Batman Begins stormed the world of superhero movies in 2005 as it proved to be one of the best superhero pictures of all time. Writer/director Christopher Nolan shows his filmmaking prowess as he gives us a superhero world where tricks and gadgetry are secondary to real life emotions and situations. A young Bruce Wayne has just seen his parents murdered and as time passes his secluded lifestyle soon finds him traveling the world in search of a means to fight injustice. His rage is replaced by a sense of duty and he soon returns home to Gotham City with a mission to dispel evil, but not as himself. Instead he takes on the persona of his worst fear and hopes to instill that same fear in Gotham's criminals... as Batman.

This HD DVD offers all the same features you found on the special edition DVD [review here], which was quite a bit. The one glaring omission was an audio commentary and this is where I assumed the HD DVD exclusive In Movie Experience (IME) would help out, much like the picture-in-picture feature on Universal's HD DVD release of The Bourne Supremacy. Instead a lot of what was already touched upon in the featurettes is included, and it seems as if the primary goal of this IME was to give you more of a behind-the-scenes look rather than any kind of commentary. I know Nolan isn't entirely against commentary tracks as he supplied one for the special edition DVD for Memento, so what gives with the lack of commentaries with such a universally loved movie? Personally a boat load of featurettes never really satisfies like a quality commentary, and I can't help but think that if Nolan, David Goyer and possibly Christian Bale got together and rattled on for two hours it would be quite compelling.

Nevertheless, the main goal of early HD DVD releases is to give us a look at how fantastic the video and audio are, and while the video level is amped up here I would say the audio track is pretty much the same as the DVD release. I should mention, however, that I was highly impressed with the audio on the DVD release despite its lack of a DTS track, much like this HD DVD release which only turns the dial up about a notch as it goes from the DVD's Dolby 5.1 sound to either Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital-Plus, both of which offer a bit more clarity and a little extra oomph, yet it isn't such a vast improvement that it would be noticeable to most.

Warner Bros. continues to do a very good job with their HD DVD releases as they span the genre gamut and bringing Batman Begins to the format is only going to help them in getting more and more early adopters. While I was not impressed with this edition's IME, I am happy it is part of my HD collection. After all, it is all about the movie... right?