Batman Begins

Batman Begins

2005

Bruce Wayne witnesses the murder of his parents as a child and channels that trauma into an obsessive quest to confront injustice, training with a secret order of assassins before returning to Gotham City to become the caped vigilante Batman. Christopher Nolan's grounded, psychologically serious reboot reinvented the superhero origin story.

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Director

  • Christopher Nolan

Cast

  • Christian Bale
  • Michael Caine
  • Liam Neeson
  • Morgan Freeman
  • Gary Oldman
  • Ken Watanabe
  • Rutger Hauer
  • Katie Holmes
  • Cillian Murphy

Filming Locations

  • Abbey Mills Pumping Station

    The Victorian Gothic interior of Abbey Mills Pumping Station in West Ham doubled as the Arkham Asylum laboratory where Dr Crane (Cillian Murphy) manufactures his psychotropic hallucinogen.

  • Cardington Airship Hangars

    This was where sets of Gotham City and the monastery were built. The monastery was subsequently blown up.

  • Citypoint

    The CityPoint skyscraper in the City of London was used for the scene in which Bruce Wayne arrives at a restaurant entrance as part of the Gotham City streetscape.

  • Coalhouse Fort

    The scenes at the start where Batman (Christian Bale) is in Prison were shot at here. It was kept very quiet and the locals only knew a week later.

  • Knebworth House

    The grounds of Knebworth House were used for the exterior garden scenes of Wayne Manor, establishing Bruce Wayne's ancestral home.

  • Mentmore Towers

    Most of the exterior shots of Wayne Manor were filmed here.

  • Senate House

    The imposing art deco Senate House of the University of London doubled as the Gotham City courthouse lobby, where Joe Chill (the Wayne family's murderer) is shot outside after testifying.

  • Shepperton Studios

    The main interior sets were built at Shepperton Studios, including the Batcave, Wayne Manor interiors, and the elevated monorail sequence through Gotham City.

  • The Excel Building

    The Event Hall at the ExCel Centre in east London was used for the scene in which Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) demonstrates the Tumbler prototype to Bruce Wayne.

  • The Farmiloe Building

    The Victorian Farmiloe Building in Clerkenwell was transformed into the Gotham City Police Department headquarters, a location that Christopher Nolan reused in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

  • The Garrick Theatre

    The Garrick Theatre on Charing Cross Road served as the Gotham City opera house where a young Bruce Wayne watches a performance and first encounters his fear of bats, leading his parents to leave early.

  • The Guinness Factory

    The Guinness (Coors) factory in Park Royal was used as one of the Gotham City industrial exterior locations during production.