Batman Begins was made in 2003 when Warner Bros. wanted to refresh the Batman franchise after the success of Spider-Man. Christopher Nolan, fresh from Memento, and writer David S. Goyer set out to tell the origin story in a grounded, realistic world rather than the stylised Gotham of earlier films. Nolan drew on Richard Donner's Superman for its focus on a hero's growth and on comics such as The Long Halloween and Year One. Filming began in March 2004 on the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland, standing in for Bhutan, in brutal winds. Most interiors were shot at Shepperton Studios outside London, where a Batcave set was built with a real waterfall, while exteriors were shot in London, New York and Chicago so the city would look recognisable. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard shared the score, which mixed orchestra and electronics. Nolan also avoided gore so that younger teenagers could see it.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.