Batman / Bruce Wayne

As a boy, Bruce falls into a well on the Wayne Manor grounds and is swarmed by bats. Soon after, at the opera, the bat costumes on stage scare him and he asks to leave. Outside, mugger Joe Chill kills Thomas and Martha Wayne. Officer Jim Gordon comforts the boy, and Alfred raises him.

Fourteen years later, Chill is released for testifying against mob boss Carmine Falcone. Bruce goes armed to kill him, but Chill is shot first on Falcone's orders. His childhood friend Rachel Dawes scolds him, and Falcone mocks him. Bruce vanishes for seven years, living among criminals. In a Bhutan prison, Henri Ducard recruits him into Ra's al Ghul's League of Shadows and teaches him to master fear. When the League demands he execute a prisoner and reveals its plan to destroy Gotham, Bruce refuses, burns down the temple and saves Ducard.

Back in Gotham, Bruce finds a huge cave beneath the manor. Lucius Fox at Wayne Enterprises gives him access to military prototypes, including an armored suit and the Tumbler. Bruce takes the bat as his symbol, brings down Falcone and hands evidence to Rachel, now an assistant DA.

Psychiatrist Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, hits him with fear toxin, and Alfred and Fox make an antidote. At Bruce's birthday party, Ducard reveals he's the real Ra's al Ghul and burns the manor. The League releases the toxin in the Narrows and plans to spread it across Gotham from a train. Batman tells Rachel who he is, fights Ra's on the train and leaves him to die in the crash. Rachel says they can only be together once Gotham no longer needs Batman. Finally, Gordon shows him the Bat-Signal and mentions a criminal who leaves Joker cards.

A year later, Batman teams up with Gordon and DA Harvey Dent against the mob. Bruce believes Dent can be Gotham's hero with a face and dreams of retiring to be with Rachel. He grabs accountant Lau in Hong Kong, but the Joker steps in, kills prominent people and demands that Batman unmask.

The Joker puts Rachel and Dent in two buildings rigged with bombs and swaps the addresses: Batman saves Dent, and Rachel dies. Disfigured, Dent becomes Two-Face. Using a surveillance system built with Fox, Batman finds the Joker and captures him without killing him, while the passengers on two ferries refuse to blow each other up. Then Dent threatens Gordon's son and dies in a fall. To protect Dent's image, Batman takes the blame for the killings and becomes a fugitive. Alfred burns the letter in which Rachel chose Dent.

Eight years later, Batman is gone and Bruce lives as a recluse in the manor. Cat burglar Selina Kyle steals his fingerprints, and cop John Blake, also an orphan, shows he knows who Bruce is and asks him to come back. Mercenary Bane uses the prints in a stock exchange attack that bankrupts Bruce.

Batman returns against Alfred's advice, and Alfred leaves. Selina leads him into a trap, and Bane beats him hand to hand, knowing who he is. Bruce wakes up in the Pit, an underground prison across the world, where Bane makes him watch on TV as Gotham is cut off under the threat of a nuclear bomb.

In the Pit, Bruce hears about the only child who ever climbed out and about Ra's al Ghul's wife, who lived there. He recovers, tries the climb and only makes it when he goes without a rope, feeling fear again. He returns to Gotham after five months of occupation.

Miranda Tate stabs him and reveals she's Talia al Ghul, the child who escaped the Pit. Selina saves Batman by killing Bane. With no time to disarm the bomb, he flies it over the bay in the Bat, and it explodes far from the city. Gotham believes he's dead and builds him a statue. In Italy, Alfred sees Bruce alive at a café, sitting with Selina. Blake, whose legal name is Robin, receives the coordinates to the Batcave.

In Matt Reeves's version, Bruce is in his second year as Batman and announces himself to criminals as vengeance. He works with Lieutenant Gordon to track the Riddler, who kills corrupt officials and leaves him messages. Along the way he meets Selina Kyle and enters the underworld of the Penguin and Carmine Falcone.

The Riddler targets the Waynes too: he reveals that Thomas Wayne turned to Falcone to silence a journalist who was going to expose Martha's family, and the journalist turned up dead. Alfred, hurt by a bomb sent to Bruce, says Thomas only wanted him scared and, once he learned of the murder, planned to turn in both himself and Falcone. Once caught, the Riddler says Batman himself was his inspiration. When Gotham floods, he leads survivors with a flare and decides to be a symbol of hope, not vengeance.

Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and debuted in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. In the comics, mugger Joe Chill kills Bruce's parents on the way home from the movies; Batman Begins swaps the movie for an opera. Batman Begins borrows heavily from Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, and The Batman draws on Year One and The Long Halloween. DC only officially credited Finger as co-creator in 2015.