I almost didn’t write this review. I seriously toyed with the idea of putting Batman Begins off for another fortnight and devoting an entire post to the sheer insanity that was Warner’s near decade-long attempt to get a fifth Batman movie made after the neon coloured Chernobyl that was Batman and Robin.
This was right around the time I started following movie news and let me tell you, friends, listening to the proposals coming out of Warners in the late nineties was like having your ear pressed to a cell wall in a lunatic asylum.
Some of these proposed films, admittedly, do sound pretty interesting, like the Batman versus Superman movie starring Colin Farrell and Josh Hartnett, Darren Arronofsky’s Batman Year One or a version of Batman Beyond with Keanu Reeves as Terry McGinnis.
But the one thing that all these proposed movies have in common is that they really, really want you to know that they were going to be DARK. Black. Psychologically tortured. Darkness. No parents.
It’s honestly a little macabre how much they wanted you to know that Batman was going to have a thoroughly shitty time when this movie finally got made. Which is unfair. I mean, Batman didn’t decide to let Akiva Goldsman write the script for Batman and Robin, why should he have to suffer?
Thankfully, we were spared the spectacle of a sobbing, psychologically scarred emo Batman by the appointment of Christopher Nolan as director, a man who has no time for your puny human emotions.
So here’s a quick question for you. Do you feel that Ant-Man or Legend of Ultron are noticeably different in tone and visual style to the comic book movies being made today? No, right? Well consider that the same amount of time has elapsed between those movies and now as between Batman and Robin and Batman Begins. Which is nuts to me because they are so clearly coming from entirely different eras of movie-making. I think this is probably why the whole Barbenheimer phenomenon happened. We’ve been stuck in the current era of movie-making for so long that Oppenheimer and Barbie felt less like movies than escape hatches.
Anyway, the movie begins with honestly a pretty baller move; no opening title, just the bat symbol being formed by a swarm of shrieking bats at sunset.
Little Bruce Wayne is playing in the garden of stately Wayne manor with his friend Rachel when he trips and falls into a disused well.
He’s terrified by a swarm of bats but is rescued by his father who explains that origin stories build character. We flashforward to the present where the now adult Bruce Wayne is serving time in a prison in Bhutan. After getting into a fight with some of the other inmates he’s sent into solitary confinement where he finds a man named Ducard waiting for him. Ducard asks him if he’s so desperate to fight criminals that he’ll lock himself up with them to fight them one at a time. Bruce replies that there were seven and Ducard quips that he counted six.
Rewatching Begins almost twenty years later, it’s easy to see why it was such a big deal. It feels like a proper grown up movie with it’s excellent direction, moody cinematography, stacked cast of phenomenal actors and legendary score. All of this makes it much easier to ignore the script. Now… I mean, it’s fine. Actually, it’s remarkably solid. This may be one of the most influential screenplays of the 21st century given how many stripped down reboots copied it. But there’s also some real dumb shit in here that kind of gets ignored. Like, the simple chronology of this scene. It’s a cool reveal, sure, that Liam Neeson is waiting in Bruce’s cell for him, but logically how did this work? The editing makes it suggest that Bruce was dragged straight from the prison yard to the cell, so how did Ducard know which cell to be waiting for him in? Additionally, if Ducard saw that Bruce was only fighting six inmates, he must have been in the yard when the fight broke out, so how did he get to the cell before him? The implication is that the prison staff are working for Ducard but then, were the guards just marching Bruce around the prison in circles so that Ducard had time to get into a suitably dramatic place to hide in the cell? Seems a bit try-hard, no?
Ducard offers Bruce a place with the League of Shadows, an international order of vigilantes that fights crime. Bruce has to bring a blue flower to the peak of a mountain where he finds a mysterious temple ruled over by Ra’s Al Ghul played by Ken Watanabe. I always assumed that the decision to not have an Middle Eastern Actor play Ra’s was due to 9/11 being literally four years ago, but apparently in the comics Ra’s was born in North Africa to a family of East Asian nomads (Chinese, though, not Japanese) so the casting is actually somewhat comics accurate. I don’t know if that was intentional, but I just thought it was interesting.
