it as one of the best films of the year, and Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote that Bale's "haunted, aggressive and finally wrenching performance" gave it a "strong anchor". Batman and dramatic roles (2005–2008) Bale portrayed American billionaire Bruce Wayne and his superhero alias Batman in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, a reboot of the Batman film series. Nolan cast Bale, who was still fairly unknown at the time, because Bale had "exactly the balance of darkness and light" Nolan sought. For the part, Bale regained the weight he lost for The Machinist and built muscle, weighing . He trained in weapons, Wing Chun Kung Fu and the Keysi Fighting Method. Acknowledging the story's peculiar circumstances involving a character "who thinks he can run around in a batsuit in the middle of the night", Bale said he and Nolan had deliberately approached it with "as realistic a motivation as possible", referencing Wayne's parents' murder. Bale voiced Wayne and Batman differently. He employed gravelly tone qualities for Batman, which Nolan believed reinforced the character's visual appearance. Batman Begins was released in the US in June 2005. Tim Grierson and Will Leitch of Vulture complimented Bale's "sensitive, intelligent portrayal of a spoiled, wayward Bruce who finally grows up (and fights crime)." The performance earned Bale the MTV Movie Award for Best Hero. In the same year, Bale voiced the titular Howl, a wizard, in the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, a Japanese animated film adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones's children's novel of the same name. He committed himself to voice the role after watching Miyazaki's animated film Spirited Away. Later that year, he starred as a US war veteran who deals with post-traumatic stress disorder in the David Ayer-helmed crime drama Harsh Times, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. He portrayed colonist John Rolfe in The New World, a historical drama film inspired by the stories of Pocahontas, directed by Terrence Malick. The film was released on 25 December 2005. The following year saw the premiere of Rescue Dawn, by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, in which Bale portrayed US fighter pilot Dieter Dengler, who fights for his life after being shot down while on a mission during the Vietnam War. After the two worked together, Herzog stated that he had considered Bale to be among his generation's greatest talents long before he played Batman. The Austin Chronicles Marjorie