What I thought of “Batman Begins”
Now I have already done one review of this movie on my other blog, but I didn’t get to the comic book geek aspect of the movie, as in the things that I was a little disappointed about. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie. I thought it was way better than the “Fantastic Four”, in my opinion (but that is another post). In fact here is what I wrote previously:
The Bat is Back!!!
I went and saw Batman Begins last night and it was AWESOME!!
Those that know me know that I am an avid comic book collector and have been a huge Batman fan since I was a kid. I have thousands of comics in my collection and have read more Batman stories than you can imagine.
With that in mind, believe me when I tell you that Batman Begins has FINALLY captured the true essence of what the Batman character was meant to be when Batman was created by Bob Kane, all those years ago (1939 to be exact).
In my opinion, Batman Begins is a must see movie. With news out that they are already making plans for the sequel, Batman is hopefully back for good!
posted on Thursday, June 16, 2005 8:35 AM
With that said, there were a few things that I had a problem with off the top of my head. I have only seen it once so far, and I am going from memory. MAJOR SPOILERS if you read any further, so if you haven’t seen “Batman Begins” and plan to eventually, STOP READING right now.
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David Goyer did a good job of bringing multiple elements from several Batman stories to this film. Readers of “Batman: Year One” will definitely remember the “calling of the bats” scene and fans of “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” will recognize how the Batcave is first found by a young Bruce Wayne. One of my favorite elements brought from the comics was the “true” name of the killer of Batman’s parents, Joe Chill.
Goyer was able to put some modern realism to an origin story that has been told several times to “comic geeks” but has never really been fully covered in the mainstream media that I am aware of. Having Bruce Wayne go on a quest to actually be a criminal to know how they work disturbed me at first, but I realize that was more interesting than watching the character going through school learning criminal psychology or training his body to physical perfection in solitude. Having the story go this way also gave the plot more realism and made it more believable.
I think you can see the “theme” of what I thought about this movie. All of the little bits and nuances of the plot that Goyer changed from what is “established” Batman canon, were to make the story more realistic and modernized for today. Showing the story this way also gave the auidence, in my opinion, a stronger connection to Bruce Wayne\Batman character than in the other Batman movies, because you saw exactly what he went through to get to the point of dressing like a bat and scaring the crap out of criminals. Overall, this movie was very well done. It had the right amount of the comics in it for comic book fans (after all they are the ones that put Batman on the map) and enough of modern Hollywood style to make it appealing to the mainstream public.
With that all said, this is what I didn’t like about the movie.
- The Batman character that I grew up with is the “World’s Greatest Detective”. They don’t make as much a deal about this as they used to in the comics, but I certainly felt the loss of that aspect of the character in the movie. Like I have already said, doings thing the way they did helped the plot flow better and made things more realistic. They by no means made Batman an idiot in the movie, but I will always think of Batman being trained to perfection in mind and body. “
- The way that the Ra’s Al Ghul character was handled. I didn’t really care for that whole part. It was a total waste of a very strong villian. You can look here at the character’s DC Comics Secret Files entry to see just what the differences are.
- Last but not least, Batman’s decision not to save his mentor from the crashing train at the end of the movie. The Batman that I grew up with would never kill, and would rather die himself to see anyone else die from his inaction. Since his parents death when he was a child, life is sacred to him. This hasn’t always been this way with the Batman character. But I have always felt that this is one of the most noble things about the Batman character that has developed over the years. Batman’s quote at that moment before the train crash “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you either”, in my opinion is splitting hairs and kind of a cop-out. Earlier in the movie, when asked to kill a criminal to finish his Shadows training, he refused. Ducard told him, “You’re compasion will be seen as a weekness by your enemies”. Bruce replied, “That is why it is so important.” Though Bruce saved Ducard once already in the movie, Batman’s action on the train seemed kind of contradictory to me. Once again I can see why this was done this way, it certainly makes the character more modern and realistic. However it is kind of like playing God, seeing who gets to live and die. In my opinion, Batman has always been about justice and not about judgement.
Well that is it for me tonight. Make sure to let me know what you thought of “Batman Begins” in the comments section
Thanks for stopping by,
Moz
