“Casablanca” opens in theaters

Year
1942
Month Day
November 26

On November 26, 1942, Casablanca, a World War II-era drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City; it will go on to become one of the most beloved Hollywood movies in history.

In the film, Bogart played Rick Blaine, the owner of a swanky North African nightclub, who is reunited with the beautiful, enigmatic Ilsa Lund (Bergman), the woman who loved and left him. Directed by Michael Curtiz, Casablanca opened in theaters across America on January 23, 1943, and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Bogart. It took home three Oscars, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film featured a number of now-iconic quotes, including Rick’s line to Ilsa: “Here’s looking at you, kid,” as well as “Round up the usual suspects,” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

Bogart was born on December 25, 1899, in New York City, and during the 1930s established his movie career playing tough-guy roles. He gained fame as Detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), which marked John Huston’s directorial debut. Bogart and Huston later collaborated on such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and The African Queen (1951) with Katharine Hepburn, which earned Bogart a Best Actor Oscar. In 1945, Bogart married his fourth wife, the actress Lauren Bacall, with whom he co-starred for the first time in 1944’s To Have and Have Not. Bogey and Bacall became one of Hollywood’s legendary couples and went on to appear together in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). Among Bogart’s other film credits are The Barefoot Contessa (1954), with Ava Gardner; Sabrina (1954), with Audrey Hepburn; and The Caine Mutiny (1954), which earned him another Best Actor nomination. Bogart’s final film was The Harder They Fall (1956). He died on January 14, 1957.

Casablanca was also the movie for which the Swedish-born actress Ingrid Bergman is perhaps best remembered. Bergman, born August 29, 1915, received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for 1943’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was followed by a win in the same category for 1944’s Gaslight. She was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar again for 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s and 1948’s Joan of Arc. Bergman worked with the acclaimed director Alfred Hitchcock on Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946) and Under Capricorn (1949). In 1949, the then-married Bergman began a romance with director Roberto Rossellini that created a huge scandal after she became pregnant with his child. (Bergman and Rossellini, who later married, had three children together, including the noted actress Isabella Rossellini.) Although Bergman won another Best Actress Academy Award for 1956’s Anastasia, the actor Cary Grant accepted the award on her behalf, and Bergman did not return publicly to Hollywood until the 1958 Oscars, at which she was a presenter. She won her third Academy Award, in the category of Best Supporting Actress, for 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express. Her final Oscar nomination, in the Best Actress category, was for 1978’s Autumn Sonata, which was helmed by famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (to whom she was not related). She died on August 29, 1982.

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“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” opens in wide release

Year
1969
Month Day
October 24

On October 24, 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as a team of bank robbers in the Old West, opens in theaters around the United States. The film was a commercial and critical success, receiving seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director) and winning in the categories of Best Screenplay (William Goldman), Best Song (Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”), Best Score and Best Cinematography.

Prior to Butch Cassidy, Paul Newman, who was born on January 26, 1925, appeared in such films as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967), each of which earned him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. He teamed up with Redford again in 1973’s The Sting, which collected seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The famously blue-eyed Newman went on to star in such movies as Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict (1982), both of which earned him Best Actor Oscar nominations, and The Color of Money (1986), for which he took home his first Best Actor Oscar. He received Oscar nominations again for his performances in Nobody’s Fool (1994) and Road to Perdition (2002). The screen legend died at the age of 83 on September 26, 2008, after battling cancer.

Redford, born on August 18, 1936, made his breakthrough performance on Broadway with Barefoot in the Park in 1963. Following the success of Butch Cassidy, he starred in such movies as The Candidate (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), All the President’s Men (1976) and The Natural (1984). Redford made his directorial debut with 1980’s Ordinary People, which won four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. Redford went on to helm The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992) and Quiz Show (1994), which received four Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Later features included The Horse Whisperer (1998), in which he also starred; The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Lions for Lambs (2007), Our Souls at Night (2017) and The Old Man & the Gun (2018). 

READ MORE: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The True Story of the Famous Outlaws

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Actor Burt Lancaster dies

Year
1994
Month Day
October 20

On October 20, 1994, Burt Lancaster, a former circus performer who rose to fame as a Hollywood leading man with some 70 movies to his credit, including From Here to Eternity and Atlantic City, in a career that spanned more than four decades, dies of a heart attack at the age of 80 in Century City, California.

Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in New York City and raised in East Harlem. After a stint at New York University, which he attended on an athletic scholarship, he quit to join the circus, where he worked as an acrobat. An injury forced Lancaster to give up the circus in 1939, and he worked a series of jobs until he was drafted into the Army in 1942. Three years later, while on leave, Lancaster’s acting career was launched after he went to visit the woman who would become his second wife at the theatrical office where she was employed and was asked by a producer’s assistant to audition for a Broadway play. He got the part, as an Army sergeant, and soon got noticed by Hollywood. In 1946, Lancaster made his silver-screen debut opposite Ava Gardner in The Killers, based on an Ernest Hemingway short story. Lancaster stars as The Swede, a former boxer who’s tangled up with the mob and waiting to be murdered by hit men.

He went on to star in the 1951 biopic Jim Thorpe: All-American, about the Native American Olympian, and 1952’s The Crimson Pirate, in which he put his acrobatic skills to use as the swashbuckling title character. In 1953, he co-starred with Deborah Kerr and Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity, a World War II film set in Hawaii just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film, which contained the now-iconic scene in which Lancaster and Kerr are locked in a beachside embrace as waves roll over them, earned Lancaster his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. Among Lancaster’s other movie credits during the 1950s were Apache (1954), in which he plays a Native American warrior; Sweet Smell of Success (1957), in which he plays a ruthless gossip columnist; and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), in which he portrays Wyatt Earp to Kirk Douglas’s Doc Holliday.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Lancaster appeared in movies such as 1960’s Elmer Gantry, which earned him a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as a con man turned preacher; 1961’s Judgment at Nuremberg, about the World War II Nazi war-crime trials; 1962’s Birdman of Alcatraz, which was based on the true story of a convicted murderer who becomes a bird expert while behind bars and garnered Lancaster another Best Actor Oscar nomination; Italian director Luchino Visconti’s 1963 historical drama The Leopard, in which Lancaster plays an aging aristocrat; 1968’s The Swimmer, based on a John Cheever story; the 1970 disaster movie Airport; and 1979’s Zulu Dawn, with Peter O’Toole and Bob Hoskins.

In 1980, Lancaster co-starred in director Louis Malle’s Atlantic City and his performance as an aging gangster earned him his fourth Best Actor Academy Award nomination. He was also featured in Local Hero (1983), in which he plays an eccentric oil company owner; and 1989’s Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner. Lancaster formed a production company with his agent, Harold Hecht, in the 1950s, becoming one of the first actors in Hollywood to do so. Among his producing credits were 1955’s Marty, which won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor (Ernest Borgnine).

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Actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee dies at age 32

Year
1973
Month Day
July 20

On July 20, 1973, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee dies in Hong Kong at age 32 from a brain edema possibly caused by a reaction to a prescription painkiller. During Lee’s all-too-brief career, he became a movie star in Asia and, posthumously, in America.

Jun Fan (Bruce) Lee was born on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. At the time, his father, a Chinese opera star, was on tour in the United States. The family moved back to Hong Kong in 1941. Growing up, Lee was a child actor who appeared in some 20 Chinese films; he also studied dancing and trained in the Wing Chun style of gung fu (also known as “kung fu”). In 1959, Lee returned to America, where he eventually attended the University of Washington and opened a martial-arts school in Seattle. In 1964, Lee married Linda Emery, who in 1965 gave birth to Brandon Lee, the first of the couple’s two children. In 1966, the Lees moved to Los Angeles and Bruce appeared on the television program The Green Hornet (1966-1967), playing the Hornet’s acrobatic sidekick Kato. Lee also appeared in karate tournaments around the United States and continued to teach martial arts to private clients including the actor Steve McQueen.

In search of better acting roles than Hollywood was offering, Lee returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s and successfully established himself as a star in Asia with the action movies The Big Boss (1971) and The Way of the Dragon (1972), which he wrote, directed and starred in. Lee’s next film, Enter the Dragon, was released in the United States by Hollywood studio Warner Bros. in August 1973. Tragically, Lee had died one month earlier, on July 20, in Hong Kong, after suffering a brain edema. Enter the Dragon was a box-office hit, eventually grossing more than $200 million, and Lee posthumously became a movie icon in America.

Lee’s body was returned to Seattle, where he was buried. His sudden death at the young age of 32 led to rumors and speculation about the cause of his demise. One theory held that Lee had been murdered by Chinese gangsters while another rumor circulated that the actor had been the victim of a curse. The family-curse theory resurfaced when Lee’s 28-year-old son Brandon, who had followed in his father’s footsteps to become an actor, died in an accidental shooting on the set of the movie The Crow on March 31, 1993. The younger Lee was buried next to his father at Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.

