When going through the live-action Batman movies in order, Batman Begins especially stands out from the pack given that it rebooted DC Comics’ Dark Knight for the big screen following the commercially-disappointing and critically-maligned Batman & Robin. One of the highlights of the 2005 superhero movie is Gary Oldman’s performance as Jim Gordon, who becomes a key ally to Christian Bale’s Batman. Oldman, who believes he was originally eyed for Scarecrow, had a particularly hectic shooting schedule on Batman Begins, but this ended up aiding his performance as Gordon.
While being interviewed on Happy Sad Confused, Oldman first noted to interviewer Josh Horowitz about how there’s a “world-weariness” to Jim Gordon in Batman Begins because he’s surrounded by corrupt cops and, despite his best efforts, “can’t corral the chaos.” The actor then recollected how he was frequently flying between Los Angeles, where he lived, and London, where Batman Begins was shooting, so he wouldn’t be away from his children for too long. As he remembers it:
I think I ended up doing 27 round trips on the first Batman… So I’d go home for two days, see the kids, fly back, work three days, go home, be home for three days, I’d fly to London and do one shot, and then get on the plane the next morning and come back.
Yeah, just reading about that amount of plane travel is stressing me out. For Gary Oldman, however, it was a necessity so that he wouldn’t have to go for months without being in his kids’ lives. He also made it clear to director Christopher Nolan he would turn back around on his way to the airport if there ended up being “anything wrong with the dailies” that required him to reshoot one of more of his scenes.
Now spending this much time going back and forth between continents probably would be detrimental to an actor who’s playing a more upbeat role. In Gary Oldman’s case, however, it proved beneficial for him as he was bringing Jim Gordon to life in Batman Begins. As he put it:
I’m being silly, but there’s a world-weariness to him, so I embraced the feeling that you have when you’re going back and forth or you’ve been on a long flight. I just thought, ‘I can actually use this to my advantage.
When we meet Lieutenant Gordon in Batman Begins, he seems resigned to being one of the few incorruptible police officers in the GCPD and barely tolerates being around his bent partner Arnold Flass. But when Bruce Wayne, who remembered Gordon’s kindness from when he was a child, approached the mustachioed man in his vigilante persona, a beacon of hope was lit. By the end of Batman Begins, Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul were defeated, and with all the “bent cops running scared,” the now-sergeant Gordon embraced his new partnership with Gotham City’s caped protector.
Like Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman stuck around for the entirety of the Dark Knight trilogy, and he remains my favorite depiction of James Gordon. These days, Oldman can be seen playing Jackson Lamb in the British spy thriller series Slow Horses, available to stream with an Apple TV+ subscription.
