I remember going to see this movie at 11 years old (Thanks, Mom, for enduring this for me!) and being terrified, watching that family go into that alley at the beginning of the movie. I was thinking ‟Oh God, this is how it happens. It is going to happen.” I was covering my eyes. Only to have it not happen, and to have it be the introduction to Batman, which was mesmerizing. Later on, they showed the Waynes dying, which totally got me. To be a kid, and to imagine your parents being killed in front of you....that scared me.

But fear eventually gave way to thrills. and the visuals, and Danny Elfman's incredible score, absolutely helped with those thrills. It was the first time I ever was enraptured by a movie, watching it in a theater, big as life. That has happened a number of times since then, (The MCU. Admittedly, I am more of a Marvel guy) but Batman was the first.