Anyway, while Ducard trains Bruce we learn what brought him to Bhutan. As a child, Bruce’s parents took him to see a production of the opera Mefistofele but a scene involving lots of dudes dressed as bats caused the kid to freak out and he asked to be taken home. Outside the opera house (which is apparently one of those run-down, crack-den opera houses in the bad part of town) Bruce’s parents were confronted by a hoodlum named Joe Chill who shot both Waynes. A traumatised Bruce was looked after by a young cop named Gordon and Chill was quickly caught and imprisoned.
Now, I got issues with this revised origin story and maybe not the one you think. Yeah, I prefer not knowing who killed the Waynes. I like the idea of Batman’s ultimate enemy not being some random dude but CRIME ITSELF. I also feel like, given how exceptional a job the police do here, taking care of Bruce and catching his parents’ killer within the same night of their murder, it doesn’t really make as much sense that Bruce would then decide to become the world’s greatest vigilante. I mean, the police actually seem to be pretty on the ball in this universe. But whatever, Joe Chill is canonically the killer of Batman’s parents in the comic, and the way the movie uses Chill to narratively connect Bruce to Falcone is elegant enough so I’ll overlook that. No, it’s actually more the fact that they were at an opera and not seeing Zorro in the cinema. Batman is a character with a pretty big relatability problem but the idea of going to the cinema with your parents is so universal across social class that I think it works better than the relatively high-brow trip to the opera. It’s also a nice way to acknowledge Batman’s literary debt to Zorro. Now, I know why they did it. Overcoming fear is the movie’s big theme so having Bruce feel guilt because his fear inadvertently led to his parent’s death, sure that works. But it’s a simple fix. You keep the trip to the cinema. You just make it a double-bill of Zorro and one other movie.
Anyway, years later Bruce returns home from college because Joe Chill is up for parole. He’s greeted by Alfred, his family’s trusty…why am I explaining this, you all know who Alfred is. He also meets his childhood friend Rachel who’s all grown up and working for the DA who arranged Chill’s parole which Bruce, understandably, is none too happy about. She explains that Chill is going to testify against Carmine Falcone, who’s running all of the crime in this shit town. Bruce and Rachel are horrified when Chill is shot down before their eyes in the courtroom. Driving home, Bruce reveals to Rachel that he had actually planned to shoot Chill himself and muses whether he should be thanking Falcone. Rachel goes on a tirade, saying that Falcone is the source of the misery and crime that claimed his parents’ life and then leaves him outside Falcone’s restaurant so that Bruce can thank him personally. Disgusted by what he almost did, Bruce throws the gun away and goes in to confront Falcone.
Falcone tells Bruce that he’s a pampered rich kid who doesn’t understand the first thing about real suffering and then educates him by having his bodyguards beat the privileged snot out of him.
Bruce then decided to rectify this with a little poverty tourism in the Far East, joining criminal gangs and ending up in prison in Bhutan and we’re all caught up.
Bruce learns that the League of Shadows use the blue flower to create a fear toxin to weaken their enemies. On his graduation day, he learns that he’s going to have to execute a criminal and then he’s going to be sent back home to Gotham to basically destroy the entire city as the league has decided it’s too corrupt to exist and Bruce is all “…..hang on”.
So committed to preserving precious human life is Bruce that he selflessly starts a fire that leads indirectly to the death of Ra’s Al Ghul and the complete destruction of the temple. Bruce saves an unconscious Ducard from going over a cliff and leaves him in the care of some local peasants while he returns to Gotham to pursue his war on crime.
Back in Gotham, Rachel is butting heads with one Doctor Johnathan Crane, a psychiatrist who’s been getting Falcone’s thugs declared insane so that they get sent to Arkham Asylum instead of prison. Of course, in real life it’s far more preferable to get sent to a prison where you actually have a set sentence than a mental institution where you get out when you’ve managed to convince everyone that you’re not crazy which is actually really hard to do without seeming crazy.
