IGN has officially been around for two and a half decades, and has borne witness to a lot of monumental shifts in video game and entertainment culture in that time. To celebrate our lengthy tenure on this earth, IGN's 25th Anniversary Feature series will hone in on these shifts, and the movies, video games and TV shows that helped define them. Today, we’re looking back at the birth of the gritty reboot in film, which came via the revival of both Batman and Bond!
Darker. Grittier. More realistic. For a while it was something we came to expect, from Superman to Snow White. But like every trend worth its salt, the “gritty reboot” had to be a good idea at least a few times. Even something that’s become a tired cliché had, in its past, a window of actually invigorating creativity.
In the mid 2000s, two of cinema’s biggest franchises reinvented themselves at the same time–Batman and Bond. These films created a high-water mark for the trend and brought a Hollywood shorthand into the mainstream consciousness.
Where the gritty reboot is concerned, the trend saw its pinnacle in 2005 and 2006 with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale. On top of both being enjoyed by fans and critics alike, the two films were created using incredibly similar recipes. Both are entries into franchises that date back to 1960s, both are the only true origin story on film for either Batman or James Bond, and both take a decidedly more grounded approach than their predecessors. And the legacies of both have benefited from releasing such successful reboots.
Of course, nearly every trend follows a pattern and the gritty reboot is no different. First, there’s the introduction of a new idea, second comes an intriguing building period as creatives suss out just what the value of this new idea is, third there’s the zenith where form and function work together and something genuinely great comes out of it, and fourth comes the inevitable slow decline that wears out the idea’s welcome.
The Introduction
Reboots were nothing new by the mid-2000s. 90s cinemas were littered with 60s TV show reboots from Lost in Space to The Avengers to The Saint, while Bond and Batman saw more subtle tweaks to their respective formulas in the decade.
Martin Campbell directed not only Casino Royale, but also Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as Bond in 1999’s Goldeneye, which, to the director’s mind, didn’t really count as a reboot.
“It was just thinking, ‘Well, it's a Bond film, let's pull it into the '90s. Let's sort of make it our own, basically,’ which is what we did, but it was not so much a reboot as an extension of now we had Pierce and so forth. … A lot of people did ask … ‘Should we reboot this thing? Is it past its sell-by date?’ So that was the challenge,” Campbell told IGN.
Meanwhile in 90s Gotham, three actors and two very different directors took a crack at portraying Batman.
“The last Batman film that had come out prior to Batman Begins was, I think, Batman & Robin, which was the fourth in a series. And as the series had progressed, the movies had become increasingly more comical, more like the Adam West TV show, goofier. They didn't really take themselves seriously. And as the series progressed, it also became less successful,” screenwriter David Goyer told IGN in an interview.
But simply recasting or hiring a new director does not a reboot make, certainly not a gritty reboot. For Batman Begins and Casino Royale, their more grounded approach has roots a decade earlier and in a different medium.
Comics in particular saw a trend in the ‘80s leaning into darker stories aimed at adult audiences. This included titles like Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s work with characters like Daredevil. Most notable where Batman Begins is concerned was Miller’s work with Batman in The Dark Knight Returns and the gritty reimagining of Bruce Wayne’s origins in Batman: Year One. Miller’s Batman is, to this day, some of the more enduring work with the character. So here, we start to see the stars aligning. The Caped Crusader was both primed for something new and had a proven track record for it.
The Intriguing Build
In 1997, Joel Shumacker’s Batman & Robin was not gritty, dark, or realistic, to say the least. It was a flashy, over-the-top box office failure that nobody seemed to like at the time. Lorenzo di Bonaventura was President of Feature Production at Warner Bros. in the years when they were trying to figure out what to do next.
“We saw that direction had run its course. It was time to embrace a new course,” di Bonaventura said to IGN.
The same can be said for 2002’s Die Another Day, the flashy, over-the-top box office failure that was the Bond entry prior to Casino Royale.
“I think with invisible cars, with ice palaces, and snowboarding off of ice floes and so forth, it was too much,” Campbell reflected. “I think it just got to the point of just, it was starting to lose it, as it were. And the producers knew it too. They just felt it had just gone too far and they had to do something to pull it back.”
Both of these storied franchises found themselves at a crossroads. The fact that they’d both been trending downward, critically and commercially, for some time created an environment where studios were willing to give just about anything a try.
“So to a certain extent, the Batman franchise was in the dumps. It had been degraded. And so I think it was because of that, that Warner Bros. was willing to try something, in their opinion, more extreme, which is ironic because extreme meant just really taking it seriously,” Goyer said.
Adding to that idea, di Bonaventura said, “How we perceived comic books, graphic novels was changing at that moment … we began to look at them with a greater appreciation as a company. I think we were a little ground-setting in that respect and it helped. I don't know if we were the exact first ones to do it that way, but that is what happened over the next few years in the movie businesses that comic books became more elevated in what they represented.”
Batman of course had already seen a seismic shift in tone once before. Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 was a dark, gothic dreamscape, particularly compared to the almost vaudevillian original series from the ‘60s. But more than 20 years had passed between the two.