READ MORE: Bruce Lee: His Life and Legacy

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Bruce Lee born

Year
1940
Month Day
November 27

On November 27, 1940, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee is born in San Francisco, California. In his all-too-brief career, Lee became a film star in Asia and, later, a pop-culture icon in America.

Lee was born while his father, a Chinese opera star, was on tour in America. The Lee family moved back to Hong Kong in 1941. Growing up, Lee was a child actor who appeared in some 20 Chinese films; he also studied dancing and trained in the Wing Chun style of gung fu (also known as kung fu). In 1959, Lee returned to America, where he eventually attended the University of Washington and opened a martial-arts school in Seattle. In 1964, he married Linda Emery, who in 1965 gave birth to Brandon Lee, the first of the couple’s two children. In 1966, the Lees relocated to Los Angeles and Bruce appeared on the television program The Green Hornet (1966-1967), playing the Hornet’s acrobatic sidekick, Kato. Lee also appeared in karate tournaments around the United States and continued to teach martial arts to private clients, including the actor Steve McQueen.

In search of better acting roles than Hollywood was offering, Lee returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s. He successfully established himself as a star in Asia with the action movies The Big Boss (1971) and The Way of the Dragon (1972), which he wrote, directed and starred in. Lee’s next film, Enter the Dragon, was released in the United States by Hollywood studio Warner Brothers in August 1973. Tragically, Lee had died one month earlier, on July 20, in Hong Kong, after suffering a brain edema believed to be caused by an adverse reaction to a pain medication. Enter the Dragon was a box-office hit, eventually grossing more than $200 million, and Lee posthumously became a movie icon in America.

Lee’s body was returned to Seattle, where he was buried. His sudden death at the young age of 32 led to rumors and speculation about the cause of his demise. One theory held that Lee had been murdered by Chinese gangsters, while another rumor circulated that the actor had been the victim of a curse. The family-curse theory resurfaced when Lee’s 28-year-old son Brandon, who had followed in his father’s footsteps to become an actor, died in an accidental shooting on the set of the movie The Crow on March 31, 1993. The younger Lee was buried next to his father at Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.

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Bob Hope celebrates 100th birthday

Year
2003
Month Day
May 29

Some 35 U.S. states declare it to be Bob Hope Day on May 29, 2003, when the iconic comedic actor and entertainer turns 100 years old.

In a public ceremony held in Hollywood, city officials renamed the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Avenue–famous for its historic buildings and as a central point on the Hollywood Walk of Fame–Bob Hope Square. Several 1940s-era U.S. planes flew overhead as part of an air show honoring Hope’s longtime role as an entertainer of U.S. armed forces all over the world. Hope, who was then suffering from failing eyesight and hearing and had not been seen in public for three years, was too ill to attend the public ceremonies. Three of his children attended the naming ceremony, along with some of his younger show-business colleagues, including Mickey Rooney.

One of the leading talents on the vaudeville scene by the 1930s, the London-born, American-raised Hope met his future wife (of nearly seven decades), the nightclub singer Dolores Reade, while he was performing on Broadway in the musical Roberta. They married in 1934, and four years later Hope launched his own radio program, The Bob Hope Show, which would run for the next 18 years. One of the country’s most popular comics, Hope had a successful film career largely thanks to the series of seven “Road” movies he made with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, including Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946) and Road to Rio (1947).

In 1941, after America’s entrance into World War II, Hope began performing for U.S. troops abroad; he would play shows for more than a million American servicemen by 1953. Some 65 million people watched him perform for troops in Vietnam on Christmas Eve in 1966, in his largest broadcast. Hope also became a legend for his countless TV specials, which he would perform over the course of some five decades. He hosted the Academy Awards ceremony a total of 18 times, more than any other Oscars host.

Dubbed “Mr. Entertainment” and the “King of Comedy,” Hope died on July 27, 2003, less than two months after his 100th birthday celebration. He was survived by Dolores, their four adopted children–Linda, Anthony, Nora and Kelly–and four grandchildren.

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“The Blair Witch Project” released in theaters

Year
1999
Month Day
July 30

On July 30, 1999, The Blair Witch Project, a low-budget, independent horror film that will become a massive cult hit, is released in U.S. theaters.

Shot with shaky, handheld cameras, the documentary-style movie told the story of three student filmmakers who disappeared into the woods and were never heard from again, although their footage was later discovered. With the help of a Web-based viral marketing strategy–a relatively new concept at the time–The Blair Witch Project generated huge buzz over the question of whether or not it was based on a true story. In fact, the story was entirely fake. Fake or not, it didn’t matter at the box office: The Blair Witch Project grossed some $250 million worldwide and was featured on the covers of Newsweek and Time magazines.