Anyway, let’s talk about this Cillian Murphy, the guy who everyone in Ireland knew was awesome before all you Johnny Come Latelies.
I think it’s a damn shame that Murphy’s Scarecrow has kind of been overshadowed by Heath Ledger and Tom Hardy’s more memeable villains because Murphy is the best thing in this. This is such a fucking good villain. The arrogance, the reptilian stillness, the icy menace. You can absolutely see why Christopher Nolan took one look at this guy and said, “yeah, he’s going in regular rotation”. Also as a long time Scarecrow fan I love this. I think Crane is one of the very best Bat-rogues. I think he actually makes a more logical choice to be Batman’s arch-enemy than the Joker. And as a Scarecrow fan I love how effortlessly Crane wrecks Batman’s shit in their first encounter. Takes him apart like it’s nothing, it’s so cool.
Annoyed at having Rachel breathing down his neck, Crane tells Falcone to put a hit on her and tells him that “his employer” is going to be coming to Gotham.
Meanwhile, Bruce shows up at Wayne Enterprises which is now run by William Earle, played by Rutger Hauer and a character I always feel strangely sorry for. Like, what exactly did this guy do wrong? I mean sure, he stuffed Morgan Freeman in the basement but he seems to have done a great job running the company for Bruce while he was off training to be Snake Eyes. And when this nepo-baby just shows up asking for a job he gives him one in the exact section he wanted no questions asked. That section being a storeroom of unused prototypes where Bruce meets Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who is so checked out of his job he doesn’t mind the new kid helping himself to all the cutting edge military tech lying around.
Bruce sets his sights on young Jim Gordon, who he identifies as the one honest cop left in Gotham. The two form a tentative partnership, with Gordon telling Bruce exactly what he needs to bring down Carmine Falcone. Bruce intercepts some of Falcone’s thugs who are bringing mysterious drugs into the city and we get our first look at the Batman suit.
It’s fine. I think the helmet is a little…off. I dunno. Decent effort.
Anyway, Batman stops the shipment and rescues Rachel from the hit that Falcone put on her. With Rachel and Gordon on his side, Batman is able to get Falcone arrested who promptly pretends to be crazy so that he can be sent to Arkham. Crane visits him and Falcone threatens to expose their whole operation unless Crane can get him out. To this, Crane has one question.
Crane then goes to clean up Falcone’s mess by destroying evidence of the operation where he meets Batman and gasses him, sets him on fire and basically leaves him crying to Alfred that the bad man did a bad thing.
Alfred manages to rescue Bruce and brings him home. He then calls Lucius Fox who is presumably confused because he is not a doctor but is a good enough sport to work up an antidote anyway. (I guess bringing in Leslie Thompkins would have been one too many supporting characters but I really hate the “doctor and scientist are basically the same thing” trope.)
Bruce realises that the fear toxin is a strengthened version of the effect of the blue flower and asks Lucius to make more of the antidote.
Rachel angrily insists that she be allowed to have her own expert assess Falcone to see if he true-true cray-cray and Crane takes her down to the basement so that she can see his illegal operation where he’s dumping scads of fear toxin into the water supply. Why all of Gotham’s water runs under a mental hospital is not explained. Crane doses Rachel with a fatal dose of fear toxin. Batman arrives and sprays Crane with some of his own medicine which causes him to see Batman as The Creeper from Jeepers Creepers.
Bruce has to get Rachel out of the Asylum without getting caught by the cops. This leads to a really cool chase scene with the new Batmobile, the Tumbler, which Alfred later says resulted in no casualties because that’s what he needs to sleep at night.
After treating Rachel and getting Alfred to return her home, Bruce attends his birthday party and one of his guests offers to introduce him to “Mr. Ra’s Al Ghul”. Bruce is naturally a little surprised by this but it turns out that Ducard was actually Ra’s the whole time.
Ra’s proceeds to lay out his ridiculously overly complicated plan. See, the League of Shadows recently high-jacked a ship containing a device that causes water to evaporate…
Oh my God, they stole this plot from sixties Batman! All it’s missing is Commodore Schmidlapp and a scene at the off-brand United Nations!
