I hated this freaking movie. In fact it gave me nightmares. Of SUCK. Oh no, I’m falling endlessly and this movie is chasing me in an ice cream truck and there’s suck coming out of the back. That kinda dream.

Spoilers ahead…

Batman Begins (awful title) had a deific word-of-mouth when it debuted, although I didn’t get to check it out due to total lack of interest in yet another, likely inept Batman movie, and another Origin retcon at that. So I’m bored a few weeks ago and pop it in a DVD. Yikes. My main problem with films nowadays is the utter lack of realism, especially notable in supposedly “realistic” takes on fantasy or adventure genres. Often presented as a “darker” Batman tale, BB has exactly this fault. Neither dialogue nor background nor characters are at all believeable to me. A certain laziness in modern storytelling also pervades the movie…I suppose I can call it a riding-on-rails feeling you get in so many stories now: the rushed pacing that skips over promising chances for development; the exhaustive use of quick-cut transitions that got old a generation ago; the constant self-realization that this is a movie belonging to a franchise belonging to the pop culture. IMDB tells me it was intended as the 4th Batman movie, but laid off after we saw that thing that Schumacher did.

A recent post on our boards expresses the desire for an “adult” Batman series. I would love to see an adult ANYTHING on television. Let’s do a quickie definition of “adult” subject matter as containing the nasty kaleidoscope of crises through which we’ve come to see the world, and having serious, unavoidable character flaws in its characters, and something loud to say about how we all gradually become part of the system and thus necessarily rotten. No real redemption, no good phase/evil phase of life, no moral fairy tales. But all you see is neatly-packaged nonsense, and aware of itself. I mean, why can’t we have stories that TEACH you something about how to live?

Anyhoo, BB is not concerned with showing Batman fans examples of why they love Batman and what he represents–it’s just concerned with showing Batman. Absent entirely is his nobly self-deprecating grit, his virtuous callousness toward the criminal element, and most importantly, the fact that he is one of a very very few self-actualized personalities who make choices about the past, rather than be mindlessly molded by it. Bruce asked himself what he should DO about his past, and then did it. Somehow, though, every Batman movie I’ve seen goes straight from gunshot to pulling the mask on. BB‘s Eastern scenes and early “training” are just forgettable filler between these bookends.

In short, we love Batman because he gives a damn! And now they’ve got me not giving a damn about Batman!

Pros:

• Uhhhhhmmmmm
• It used costly computers? Yeah it did, didn’t it?
• Big names in the cast, although Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were just as wooden and essentially uncaring as anyone else involved, including Bale. The first time I heard his in-cape voice I had to laugh. “THIS IS MY BATVOICE!” Sure, Liam Neeson was characteristically cool, but I spent most of his scenes trying to figure out what the hell he was doing that wasn’t Neeson-specific. But he’s not capable of such things as far as I’ve seen him, so why shouldn’t he be all decked out in a slick suit in the movie’s finale?
• They finally put Scarecrow in a movie
• The Bat-Hummer was more what I’d expect Batman to drive. I always wondered wtf Batman would do when he was stuck in traffic, which of course you never saw. And here too we see a Gotham that’s one big empty street.
• A 6th Pro would go here

Cons:

• What the hell? This is all BB kept getting from me. Let’s take plot by its scruffy neck and haul it in here. What the hell is with that plot? Everything in a story has to tie in with every other element? Life doesn’t have events/episodes that slowly sink down into the past without being flashbacked or referenced five times more by every supporting character? God.
• Dialogue hits record shits in this movie. It’s shit in just about every movie. To me, you’ve only got realistic, modern dialgoue when the characters say almost nothing, or have long monologues in which they’re saying almost nothing. I can count on half a hand the number of people I’ve met who don’t fall into those categories. What I keep seeing onscreen instead are people who just regurgitate ONE LINE that was said ten years in the past. For many of these characters, there is just one flimsy bond formed in one flimsy event. No nuances, reservations, realism. Just cliche’ crap like “Like your father said, we fall so we can pick ourselves up!” I thought it was show, not tell. Psychedelic gory Jesus I hate this movie.

  Bruce wants to kill his parents’ murderer in this movie, with a gun even…this could have been interesting if it wasn’t handled so typically. We don’t see the buildup to the sudden planned violence, and we don’t see its refutation (just a gun thrown in the river so the movie can show us something else). Token gesture at more of that “darkness” I keep hearing about.

• BB makes Scarecrow lameass. Scarecrow was always my favorite villain in the comics, mostly because he’s a total weirdo and obsessed with an idea, that of fear, and wants to be the living avatar of this idea. Even better, he’s a good example of the revenge that a lot of weirdo bookish people would like to get on bullies/society/etc. That’s pure cool in my book. He also understands the human mind and its reflexes, and invented the Crane martial arts style, and come on, how do you screw that up. Plus that fear gas is the best character development for Batman you can think of. Here he’s just another prettyboy movie star who can’t be bothered to contort a face muscle or vocal cord. Scarecrow’s supposed to visibly get off when he drives people insane. Kinda his THING.

  Someone tell me how the hell BB‘s Morgan Freeman finds an antidote to the gas. Smart people are scientists and scientists can build and fix everything, oh. Even your BODY. Fuck that.

• All the elements and setups are too convenient. The abandoned Batmobile is just beyond ready-made, as is the abandoned R&D basement where it’s parked. Wayne loses and regains his empire, each getting seconds of screentime. The local mafia don is inexplicably tied into the plot when he should be Batman’s warm-up phase. Ras al Ghul controls everyone everywhere and was responsible for everything, including Bruce’s father’s murder (!). I can’t bash this sort of press-button plot hard enough.
• This movie literally rides the rails at the end. Yeah I’m punning, but it’s too appropriate. Gimme a shark and a motorcyle and I’ll do the same with that.
• Cast–Why so pretty? Gotham’s hard-working (if not obsessed) District Attorney just came back from a shopping spree and the stylist’s in every scene. More of a general gripe I have with the movies, but really, we only get Clean People and Dirty People. Kinda like how she slaps Bruce repeatedly and he’s got no red mark. I don’t ask that such a movie break its neck focusing on detail, but without these fundamental nods to reality, you get something much less out of focus than the comics. Maybe the movie-goers are unconsciously demanding this, but that’s still sad.
• Goddamn it’s long. 140 minutes of this crap and still the director/editors feel they need the Lucas touch from scene to scene. WHOOSH go the transitions down the tunnel!

Final Thoughts: Definitely a movie making me wonder why I even watch anything the big studios do. Only the name Batman kept me from shutting the damn thing off, and of course that’s the only reason it was filmed. A few years ago I’d heard that this movie was slated to depict Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, but what we ended up getting could actually have used all those colored floodlights of Schumacher’s. Some context then to fill out all this pretension to actual storytelling and honest work. No one works in this industry, honestly. The cartoons managed to get it right though–any single episode of Batman: The Animated Series had so much to say about Batman (neverminding his origins, even!) that it doubly disgraces this offering here. Now THAT was much closer to ‘adult’ than this ever wanted to get. Batman Begins is horrid and it’s stricken from my own Batman film canon, which doesn’t even exist. Just chalk up another dead God.