Starting with Disc One you get the feature film accompanied by a 5.1 Dolby audio track and, while a DTS track would have made this the ultimate DVD, the 5.1 track more than satisfies and you will realize it only seconds into the film as a swarm of bats takes over your living room. However, there is a problem... there are no commentaries... None! This truly is the largest void in the whole set, and it is in no way understandable considering Nolan and Goyer are all over the Disc Two features. While they may have regurgitated everything they said in the featurettes on the commentaries I would much rather had the chance to find out rather than have nothing.

The only other feature, besides the Theatrical Trailer, on the first disc is the Fatman Begins MTV Movie Awards spoof in which Jimmy Fallon gets a personal escort to the show by Batman who actually turns out to be Jon 'Napoleon Dynamite' Heder. This may be a cute little anecdote for some but it doesn't really add to the overall quality of the DVD.

Now for Disc Two, and its unique way of presenting featurettes as it is told in an animated and interactive comic book format. By clicking on the IMAGES link to the right you will see examples of the menu screens that are used and inside each one you can navigate the animated storyboards and choose what you are going to watch. Whether you click on an actual feature or the name of one of the characters inside the word bubbles will decide where you end up. On top of that there are about three Easter Eggs inside the linear feature, and you will know when you have found one as it will begin with a little clue saying "Finders Keepers."

As for the features themselves, they explore every aspect of Christopher Nolan's world of Batman:

The Journey Begins: Creative Concepts, Story Development and Casting: This feature is exactly what it says it is. It takes a look at how Christopher Nolan got wind of Warner Bros.' interest in bringing Batman back to the big screen and then secretly employed David Goyer to pen the screenplay with him. The featurette explores the work they did in Nolan's garage, hashing out the character and the design of the film as production designer Nathan Crowley began creating conceptual designs of Gotham City and models of the re-imagined Batmobile. As far as the Batmobile, or The Tumbler goes, don't worry there is a whole feature dedicated to it later on.

Gotham City Rises: Production Design: Get ready to explore the world of Batman Begins, and be utterly astonished at the set pieces they created at Britain's famous Shepperton Studios, and at Cardington, a former airship hangar converted into a mammoth soundstage for the film, and by mammoth, I mean mammoth. The sets designed ranged from a massive bat cave, which was subsequently flooded to give it its look along with the entire world of Gotham was created inside the hanger at Cardington. Inside this one hanger they were able to pack in everything they needed from The Narrows to the main city streets. They had three separate sets inside one hanger, it is phenomenal.

Cape and Cowl: The New Batsuit: This feature is both good and bad. While the feature itself is great as it explores the creation of the batsuit from concept to finished product, this is really the only exploration of the tools of Batman Begins, aside from The Tumbler feature. There isn't a feature dedicated to the gadgetry on the film, which would have been nice, but then again the gadgets weren't as elaborate as earlier Batman films.

Shaping Mind and Body: Fighting Style: For Batman Begins the fight coordinators decided on a fighting style that is only 20 years-old, the Keysi Fighting Method, also known as Keysi or KFM. This style of fighting is based on a series of tight, controlled, efficient movements involving a lot of elbows and fists and this feature explores everything involving the fighting in the film. The most satisfying bit for some of you naysayers out there, may be when Nolan gives his reasons for why the Batman fight scenes are cut so quick and don't give you a perfect look at Batman in action.

The Tumbler: The New Batmobile: Pretty straight forward here, but you will have a lot of fun with this one, that is if you enjoyed the new look Batmobile as much as I did. The only thing that I wanted to learn that wasn't really revealed was just how fast this bad boy can go. They do give mention that they drove it at about 100 miles per hour on occasion, but I didn't get the impression that was the top speed.

Path to Discovery: Filming in Iceland: One of the bonuses of Batman Begins is how real it felt and that is for good reason, the whole damn thing virtually is real. Areas where you thought they might have used green screen are actually real situations, such as when Bruce Wayne saves Ducard from falling off the cliff in Iceland... Yeah, that's real, and they don't want to give stuntmen an Oscar... for shame!

Saving Gotham City: The Monorail Chase Sequence: One of the few areas where a lot of CGI and green screen was used was in the final fight sequence aboard the Monorail and this feature explores it to the fullest. You will get a look at how the CGI was developed, when they used miniatures and what was real and what was not.

Confidential Files Character/Weaponry Gallery Featurette: This one is a 50/50 for me also. So I wanted a look at the gadgets, well here it is, only problem is that it is all text and you are simply reading about each piece and not getting the "hands-on" look I would have wanted. This is also where you get a look at the heroes and villains of the movie, also in text format, which is a bit of a downer. With such a large ensemble cast it would have been nice to have individual featurettes on each one, especially Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow, I felt he was one of the strongest pieces of this film and yet he gets no time on the special features.

Poster Gallery: Granted, if you are an Internet movie junkie you have already seen all the international and US posters for Batman Begins, and if you haven't head on over to IMPAwards.com and check them out, they are the same things you will see in this feature. The only difference is that there is also a large gallery of poster explorations, a.k.a. posters that were not used in the marketing but were created in the process of getting to a final product. There are some damn cool posters in this gallery, five of which I have added to the DVD gallery here, just click on the IMAGES button above to check them out.

<>Theatrical Trailer: What were there, a gazillion trailers for this movie? Yet, we only get the theatrical trailer on the DVD. A bit disappointing, but whatever.

Exclusive collectible 72-page comic book: Like the Constantine Deluxe DVD this one comes with a comic book of its own and as you will learn the three comics included were integral to the creation of the film as they served as inspiration. You will get "Detective Comics #37 - the very first Batman story," "Batman: The Man Who Falls" and "Batman: The Long Halloween."

Overall I would say this DVD satisfies, but could have been better. The absence of a commentary track and any deleted scenes along with the lack of focus on anyone in the film besides Bale is a bit disappointing especially since it was such a large cast. I would say there has got to be another edition of this film in the future, but it just doesn't seem like it would be in the near future considering the amount of features included.

I am sure as the sequel to Batman Begins rolls out we will get another edition with a director's commentary and additional special features, along with some deleted scenes but that is far off in the future so for now I would say this is your best bet, and you won't be disappointed. After all, Batman Begins is one of the best movies of the year, and the best superhero movie ever... right?

I should also mention that this DVD is only $15.98 over at Amazon.com right now (9/30/05) so what the hell are you waiting for? BUY IT NOW.