movie review: Batman Begins
Sandro
2005
I have to say, I'm starting to get sick of all this superhero shit.
The names and stars change, the settings and villains, but it's the
same shit in a different bucket every time a new one comes out.
With fairly low expectations I ventured onward and upward to check this
out, being mindful of the exuberant reviews that paint this as being
the bestest superhero flick ever made. I have to say, I just can't
see what they're seeing. To me Batman Begins is just another generic
superhero film, only slightly lamer than the others that have been
coming out lately.
Sure, it's better than the other four movies directed by spookykid
Tim Burton and uberhack Joel Schumacher, but they were pretty crappy
anyway. Batman & Robin was the acknowledged nadir of the franchise, but
for my money it was just as lame and cringeworthy as any of the other
flicks.
Admittedly, I don't really have an affinity for the character in any
of his incarnations. I never read the comic books, either the Bob Kane
originals or the Frank Miller Dark Knight stuff. I watched the campy
television series with Adam West and Burt Ward but hated the way that
they kept stretching out the stories with cliffhanger endings, where
there was also never any resolution to anything that went on. There's
only so many times that a criminal mastermind can escape from jail or
an asylum and continue committing the same loopy crimes every week
before even the most benevolent and humanitarian crime fighter / police
commissioner snaps and decides to kill them with their bare hands. Lord
knows it had that effect on me.
That being said, the dramatic impetus, the psychological motivation
behind Batman never really resonated with me either. It's hard for me
to care about a billionaire who fights crime because, like most
mega-wealthy aristocrats who don't decide to run for President,
he's kinda bored.
Okay, so they spend hours detailing his post-traumatic stress, his
guilt and crippling emotional problems due to his feeling responsible
for his parentals being gunned down in a feculent alleyway. So what?
I'd have more respect for the guy if his motivation was little more
than "I do it for the chicks, and I love wearing latex". It's
just as psychologically complex as any of the pseudo-Jungian analytical
bullshit they serve up in this or any of the other flicks.
That said, I think that director Chris Nolan is on a surer footing when
he's dealing with the psycho-malogical / dramatic stuff in the film,
rather than the action sequences. The action scenes are all, with few
exceptions, pretty lame.
You could argue that there is a thematic reason as to why early on the
scenes where Batman takes down bad guys are hyperedited and spastic:
assuming the fearsome Batman persona, he fights in such a way that he
is barely ever seen until it's too late for the criminal. His entire
shtick is supposed to be confusion and misdirection as a tactic against
his enemies. Sure, I'll buy that for a dollar.
Later on, however, I don't accept that over-editing something makes
it more compelling. Over-editing something makes it incoherent and
painful to watch. So assume that I disliked pretty much every action
scene in the film's 130 minute running time.
There's something about the costume as well, it just looks comical to
me. Christian Bale as Batman, or as anything, is wonderful, great, a
genius thing to do. He's a decent actor and deserves the big
paychecks and supermodel blowjobs. But in that suit, with that goofy
cowl (hood), he just looked ridiculous. He looked better than Michael
Keaton, Val Kilmer or George Clooney, but then they all looked
ridiculous.
It gives him this massively elongated head that seems to just go on and
on. I actually giggled at some points when he was supposed to be
mysterious and cool when talking to some of his good guy allies. The
costume, well, the costume... If you buy it, then good luck to you. It
just always looks a bit silly to me.
I can't really go into the whys and the wherefores as to how I can
accept the look of Spider-Man or the Hulk and not Batman on film, but I
just can't. There's something about him that looks cool in comics
and in animation, but just doesn't translate well to the screen for
me.
There's something about the immobile neck that really gets to me too.
It's like every Batman is forced by his costume to have a paralysed
neck like a steroid junkie who's worked out so hard that their neck
has disappeared into their chest and head.
Sure, there are lots of wonderful actors in this flick, and a few who
aren't wonderful but still do okay, and I guess that will raise the
movie up in the eyes of a lot of people. But really, as odd as the
primary danger to the city of Gotham is (a vaporised cloud of water
containing a powerful hallucinogen threatens to turn everyone into a
lunatic), it's little different from every other hero flick where the
girl and the city are in perpetual danger.
To be fair, some of the recent superhero flicks that I've enjoyed
(the Raimi Spider flicks, Hulk, The Incredibles) didn't exactly have
particularly innovative villains or climaxes. It's just that I found
the jeopardy / danger to citizens and puppies stuff here extremely
dull. I don't think it was the material itself, it's just that I
can't handle hyper-editing, and it flat out bores me.
