Batman Begins

Essential, and start here: the trilogy is strictly sequential and the next two films assume everything this one establishes. It is also the best superhero origin film anybody has made, because it is the only one that treats becoming a vigilante as a project with research, suppliers and a procurement problem.

The structure is the reason. An hour passes before the costume appears, spent on a wealthy man travelling, being imprisoned, being trained by a group whose politics he has not thought about, and then having to decide what he objects to in them. The question the film asks is not whether Gotham needs saving but what a symbol is for, and Nolan has it answered out loud by three different characters who disagree.

Everything is sourced. The suit is prototype military, the vehicle is a cancelled bridging machine, the cape is memory fabric that failed procurement, and all of it comes from one department of his own company staffed by a man nobody listens to. After two decades of superhero films where equipment simply exists, this reads as a revelation.

The weak point is the action, cut too close and too fast, which Nolan corrected in the sequel. Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow is excellent and underused, and the microwave emitter plot is thin. The last scene sets up the second film with one playing card.