So the plan is to vaporise all of Gotham’s water which contains the fear toxin which needs to be breathed rather than ingested to work. Okay, fine, I guess. But I still don’t get how it’s vaporising all of this water without killing every living human being in its radius. We’re mostly water, you know. And yes, I guess I am saying that the sixties Batman movie displayed greater scientific literacy than this one.
Ducard uses the monorail that Bruce’s father built as the delivery system for the microwave emitter. With Gordon’s help, Batman is able to blow up the rail bridge and lets Ra’s plummet to his death saying “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you”.
The day after, Earle learns that all of Wayne Enterprises stock was secretly bought by Bruce and that he’s now out of a job.
Rachel visits the smouldering ruins of Wayne Manor where Bruce is randomly hitting a piece of wood like a fucking caveman who can’t understand why the house isn’t fixed yet (dude, just call an architect, this is not a one-man-and-his-butler job). She tells Bruce that she waited so long for him to come back but that the man who returned home was someone else. But she hopes that when Gotham has no need of Batman she’ll see Bruce again.
The movie ends with Gordon showing Batman the brand spanking new Bat-signal he’s had installed and telling about this strange new criminal who’s appeared with a flair for the theatrical. One who likes leaving mysterious cards…
***
At once an incredibly influential movie and something of a rough draft, Batman Begins is a solid opener for an exciting new chapter in the bat’s cinematic journey.
The Dark Knight Detective
Counter-intuitively I think Bale’s Batman peaked with his first appearance. He nails Bruce Wayne, possibly the best live action portrayal. And while his Batman isn’t perfect, he’s still got the voice under some kind of control.
His Faithful Manservant
I like my Alfreds posh as a matter of personal preference, but if you like the rough-around-the-edges working class former military Alfreds that pop up occasionally, Michael Caine is the best version of that.
Fear Incarnate, Fear Walking the streets of Gotham…
Much as we must forever lament not seeing Coolio or Howard Stern as the Scarecrow (yes, those were both seriously considered, don’t do drugs, kids) I’m confident in calling Cillian Murphy’s venomously beautiful, deliciously chilling Scarecrow the best thing in this whole show.
“Perhaps, Detective, it is time that you and I finally settled this!”
On the other hand, I’m not really a fan of the reveal of Ducard as Ra’s. It reeks of “twist for the sake of having a twist”. Nothing is really changed by the revelation, the story would proceed exactly the same if Ducard just returned to Gotham to avenge the real Ra’s death. And, while Neeson’s the man, there will never be a Ra’s Al Ghul as iconic as David Warner in the animated series.
The Comish
Although technically not yet a comish. The Lieutenantish? While certainly treating the character with more respect than the Burton/Schumacher movies did, Oldman’s Gordon is honestly a bit of a wet cabbage. I get that he has to be less cool than Batman, but in the comic this is based on Gordon is a former marine who can take down Green Berets without breaking a sweat.
Our Plucky Sidekicks
I feel like Katie Holmes got overshadowed by Maggie Gyllenhaal but she’s really good in this. Maybe her best performance. Or are there great Katie Holmes performances out there I’m overlooking? Let me know in the comments. Or don’t. You don’t work for me.
Batman NEVER kills, except:
I’m sure they’re all fine.
Seriously, I’m glad this movie at least acknowledges the idea that Batman does not and should never kill. That said, I can’t get on board with the “I don’t have to save you” rationale. Yeah you do. You’re Batman.
Where does he get those wonderful toys?:
This movie actually explains (maybe over-explains?) just where exactly he gets those wonderful toys. In keeping with the stripped down, back to basic approach, Batman actually has very few gadgets in this movie that you couldn’t get in an army surplus store. With the notable exception of:
It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:
I feel this might be controversial but…I don’t like the Tumbler. Yeah, it’s genuinely cool that they built this thing from scratch and it can actually go that fast. But…it’s ugly as shit. Am I crazy?
FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:
NEXT UPDATE: 07 September 2023.