Bond, meanwhile, had never quite pivoted so drastically, instead enjoying a gradual, decades-long slide from Cold War-era kitsch and spycraft to invisible cars with a few minor course corrections along the way. The Bond franchise would ultimately turn to franchise veterans Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to write Casino Royale, while Batman went looking for fresh-faced auteurs like Darren Aronofsky and, of course, Christopher Nolan.
“When Chris took Batman,he really needed a take for himself to convince himself that he could do it,” di Bonaventura recalled. “So to me, when you suddenly have a very talented filmmaker willing to jump into a space like this you jump right with them.”
The Zenith
Batman Begins (2005)
Batman Begins was a hard reboot, an origin story stretching past pearls hitting the ground in slow motion. The film explored what it would take to make a man dress up like a bat and go full vigilante to an extent not seen in previous entries in the Batman franchise. He travels the world to turn his hate and privilege into something productive. There’s a grounded nature, at least an explanation for everything from the Batmobile to the Batsuit.
“When Chris and I started working on Batman Begins, the idea of doing something grounded was pretty baked into the concept,” Goyer said. “First of all, Chris tends to be a very grounded filmmaker. I would say it was Chris as a filmmaker, to a lesser extent, my own desire to do something more serious, more like the Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams Batmans or more like Miller's Batmans. And then just the fact that the franchise was broken.”
Introducing the character of Rachel Dawes was unlike any other Batman film as well. She became just as tied to Bruce’s origins as Batman as those slow-motion pearls and became a love interest that had actual bearing on Bruce as a character and on what it means to be Batman.
And to top it all off, it worked. The film was a commercial and critical success which meant a brand new direction for the Batman franchise–and a tipping point for the gritty reboot as a viable trend.
Casino Royale (2006)
Like Batman, the James Bond franchise was missing a proper origin story for it’s hero. Despite recasting across half a century, the producers had never ventured into Bond’s first outing as a Double O.
“They had the rights to Casino Royale so we all went into that saying, ‘We have to completely reboot this thing. We have to bring it back to earth and really make a grittier, tougher, make a tougher Bond, much more like the books.’ And if you read the book, Craig is much more like the original Bond character, much more serious, and a darker Bond,” Campbell said.
One thing the franchise has always done, though, is adjust to the latest trends. Blacksploitation was one the rise in the early ‘70s, so they made Live and Let Die. The most obvious example came at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me. In theaters the closing titles read “James Bond will Return in For Your Eyes Only.” However, a film called Star Wars was released just a few months prior to The Spy Who Loved Me, so EON decided to make Moonraker next instead.
All that to say, when they saw the success Batman Begins had in 2005, Bond did what Bond does and adapted to the landscape. While Purvis and Wade wrote the initial draft, Paul Haggis was brought on in late 2005 to polish the script and even told reporters explicitly where his inspiration came from, saying, “We’re trying to do for Bond what Batman Begins did for Batman.”
Admittedly the story in 2006’s Casino Royale is more or less a direct narrative adaptation of the original Ian Fleming novel. So Vesper Lynd, the love interest that has a real impact on Bond’s character, a notable departure for the franchise, had always been a part of Casino Royale. However the formula that had been entrenched in the Bond Franchise since Goldfinger, a colorful villain with an outlandish plot to destabilize the world featuring idiosyncratic henchman and an Aston Martin full of gadgets at Bond’s disposal, was certainly not the focus of Casino Royale. Instead there’s a weightier investigation into Bond’s motivations and what drove him to become the cold bastard he’s been on screen all these years.
And so the Gritty Reboot had two impressive new calling cards. Two of the most iconic characters of all time had successfully navigated the darker, more tonally realistic waters and come out shiny, new and profitable. There is, however, that fourth part of the trend pattern…
The Slow Decline
One success may be a fluke, but two is a sure thing in Hollywood. The one-two punch of Batman Begins and Casino Royale spawned a reshaping of any franchise that felt the need to reboot.
“I remember after Batman Begins, I was invited to various studios to see if we could do the Batman Begins or the Dark Knight version of various other franchises. I remember at one point Paramount wanted me to do the Dark Knight version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or everything was the Dark Knight version of this or the Batman Begins version of that,” Goyer said.
Goyer would of course go on to write the screenplay for Man of Steel, setting a darker tone for the entire Snyderverse. Planet of the Apes came back with a prequel reboot that riffed on the ideas presented in the originals, but played it much darker by the time they were done. The Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films, the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes, Fantastic Four, Snow White and the Huntsman… they all came to theaters with the same darker color palette and determination to explore more dramatic themes in the wake of Batman Begins and Casino Royale
“I think after the success of those films, I think for a while you saw this proliferation of really dark takes on some of these superhero shows and superhero concepts and franchises,” Goyer said. “But the most successful versions are products of their time. And these things are cyclical, so after having seen a ton of these really dark movies, sometimes it's nice to go back again and see something that's really joyous or something that isn't dark.”
The Gritty Reboot seems to have run its course for the moment, giving way to the cheerier, universe-hopping fare found in the MCU. But the trend will undoubtedly have another day in the gritty sun. At some point films will start leaning back in that direction, then a couple will break through and really work and then, well, Goyer puts it best.
“Left to their own devices. Hollywood is always going to just repeat and repeat and repeat until the audience gets sick of it.”