The bad guys in this are somewhat interesting. Though they initially
were his mentors, a cryptic Illuminati-like organisation called the
League of Shadows orchestrates major world events and has designs upon
Gotham City. A mafia boss, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) makes it his
life's work and delight to ensure the city is as corrupt as possible,
right down to having city judges cavorting with underage hookers just
for laughs.
A creepy psychiatrist who runs Arkham Asylum, Dr Frasier Crane (Cillian
Murphy, or Kelsey Grammar, whichever you think is creepier) likes
wearing a hessian sack over his head and using this trippy drug gas on
unsuspecting victims which drives them insane. And there's a bunch of
other lunatics and corrupt cops as well. Some trains, thousands of
bats, magical microwave emitters that vaporise water but don't kill
the thousands of people around it who are, to quote someone funny
"bags of mostly water", and long periods of noisy dullness where
little happens despite the appearance of such.
Arrayed against them are a hollow crazy person who dresses as a bat, a
butler (Michael Caine), a good hearted prosecutor who still hungers for
Dawson's touch (Katie Holmes) and the one incorruptible cop in Gotham
City, Sgt Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman).
Of course the good guys are probably going to win. Of course millions
of people aren't going to die. If they did, the flick was probably
better off being called Batman Fucks Up, And How!
This isn't really a prequel, they decide to just pretend the other
films don't exist, and start all over again. The primary difference
between this film and the ones from the 90s is that those were really
REALLY lame, were pretty stupid and didn't take themselves that
seriously. Batman Begins takes itself deathly seriously, which I like,
but that doesn't stop it from being a bit lame as well.
There are some smidgens of humour in the flick, it's not all
grimacing and overacting. There's one particularly funny bit where
Bruce Wayne pretends to be drunk to get rid of some party guests which
I really liked, and the follow-up article in a newspaper the next day
about the actions of a drunken billionaire is priceless.
There are also few moments that are damn near perfect in their
intensity. Batman's interrogation of a corrupt cop whom he suspends
over a ledge as if he's one of Michael Jackson's children looked
amazing. The way that Bale does the dialogue and moves his mouth was
chilling, and almost frightening. Later on, when a henchman is drugged
with the Scary Drug and he sees Batman as a demonic figure, he really
is quite horrific, with black darkness pouring from his misshapen
mouth.
Many different characters get to hallucinate, and they get to see
representations of their deepest fears appear before them. I'm amazed
that no-one saw their mothers, Angela Lansbury or Crispin Glover.
All of the relatively good stuff is wedged painfully in between fairly
ordinary action stuff which bored me. This isn't the greatest comic
book adaptation ever made, it's not the worst (they are legion, after
all). It's just another bloody film in a franchise. It's
entertaining, but not as deep as they'd like to think it is.
So they gave it to the guy who directed the mini-masterpiece Memento.
Big deal. He directs actions scenes (which, to be fair, probably
aren't his fault: it stinks of producer interference) the way drunk
people vomit. He is still a very good director. It'd be interesting
to see if they let him do the next one as well.
Speaking of which, you have to wonder what the next flicks (and there
will be plenty of them, that's for sure) will be called: Batman Goes
Bananas!, Batman Yet Again, Batman and a Heterosexual Robin, Batman
Versus Alien Versus Predator, Batman: Laundry Day. The potential list
is endless.
That's it. I order Hollywood to stop making comic book / superhero
adaptations. It's played out. Again and again, the Nietzchean
obsession with the "ubermensch" is getting tiresome. This would be
one of those prime moments where less would be more.
Heed me, or there will be a reckoning.
5 bored Sandros waiting desperately for a flick to end so he can get
the hell out of the cinema out of 10
--
"As a man, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol, I can be something...
terrifying" - Batman Begins
imorf
Farmer. The last straw for superhero movies for me was Spiderman (I), I
can't even read your whole review (sorry). The Horror, the horror.....
Synic
> [...] Christian Bale as Batman, or as anything, is wonderful, great, a
> genius thing to do. He's a decent actor and deserves the big
> paychecks and supermodel blowjobs. But in that suit, with that goofy
In the hood, Christian Bale seems to have Shrub's bottom jaw and mouth.
There were moments there where I could have sworn I was watching one of
those Stalin propaganda movies where Stalin's the guy who saves the day.