Batman Begins 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Batman Begins 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

The League of Shadows, Blacker than Ever

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 21, 2018

Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy occupies a special place in the director's filmography, if for no other reason than because the three films remain a high water mark in the ups and downs of Warner's decades-long collaboration with DC Comics. Like Tim Burton before him, Nolan demonstrated that a Batman film could embody cinematic artistry while still appealing to hardcore comic book fans. It's a delicate mix, and one that Warner and DC have been desperately struggling to replicate ever since Nolan turned his talents elsewhere upon concluding his trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises in 2012.

It's a sign of this trilogy's importance to Warner that it has given the recent 4K remasters of the Dark Knight their own three-film set, as well as releasing them singly and in the seven-film Christopher Nolan Collection. As noted in previous reviews, the inclusion in the Collection of every feature film that Nolan has made in the previous twelve years reflects the director's conviction that 4K UHD is the definitive home video technology of our era and the best way for his films to be seen outside of theatrical venues. In support of that conviction, Nolan has personally overseen every aspect of these releases, from element selection to film transfer to color correction to HDR grading to choice of sound formats—and even packaging. Rarely has the notion of "director approved" been more apt or more literally true.

Batman Begins was Nolan's first venture into the Dark Knight's realm, and in one respect its makeover for release in 4K has been more elaborate than the rest of the trilogy. Begins is the only film of the three where the accompanying standard Blu-ray disc isn't just a reissue. Instead, the director has had the film's 2008 Blu-ray release remastered so that it is now spread over two discs, with the feature on one and the extras on another. Although the same 1080p master has been used, it has been re-encoded at a substantially higher average bitrate, with the old VC-1 encoding replaced by the now-standard AVC codec and the previous Dolby TrueHD soundtrack supplanted by DTS-HD MA. Despite these technical updates, the resulting Blu-ray remains something of a throwback to Warner's earliest releases, immediately beginning to play the film without any interim stop at a menu. Indeed, the new 1080p disc of Begins doesn't appear to have any menu other than a popup for changing language options—an omission that may reflect shortcuts taken in the rush to get all seven films in the Nolan collection completed simultaneously. Perhaps the same rush accounts for the unfortunate omission from the new release of key extras from the 2008 original. (For more on this, see the "Special Features and Extras" section below.)

Of course, the real attraction of this release is the UHD disc, sourced from a new 4K scan of the original camera negative, then color-corrected and HDR under the director's supervision. Despite a few glitches, it's a stunning presentation and one that may prompt a reevaluation of the film it brings so vividly to life.

Greg Maltz's Blu-ray review of the original 2008 release of Batman Begins provides a suitably spoiler-free introduction to the film, stopping short of the film's extended finale in which Christian Bale's Batman saves Gotham City from a gas attack by Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow—and confronts the Scarecrow's mysterious boss, who believes that Gotham is due for an apocalyptic "reckoning". For the sake of newcomers, I won't elaborate further, but it struck me on this viewing just how carefully Nolan and co-writer David S. Goyer appear to have planned out the entire trilogy in advance, so that watching Begins after you've seen The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises offers an enriched experience, lending new resonance to numerous events from one's knowledge of what the future holds for these characters. I was initially underwhelmed by Batman Begins, but I'm now inclined to rate it much higher. Unlike its two successors, both of which suffer from excessive length and overstuffed plotting, Begins has a clear narrative arc and a briskly entertaining pace. And it doesn't overstay its welcome with multiple endings and existential posturing. Once the threat has been defused, we're treated to a simple coda introducing the bat signal and a quick reference to the next film's villain—and then it's over.

Batman Begins 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

(Note: Screenshots accompanying this review are 1080p captures from the 2008 standard Blu-ray. Additional captures can be found here.)

All three of Nolan's Dark Knight films were shot by his frequent collaborator Wally Pfister, who was nominated for cinematography Oscars for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and won for the director's Inception. (He was also nominated for the handsome period style of The Prestige.) Of the three Batman films, Batman Begins exhibits the most dramatic upgrade in its translation to UHD, simply because its ten-year-old 1080p presentation, even newly remastered, can't hope to compete with a new 4K scan. Begins' UHD rendition is a reminder of just how visually fresh and sophisticated Nolan's vision of Gotham was from the beginning of the trilogy and the degree to which the director's well-known preference for real locations and practical effects created an aesthetic that is unique in the ever-expanding world of comic book movies.