NEXT TIME: Disney doing dark fantasy in the eighties? When has that ever not worked?
*Prestige, Memento, Inception, Dark Knight and Oppenheimer in case you were wondering.
unshavedmouse 
The Tumbler, like a Staffordshire bull terrier, isn’t pretty but you love her too much to care: also, I tend to disagree with you R.E. Scarecrow (Though only insofar as I feel that he’s too close to Batman’s wavelength to work as Arch-Enemy*).
To my mind an Arch-Nemesis needs to be a visual foil to their personal headache – part of the reason the ‘Harlequin from Hell’ does the business so well is that he’s such a complete opposite of the Dark Knight, in terms of personality, aesthetic and style.
Also, Two-Face has all that AND a deeply personal connection to the Dark Knight to boot!
*I like Mr Murphy’s Scarecrow so much one can imagine an absolutely AWESOME Batman ‘66/THE DARK KNIGHT crossover with Adam West’s Batman pitted against Mr Murphy’s Scarecrow – I’d also love to see what Mr Bale’s Batman would make of the ‘66 version of The Riddler or the Penguin (and Vice Versa).
One More Thing: since Ra’s al-Ghul is literally the man who taught Batman everything he knows about being a crime-smashing ninja (and since the inmates of that League of Shadows temple were apparently given the exact same training as Bruce) it seems difficult to critique his “… but I don’t have to save you” attitude.
Tell me these bad lads couldn’t shift for themselves and I must name you FIBBER (Assuming they want to – Ducard actively chooses to die, which is no fault of Bruce’s).
Dash it all, the Internet has left this post out of proper context (Twice over, in fact, as I noticed this problem before and tried to rectify it) : my initial post basically agreed with your assessment of Mr Cillian Murphy as the best Bat-villain in the trilogy (I’d love to see a story that matched him against Batman ‘66, since he’d both fit into and stand out from that milieu in exactly the right way); it also noted that one felt The Scarecrow was held back from being Batman’s perfect nemesis by a lack of visual high contrast between them and by the lack of any Personal Drama (I’d argue that, of all Batman’s rogues, it’s TWO-FACE that has all the right pieces to be Batman’s Greatest Enemy, they’ve just never been put together in the right order); finally, I wanted to note that, like a Staffie Dog, the Tumbler is too rugged to be pretty but we adore her anyway.
Wait, where did my first post go? I had a whole speech about The Scarecrow not making a powerful enough visual or philosophical contrast with Batman to work as his arch-enemy (Especially in the absence of Personal Drama), but being in agreement that Mr Murphy is Best in Show when it comes to the villains of BATMAN BEGINS (I would actually love to see a crossover that pitted him against Batman ‘66, which I think we can agree is High Praise indeed).
That’s true about Scarecrow, though I think if his gimmick were pushed to its furthest (letting him actually be scary outside of just using his fear gas all the time) and he was made into a more compelling character, he probably would fit quite well as the archenemy.
Speaking of how the whole “vaporize the water supply” plan is supposed to work, the idea is that Scarecrow has been spiking the water for ages, and the vaporization is just the final step.
Even ignoring how potent that stuff has to be to avoid dilution (how much water is in a CITY?), and how long it seems to just stick around (no water treatment in Gotham?), how did they keep this a secret?
Does no one in Gotham take hot showers? Sauna? Boil water for tea? Either people were going nuts for weeks, or Gotham is a savage and filthy place with a massive BO problem, and I can sympathize with Ra’s desire to destroy it.
Still all Batman movies require enough suspension of disbelief to accept that the best solution for crime is billionaires punching it in fursuits, and this is otherwise a brilliant flick. Such a breath of fresh air after Batman and Robin, seeing a great filmmaker go through the effort of making a great film that just happens to be about Batman.
I grew up with the Nolan Batman movies, and I honestly think Batman Begins is the best out of all of them. While it’s definitely rough around the edges, I do like Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne and his Batman, whether he be a faceless goon trying and failing miserably to jump across rooftops, or in the actual Batsuit (which is kind of my favorite Batsuit, not gonna lie).
