Movies are perhaps the closest thing we have nowadays to a common oral tradition. In the past, the same tales of heroes and villains were told again and again by bards and poets; Homer, after all, was in a sense “just the guy who wrote it all down”. With the development of modern society and technology, that oral tradition (at least insofar as it affects society as a whole) has faded, but we still feel that human need for huge mythologies to draw inspiration and validation from.

This is why Star Wars is so huge (and perhaps why the prequels don’t work as well as the originals; they fail to provide the level of human connection, in terms of emotional investment in places, artefacts and characters that the originals did). The telling and retelling of the Batman saga approximates the way a bard’s stories change in the telling, but the essentials, the emotional core, remains the same.

Especially when adapting these huge, monolithic comic book legends, directors get a head start when they spend screen time retelling the way a character received his/her powers.

Just look at Richard Donner’s “Superman” or Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man”; you could argue about the quality of both, but they are the most fun and watchable when they’re recounting the story of how their respective hero came to be. Nolan’s “Batman Begins” is very obviously an origin tale, which is part of the reason it’s so enjoyable (it also happens to be made exceedingly well).

This is part of the reason, too, that Miller’s “Batman: Year One” is so compelling. As people we actually really do like to hear the same story over and over, just told with new twists. Origin stories for comic book heroes, especially the ones mentioned here, are so well-worn and familiar that they easily evoke strong emotions in audiences when they are retold with creativity and class.