Warner's 2160p, HEVC/H.265-encoded UHD disc breathes new life into Batman Begins' varied frames. The increase in fine detail is striking, whether in textures on the stony sides of the well down which the young Bruce Wayne falls, the dark tunnels from which a swarm of bats fly toward him, the individual hairs in Liam Neeson's neatly cropped beard, the lines and textures of the various costumes worn by the League of Shadows (and, later, Batman's own costume), or the power suits sported by the members of Wayne Enterprises' board. HDR grading provides a notable boost in contrast throughout, as well as a finer delineation of the film's copious blacks (check out the collection of bats idling and hanging in the Batcave; on the Blu-ray, they're shapes in the dark, but on the UHD they look like, well, bats). The aerial shots of Gotham that have become something of a series motif acquire a dreamy and often dangerous sense of immediacy in 4K. Indeed, in this presentation, the Gotham of Begins looks almost surreal, especially at night, as compared to the hyper-realism of the city in the later two films, where Nolan and Pfister switched to IMAX cameras for their overhead urban vistas. In Begins, however, Gotham still shares a kinship with the make-believe world created by Tim Burton in 1989, and the 4K/HDR treatment brings out that element of the film in a way I haven't seen since I experienced the film theatrically.

There is, however, one fly in the UHD ointment, and it's a flaw that I was surprised to encounter at 4K. The disc exhibits a few instances of that old video annoyance, aliasing. Most are fleeting, but a sustained example occurs at time mark 45:08 on the steps of Wayne Manor. At this resolution, and with today's software tools, aliasing should be a thing of the past. I consider it more of a video problem than a 4K problem and have adjusted the disc's scores accordingly.

(Note: The original version of this review incorrectly stated that this UHD was derived from the camera negative. That assertion was based on incorrect information supplied by Warner Brothers. It has now been confirmed from multiple sources that the 4K/HDR master was derived from an interpositive, at Christopher Nolan's express instruction and contrary to Warner's standard policy, which provides that 4K scans should utilize the existing element with the greatest resolution. We regret the error; the scores for Video and 4K have been adjusted.)

Batman Begins 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 soundtrack for Batman Begins has been re-encoded for UHD and Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, as compared to Dolby TrueHD in the original 2008 release. I have been advised that there was also some degree of remixing for near-field listening, which is a common sonic adjustment applied to home theater releases. Greg Maltz's review found the TrueHD presentation satisfactory but underwhelming—he termed it "polite"—but that description certainly doesn't apply to the new lossless DTS mix, which has all the "detail, impact and dynamic punch" that Greg found lacking in the original release (at least it does on my review system).

Note that the same remastered DTS-HD MA soundtrack also appears on Begins' remastered Blu-ray, which tracks the additional language options of the UHD, i.e., French and Spanish tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1 and subtitles in English SDH, French and Spanish. The list is somewhat shorter than the language options of the 2008 Blu-ray, which are listed here at the top of the page.

Batman Begins 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The newly created Extras disc contains all of the extras listed in Greg Maltz's review, with one important exception. The "In-Movie Experience" that overlaid a small window in a corner of the screen displaying concept art work, behind-the-scenes footage and commentary by various personnel has been dropped. While it is understandable, given the time constraints under which this new release was prepared, that Warner and Nolan decided to skip the additional authoring challenge of integrating this extra into the remastered feature disk, it should have been possible to include the footage fom the "In-Movie" window as a separate extra, perhaps with time marks to direct viewers to the appropriate point in the feature. The effect would have been the same as the "Focus Point" featurettes on films like the Harry Potter series, which offer the option to play supplemental material while viewing the film or separately. Whatever the reason, the "In-Movie" footage isn't here. If you're a completist or an extras fan, hold on to the 2008 release.

Batman Begins 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Whether acquired singly, as part of the Dark Knight Trilogy or included in the Christopher Nolan Collection, Batman Begins makes for a superior 4K disc that even those who aren't Batman enthusiasts—and yes, they do exist—should consider adding to their UHD collection (despite the aliasing glitch). I used to regard Begins as the weakest film in the trilogy, but now, after experiencing these new 4K presentations of all three films, it ranks with the best. Highly recommended.