8. Batman Begins (2005)

It’s hard to remember the eye-opening revelation Batman Begins was in 2005. It is in large part Nolan’s doing. In a time when the superhero genre still had new frontiers and when “gritty origin stories” were novel, Nolan’s Batman Begins ventured beyond its contemporaries to redefine its subject IP. Sure, Batman had many movies under his utility belt, and Tim Burton already drenched the Caped Crusader in shadows back in 1989. But Begins was a different beast, essentially Lawrence of Arabia in a cape.

With Bale in the lead role, a new, modernized Batman swooped into post-9/11 theaters like a tactical ninja, driving around a “Batmobile” that wrecked cop cars with the rolling thunder of army tanks. Yet Nolan’s grounded interpretation of the World’s Greatest Detective – a man so traumatized by his family’s murders he goes to train at a monastery – is hardly embarrassed by its source material. For better or worse, Batman Begins shaped the modern superhero tentpole for the next ten years, maybe more.