‘Batman Begins’: Christopher Nolan’s Trilogy to Stream on Netflix to Celebrate Film’s 20th Anniversary!!

Netflix has just turned the Bat-signal on to attract all subscribers and it’s not a hoax. In order to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Batman Begins, the streamer decided to bring the whole trilogy helmed by Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) into the catalog. With entries still ranked among the best superhero movies ever made, the trilogy still serves as reference for tone and how to create the perfect villain. You can stream all movies as early as today.

It’s baffling to realize, but it’s been almost 20 years since Nolan decided to bring a different approach to the superhero genre. The British director decided to set Batman Begins in a more grounded version of Gotham City, and made the bold move of only showing the title character one hour into the movie. Before that, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has a whole arc in which he loses his parents, flees Gotham, spends a long time training with ninjas and uses military gadgets to create his crime-fighting persona. The bet more than paid off: Batman Begins made over $375 million in theaters and launched a new era for DC superheroes in cinemas.

But nothing could prepare fans for what came next. In 2008, The Dark Knight debuted in theaters and introduced to moviegoers the definitive version of Batman’s biggest and most famous villain: The Joker. Played by the late Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain), the villain set a new bar for the superhero world and earned the actor a posthumous Oscar for his unforgettable performance. The movie also set a new standard in terms of big screen performance: it was the first big-budget movie filmed with IMAX cameras — which later became a signature Christopher Nolan approach — and made over a billion dollars at the box office, making it the highest-grossing superhero movie ever at the time of its release.

The “Batman Formula” Aged Pretty Well

Even though many consider The Dark Knight Rises to be the weak link of the trilogy, the movie also managed to get past the $1 billion milestone at the box office. Still, it ranks higher than Batman Begins on Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 87%. The Batman formula is still reproduced to this day, with many superhero movies trying to ground its characters and powers in order to mimic the realistic tone of the Nolan trilogy.

Aside from Bale, the cast of the Batman trilogy also featured Morgan Freeman (Lioness), Gary Oldman (Slow Horses), Michael Caine (The Great Escaper), Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Deuce), Tom Hardy (Venom: The Last Dance), Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders), Liam Neeson (Taken), Aaron Eckhart (The Brick Layer), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Killer Heat), Marion Cotillard (The Ice Tower), Ken Watanabe (Tokyo Vice) and David Dastmalchian (Late Night With The Devil), who recently spoke to Collider about the surreal story of how he was cast in The Dark Knight.