Blade is that it should have insane ass kicking. It should be pretty scary, might be R rated, and it doesn't have to be, it should not be complicated. It should be a simple story. So I don't know why. It's been so hard.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  I really, I have no idea why. I'm baffled. I've sat on the sidelines and rehearsed all these an amazing actor. I don't, I don't know why.

• 45:02Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, kudos to him for sticking through all these different iterations. He's obviously devoted to this character. He wants to make it work. But I almost wonder if like Wesley stopped showing up and being such a crowd pleaser and Deadpool Wolverine almost complicated it. They're like, wait a second. They still love Wesley. What do we?

• 45:17Speaker 03

  And I thought that was cool, too. But it's confusing also if you're trying to do another one. It's, it's, yeah, it may have been just an acknowledgement that, yeah, we can't crack it right now. I have no idea. I haven't been involved in conversations.

• 45:34Josh Horowitz?

  All good. All right. Well, you mentioned that the project you're working on, always a very full plate. Sandman about to come back. Foundation now it's third season. I really, I've really dug Murderbot. I had a chance to catch up with Skarsgård recently. That's a great one.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  I watched that. I was trying to figure out if I could go to your event, but it didn't work out. But talking about casting against type, it's so delightful seeing Alexander be funny and awkward and weird and just, he's clearly having the time of his life right now.

• 46:03Josh Horowitz?

  Oh, yeah. Which is honestly closer. You probably know him better than me, but like closer to who he really is, like that odd sense of humor.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  He's a goofball. He's a goofball and a lovely, lovely guy. I remember one time we were doing a, a, like a marketing Zoom with a bunch of million boxes and he, he, he was, there was an odd background behind him. It turned out he was in his like daughter's bedroom or something like that. But it's great. He's so fun and so delightful. And it's also really nice. I know David Desmelchon, you know, fairly well, and he gets to play, once you get to the latter half of the season, a very different role than he's known for too, which is really lovely. And Paul and Chris could not be, I will say that, that's been another project that's been.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  God, most projects are so hard and that one's been so easy and nice and there's no friction and it's just been delightful.

• 47:02Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, good, smart guys. I didn't realize they were part of it until I started to like research for Alexander and they haven't worked together in forever, it feels like, directly. And it's been really cool to see them come back together.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:11Josh Horowitz?

  For this. Um, thank you, man, as always, for, uh, for the chat and reminiscing. This is again, for a very good cause. Twenty years almost to the day Batman Begins came.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 47:22Josh Horowitz?

  Changed your life.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Thank you for your show and your advocacy. It's, uh, that it's, I'm a fan. I, I, I watch, I watch most of the episodes.

• 47:31Josh Horowitz?

  I appreciate you, buddy. Uh, well, in a few years, we'll do the twentieth for, uh, Dark Knight and continue and continue and continue.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 47:37Josh Horowitz?

  All right. Thanks, man, as always.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't supposed to do this by Josh.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  As wish lists grow, you know where to go. Head to Ulta Beauty. We have gifts they'll love from brands like Tato One and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. Shop beauty faves to give or keep from Shark Beauty, Sol de Janeiro, and more. Not sure what they want? You can't go wrong with Baumann, Clinique, or Redken. And don't forget to put yourself on the list. Book a salon moment or add a little more sparkle to your season. Shop holiday in store or at Ulta.com. Ulta Beauty.