I know The Dark Knight is *technically* a better film, but I just like how Gotham and Batman himself have a bit of a noir-style mystique that I don’t see in the rest of the trilogy.
I agree – for my money BATMAN BEGINS feels more like a Batman movie than a ‘Christopher Nolan does Batman’ movie (and Gotham definitely does have a grungy, Gothic edge in this film that it lacks in the other two-thirds of the trilogy).
Going back to this film recently, the first thing I noticed was how much more ‘comic booky’ it was than its sequels. It was honestly kind of jarring, I had a mental image in my head of all of these films looking and feeling ‘realistic’. That said, as a comic book fan, I appreciate the comic book feel a lot, the stylized noir visuals and kind of wacky villain scheme were a lot of fun to go back to. The Dark Knight is obviously incredible, but I do sometimes wonder if I’d have liked it even more if it had the more stylized feel of this movie. I also think that Bale would have become my all time favorite live action Bruce Wayne and Batman if he had continued in the manner of his performance here. Starting with The Dark Knight, it feels harder to connect to Bruce emotionally, and Batman suddenly sounds like he’s doing a bad Clint Eastwood impression!
One thing I didn’t miss about the movie is the editing! Is it me, or is it just so rapid-fire that it becomes distracting? It feels like so many shots just don’t get any time to breathe. Watching the fight scenes, I also felt so glad that the ‘go up close and shake the camera furiously’ style of action seems to have gone out of fashion. I don’t think any live action Batman movie has great hand to hand action, but at least I can usually see it.
I saw this movie in theaters back in the day cuz my Grandpa wanted to see it. The problem is that I knew nothing about Batman, so it was hard to follow along. And when TDK came out a few years later, I was one of the edgy guys saying it was terrible.
I watched both again before The Batman came out, and I reevaluated my opinion on them. They’re both decent imo.
So while you’re willing to mention in passing the terrible ideas we almost had for Bat films, you’re just going to gloss over the proposed movie wherein Batman is a homeless guy who cobbles together a Batmobile with the help of a black mechanic called Big Al, huh?
Whatever. You do you.
I mentioned Arronofsky!
Fair enough. I didn’t actually remember who was behind it. I just put that out there because I feel like it doesn’t get talked enough about.
I cannot wait to see you praise Return to Oz for thousands of words.
I really want to see Batman Triumphant/Batman Unchained, but alas it was not meant to be.
Optimistic, ain’t ya?
I am just being realistic.
Re. Batman Triumphant/Unchained, DC recently created a comic series called Batman ’89, to provide new stories in the Burtonverse. They did a first Batman 89 miniseries based on the rejected Batman Returns/Batman 3 story ideas involving Billy Dee Williams becoming Two-Face, and they are going to do a second one based on the Batman 5 rejected ideas, with a Madonna-inspired Harley Quinn and a Jeff Goldblum inspired scarecrow…
(TBF, in a world where Lady Gaga gets to play Harley Quinn, casting Madonna in that role no longer sounds that ludicrous.)
There will always be a degree of morbid curiosity about Batman films that never made it to the screen. I actually want to see the cancelled Batgirl film. Batgirl getting to use her photographic memory and research skills, Brendan Fraser as the villain, the woman from The Thick of It as a bent fire department official – sounds like fun to me…
And Batman 89 was completely awful, no involvment from Burton, and written by a man thankfully fired from Batman Returns. The same guy is doing the next one, and he had nothing to do with Batman Triumphant.
Good thing Superman 78 was great.
Sam Hamm’s initial screenplay for Batman Returns tried to turn Catwoman into a serial killer, so I can see why they lost confidence in him. However, Batman 89 did have an interesting “photorealistic” art style, so it will be fun to see that again. I am honestly curious about this sequel…
Another thing about Batman 89 that highlights one of my DC pet peeves – I don’t like it when retellings skip Barbara as Batgirl and go to her becoming Oracle without suffering any disabilities whatsoever (I am making this clarification because DC did a pretty solid YA Graphic Novel called The Oracle Code where Barbara was paralyzed as a teen after trying to follow her father into a shootout, and went straight into being Oracle from there). It just validates the stereotype that Oracle is a mere “woman behind a screen” without the comeback story that made Barbara so powerful in that role. People who prefer Barbara as Oracle argue that focusing on her being Batgirl is like focusing on Dick Grayson as Robin and ignoring his development as Nightwing. However, taking Dick Grayson straight into being Nightwing would be a terrible idea, so why do that for Barbara?