The Blair Witch Project followed the young filmmakers as they went into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, to make a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The filmmakers got lost and experienced a series of scary events and unexplained phenomena, such as strange noises and piles of stones being inexplicably re-arranged. The trio never returned to civilization, but their film equipment was supposedly found and the footage they shot became The Blair Witch Project. Unlike other horror films that featured bloody scenes and special effects, The Blair Witch Project scared moviegoers through implied terror and violence.

Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, who met as film students at the University of Central Florida, wrote and directed The Blair Witch Project. The two filmmakers had their lead actors–Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard–improvise their lines based on private messages each actor received during filming. To make The Blair Witch Project seem more realistic and heighten the psychological tension, Sanchez and Myrick reportedly did things to agitate the actors during production, such as shaking their tent and cutting back on their food supply. They also had the actors do their own filming, and the resulting grainy, black-and-white footage became a Blair Witch trademark.

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“Birth of a Nation” opens in New York


Year
1915
Month Day
March 03

Director D.W. Griffith’s controversial Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation opens in New York City on March 3, 1915, a few weeks after its West Coast premiere in Los Angeles. A 40-piece orchestra accompanied the silent film. The movie, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, was unusually long for its day and used revolutionary–for the time–filmmaking techniques, including editing, multiple camera angles and close-ups. However, the film, originally entitled The Clansman, was denounced by the NAACP, among others, for its negative portrayal of African Americans.

READ MORE: How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Revived the Ku Klux Klan

After making more than 450 short films for the Biograph movie studio, Griffith left and began secretly working on his own private project, which would become The Clansman.

Based on a novel of the same name by Thomas Dixon, Griffith’s career-making film depicted the white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan as a welcome force of order that arose amid the chaos of the post-Civil War era in the South. The later title change reflected Griffith’s view that it was the Civil War–and specifically the victory of the Union over the Confederacy–that bound the collection of disparate American states into a true nation under one central authority.

From the moment of its release, The Birth of a Nation drew harsh criticism for honoring the Klan’s historic role as a force of opposition to the Reconstruction-era idea that blacks could be successfully integrated into white society. Many historians disputed Griffith’s view of history as a distortion that glamorized the violent actions of the Klan and demonized African Americans, completely discounting their valuable contributions during and after the Civil War and degrading the important efforts made during Reconstruction to grant former slaves civil rights and a role in government. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) published a pamphlet denouncing the film, referring to it as “three miles of filth.”

The final cut of The Birth of a Nation ran nearly three hours and showcased cutting-edge filmmaking techniques for the time, including multiple camera angles. Despite the controversy (which included attempts to ban the film entirely), The Birth of a Nation would become the first true Hollywood blockbuster, earning more than $10 million (the equivalent of $200 million today) as audiences lined up to pay the unprecedented rate of $2 per ticket.

In 1918, after an extensive renovation, the Loring Opera House was renamed the Loring Theatre. Taken over by new ownership in 1938, it became the Golden State Theatre; the following year the theater hosted the first preview showing of another famous Civil War-themed movie, Gone With the Wind. A fire destroyed the Golden State Theatre in 1990, and the site was razed in 2003.

READ MORE: How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Revived the Ku Klux Klan

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“Benji” opens in theaters

Year
1974
Month Day
October 17

On October 17, 1974, Benji, a film about a stray dog who helps rescue several kidnapped children, opens in theaters; it will go on to become a family classic. Written and directed by Joe Camp, Benji starred a mutt named Higgins, who had been rescued as a puppy from a California animal shelter and went on to appear in the 1960s TV series Petticoat Junction and the 1971 movie Mooch Goes to Hollywood, with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Benji was a commercial hit and spawned a series of TV movies as well as the follow-up features For the Love of Benji (1977), Oh Heavenly Dog (1980) and Benji the Hunted (1987), all starring Higgins’ daughter Benjean. Another movie, Benji: Off the Leash! was released in 2004 and featured another pooch that Joe Camp had found at an animal shelter.

