Batman Begins

Posted by Samuel Walters

The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..

Batman Begins is a contradiction. It is movie that has both promise and disappointment. It does some things better than the original 1989 installment, but it fails to be a better overall movie than the original.

It is important to state that Batman Begins comes on the heels of two absolutely dreadful installments: 1995′s glitzy-but-hollow Batman Forever and 1997′s utter travesty Batman & Robin. By comparison, the Begins is leaps and bounds better than its predecessors, and so it is very easy to overstate the quality of the film. Therefore, we will be judging Begins against 1989′s Batman, a movie that was very well-crafted and far more successful.

The Setting:
Batman offered us Tim Burton’s nearly flawless, highly stylized vision of Gotham, its denizens, and its seedy criminal underworld. By comparison, Begins gives us a Gotham that is far more realistic. And this is really one of the strongest elements of Begins. Gotham is beautifully rendered, whether by the aerial shots or on the streets, the design, color, and cinematography are absolutely stellar. Gotham, both more beautiful and more deadly, could be any modern city anywhere on the planet.

Characters:
This is probably the most compelling aspect of Begins. The character development, particularly the psychological angle, is absolutely engaging. Exploring Bruce Wayne’s psychological roots for becoming Batman, right up to the actual creation of Batman himself are the best aspects of the film. And Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman makes a pretty good Bruce Wayne / Batman. This could have provided a strong, character-driven foundation for the rest of the film. Unfortunately, the scenes themselves are dry, drawn out, nonsensical and otherwise uninspired.

Of the remaining characters, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox all fare the best. Caine wasn’t stellar but he did provide a solid, compassionate performance. Oldman was very much convincing as the last of the “good” cops on the Gotham beat. And Freeman almost always gives a solid, compelling performance.

But the rest are average to poor. Liam Neeson’s performance was anything but “great”. At first he was he merely recreated his Qui-Gon Jinn performance. And then he was a cookie-cutter villain. Katie Holmes was probably meant to be eye candy, but in the movie, she looks more like Sloth from Goonies. Plus, she’s a pretty pathetic actress in this flick. Heck, I laughed out loud when she slapped Bruce Wayne — and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t meant to be a comedic moment.

Plot:
Another detriment to this film is its plot. Begins is much more a character sketch than Batman. And movies built on character are, generally, more enjoyable (the Spiderman movies come to mind).

But then again, the character building scenes for Begins, as noted, we far, far from being compelling. The opening sequence in the prison camp felt like a non sequitor, especially considering waiting 30+ minutes before finding out exactly what he was doing there. The training scenes were slow, and almost entirely cliché (not the specifics of ninjas, but the character building aspect of it — which is really the most important part of a character-driven storyline). The flashbacks were almost nonsensical in their non-linear display. And when the murderer of Bruce’s parents being gunned down was visible from miles away. Again, cliché. So really, the character-building part of the movie was very much flawed.

The plot involving Ra’s Al-Ghul, Carmine Falcone, The Sandman, and a corrupt Wayne Industries was just much too convoluted. It resulted in scenes and sequences that were disjointed and and awkward. And the idea of using a microwave superweapon to vaporize the water supply to release poison, while it might have fit in a stylized Burton film, just cannot be reconciled with the realism the movie was striving to achieve. Ultimately, the movie would have been better served by simplifying the poison plot, and removing the reappearance of Ra’s Al-Ghul.

Action:
The action was probably the weakest element of this film. It was too frenetic and unfocused. And it served little overall purpose. It was either preposterous (the final train sequence) or gratuitous (it seemed like the whole car-chase sequence was ripped out of Reloaded … and that is most definitely NOT a good thing).

Batman Begins is a successful restart of the franchise which manages to both shed to cheesy, campy veneer of the previous two films and improve upon some aspects of the original Batman. Unfortunately, as a film, it is not as well crafted as the original. On the whole, Burton’s film was much more solid. You may not entirely agree with Burton’s vision, but he avoided the blatant gaffes that plagued Begins. I’ll give you Bale over Keaton, though.