Batman Begins

[yendi]

Best Batman movie yet.

Which is, realistically, damning it with faint praise, as the last three* blew. But this one was damned good in its own right.

But this one captured the feel of Batman, getting his motivations right (something Burton missed by a long shot), getting his interactions with the villains down, and throwing in tons of stuff for the comic geeks (some of whom will whine that the villains and supporting characters aren't the same as in the comics, but they miss the point as much as the folks who griped about Spidey's organic webshooters did). Just a solid superhero movie, one that focuses on what makes Bats unique. Katie Holmes does suck some life out of the movie in her early scenes, but even she manages to find her footing by the latter half of the film. And since the rest of the cast includes people like Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and (of course) Christian Bale, well, we've all seen what Nolan can do with genuinely talented actors. No hamming it up -- not even by Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow -- which is a major plus.

There are a few minor plot complaints (which I'll avoid for spoiler purposes), but nothing that prevented me from having a good time. My only other minor complaint is the implication that Gotham is in the South (mentioned in a one-off comment). It's not. Otherwise, they captured the feel of Gotham nicely, and of Batman near-perfectly.

*Yes, three -- unless your tongue is stuck three inches up Tim Burton's ass, it's hard to ignore the fact that Batman Returns is just a pair of plastic nipples and a good Michelle Pfeiffer performance away from sucking as much as Schumacher's movies.

Comments

Re: Christian Bale

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

I thought he was excellent in that role - he was, after all, portraying a man whose emotions had been chemically suppressed for his entire life, who was suddenly experiencing feelings he'd never had before, and required to keep them *hidden*. In summary, he was acting like a man who had brand-new feelings that he didn't know how to control, who was acting like a man who didn't have feelings at all. And yeah, a man whose insides are going out of control is going to do his best to make his outside look like stone...and I thought he did a *fabulous* job of showing that struggle, of having the emotions leak through, of trying to pretend to be emotionless and failing. If you watch carefully, you can see how he changes from the early parts of the movie to the end. He goes through the changes in emotional level gradually.

I can't think that it was an easy part to play - having such a small range of expression you're allowed to show, and such a large range of emotion that you need to convey. The *bad* guy had an easier time of it, and I think did a horrid job of it. He was supposed to be on the same drug as the rest of them, but he should've been turned in as a sense offender far earlier - the *glee* in his eyes when threatening Bale's character was far too obvious. The Top bad guy was much, much better at hiding his feelings.