Dogs have long had a starring role in Hollywood. Starting in the 1920s, the German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin, who was rescued from a dog kennel in France during World War I, appeared in a number of successful films for Warner Brothers and reportedly saved the studio from bankruptcy. Perhaps the most famous canine character in entertainment history is Lassie. The loyal collie originated in a 1938 short story by Eric Knight, about a boy whose faithful companion is sold after his family falls on hard times, and was also featured in a 1940 novel set in Great Britain titled Lassie Come-Home. The novel was adapted into a 1943 movie of the same name, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy MacDowell. Several more Lassie films and a Lassie radio show followed in the 1940s. From 1954 to 1973, CBS aired an Emmy-winning TV series called Lassie and set in America. More Lassie movies followed, including 2005’s Lassie, starring Peter O’Toole and Samantha Morton.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Disney released a string of dog-themed films, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Old Yeller (1957), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). Another classic from that era is The Incredible Journey (1963), about two dogs and a cat who lose their owners on vacation and must find their way home. During the 1970s and 1980s, Benji was the top dog in Hollywood. The late 1980s and 1990s saw such movies as Turner and Hooch (1989), in which Tom Hanks played a man who must adopt the dog of a dead man to help catch a murderer; Beethoven (1992), about a St. Bernard; 1996’s 101 Dalmatians, with Glenn Close as the notorious dognapper Cruella de Vil; and Air Bud (1997), about a basketball-playing dog. Other canine films include My Dog Skip (2000), with Frankie Muniz, Kevin Bacon, Luke Wilson and Diane Lane; Best in Show (2000), a parody of the world of dog shows directed by Christopher Guest; Because of Winn-Dixie (2005); Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008); and Marley & Me (2008). 

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Tim Burton’s “Batman” released

Year
1989
Month Day
June 23

On June 23, 1989, Tim Burton’s noir spin on the well-known story of the DC Comics hero Batman is released in theaters.

Michael Keaton starred in the film as the multimillionaire Bruce Wayne, who has transformed himself into the crime-fighting Batman after witnessing his parents’ brutal murder as a child. As the film’s action begins, mob henchman Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) is gruesomely disfigured after Batman inadvertently drops him in a vat of acid during a stand-off in a chemical factory. After killing his boss (Jack Palance), Napier–now known as the Joker–goes on the loose in Gotham City, wreaking havoc and trying to turn its people against the caped crusader. When Batman’s affection for a beautiful newspaper reporter, Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), is revealed, the Joker uses her to draw his rival out into the open, with dramatic results.

Controversy had surrounded the casting of Keaton (best known for comedies like 1983’s Mr. Mom) as Batman. An entire roster of prominent leading men–reportedly including Mel Gibson, Dennis Quaid, Harrison Ford and Kevin Costner–were considered for the role, and Burton reportedly wanted to cast an unknown actor (a la Christopher Reeve in Superman). Having worked previously with Keaton in Beetlejuice (1988), Burton liked the idea of collaborating with him again, and the producers agreed, after screening Keaton’s 1988 film Clean and Sober, that Keaton had talent as a “serious” actor as well.

In a new marketing strategy that would become a trend for movies featuring super heroes, Warner Brothers hyped Batman as a major summer “event” long before its release. The results were stunning, as the film grossed some $100 million in its first ten days of release, including $82.8 million at the domestic box office alone. Reviews for the film were mixed, though most critics praised Nicholson’s scene-stealing performance as the Joker. For his creation of the movie’s impressive Batmobile and the dark, cavernous Gotham City, Batman’s production designer, Anton Furst, won an Oscar for Best Art Direction – Set Decoration.

Burton’s second Batman film, Batman Returns (1989), also starred Keatonas the caped crusader. Most critics considered the sequel, also a box-office hit, to be a better movie than its predecessor. Warner Brothers, seeking even greater commercial success for the franchise, hired Joel Schumacher to direct the next installment, Batman Forever (1995), which starred Val Kilmer as Batman; Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey were the villains in that film, while Nicole Kidman was the love interest and Chris O’Donnell came on as Robin, Batman’s sidekick. Kilmer, like Keaton before him, left the franchise before the making of the next planned film because he felt Batman was getting less attention than his enemies; George Clooney took his place for Schumacher’s Batman & Robin (1997), which was roundly panned by critics.

A few years later, the director Christopher Nolan reoriented the series, going back to Bruce Wayne’s childhood for Batman Begins (2005), starring Christian Bale in the title role. Nolan and Bale returned for a 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight, which featured a stunning turn by Heath Ledger (who was found dead of an accidental prescription drug overdose soon after filming was completed) as the Joker. The third and final installment was The Dark Knight Rises (2012), also a critical and commercial success. 

Batman later appeared in several D.C. Extended Universe films, including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), starring Ben Affleck as the Caped Crusader. 

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