As much as I like the look and feel of Batman Begins (the use of Chicago, England and a touch of Hong Kong to create Gotham City) and helping bring some dignity back to the Bat Franchise. It’s hard to talk about it’s use of “Making it look like it could be set in the real world” that would shape comic book movies for years to come. The positives and negatives of studios and creators copying that decision are going to be debated for years to come, but trying to make all of it look real will hinder them.
For me personally, Mr. Neeson certainly has the physicality to play the leader of a cabal of assassins who isn’t afraid to rough it up when the time comes (not that you could tell with its over-edited action scenes, another problem that pervades filmmaking). But for Ras al Ghul, I feel an actor who isn’t so readily identifiable as Irish is needed for the role, someone that’s hard to pin down in either looks or voice. Which is why Oded Fehr is my favorite take on the character.
And yeah, it’s funny that Rutger’s character gets the boot just so Bruce can run the company without oversight and keep it from going public. And there’s some throwaway lines about Wayne Enterprise manufacturing weapons, but considering the toys Bruce gets in the sequel, that just comes off as hypocritical.
I have mixed opinions on Batman Begins now, after rewatching it for the first time in awhile a year or so ago. It’s still a very enjoyable, well-made movie with poorly edited fight scenes, but it is kind of hard not to notice just how much of it’s devoted to going, “We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry…” over making a superhero movie.
Yeah, the fight scenes are pretty poor. Then again, Bale could barely move.
Pretending to be a mouse!? Surely he is lying.
Holmes was great to I agree. And recasts bother me on principle every time, I just don’t connect to different actors as same character. So I would have liked if they just had another character entirely in the next one.
Of course! Deceit is his watchword!
One thing you neglected to mention is that Batman Begins had one of the funniest DVD Extras of all time: this weird short called Tankman. It features Batman trying to get Jimmy Fallon to an awards show on time and uses a lot of the footage from the Tumbler chase scenes in the movie. And then when they arrive Batman takes off his mask to reveal he’s actually….Napoleon Dynamite! It’s so dumb and stupid and I love it. I think it may have been an actual video shown for that awards show back in 2005 but I only know it from the DVD extras.
I had the BB DVD on day of release and I don’t remember that at all. I had the UK edition. Pretty sure I watched it all.
Hey Mouse, I just thought of something. Are you going to review Joker with Joaquin Phoenix in this series, or does that not count as a “Batman” movie?
Ah. Good question. No, I don’t think so. I don’t want to review Catwoman or Suicide Squad either.
Batman v. Superman? It already had a guest review in the site but it’s still a live action mobie with ‘Batman’ in its name.
Just let me thank you in the name of all of us that we won’t be getting a review of Birds of Prey. Does anyone want to be reminded about it?
Yes, I will have to do B v S. Shudder.
On the other hand, The Suicide Squad is actually a good enough film to watch, at least in my opinion.
‘Mobie’. Boy my face is red.
Jett from the website “batman on film” did a bunch of set visits while BB was being made which I followed at the time. He said that “fear gas Batman” originally had a different look which was made in CGI and filmed, where Batman is a giant shifting CGI monster with a scarier face, but it was shelved and replaced with the Creeper one at the last minute (he didn’t see the Creeper version until he actually saw the film apparently).
Looking at the new Batman movie Robert Pattinson also tried to make batman better, but no way as comparison with Christian Bale!
For all the logic problems with the plot, this is still my favourite of the Nolan Batman movies. I have… uncommon views on The Dark Knight, and I think Heath Ledger’s death gave it some undeserved shielding from criticism.