Batman Begins

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I saw this movie a few weeks ago. I thought it was awsome, I entered the theatre expecting something ok but it was way above my expectations. I would have to agree the end was kind of dumb though.

 

Since I've haven't read all the posts til this point, and i haven't seen the movie, I'm making the observation that Christian Bale will probably fit into mould of the obsessive avenger type. The guy played "American Psyco" so he can't be that bad.

 

bah! Caine was a better Alfred than that other guy imo

i think they had to "throw in" a girl into the movie because they think that audiences need a love interest on screen. kinda like when they made arwen rescue frodo from the nazgul in fellowship when it really wasn't her that did it.

 

"You can borrow the Rolls if you want, just return it with a full tank." - Alfred (Caine)

I liked that comment. Another one would be:

"I give a damn because a good man once made me responsible for all the things that are important to him."


Btw, I'm just quoting from memory...

 

Yeah I liked the change in style for Alfred, its not the same as whats gone before, but if things kept getting repeated in the same old format, it would all get stale imo.

I never really commented on my opinion on the movie did I?

well, I loved the film, it was everything I wanted Batman to be. I always viewed the first Batman and to a lesser extent Batman Returns as good as they were darker than the originals. But as soon as Batman got the go ahead for a sequel the vilains got really stupid with no real explanation as to how they became the way ythey were. Ok I could buy that chemicals scared and demented the Joker, and partially that the Penquin was an abandoned mutant (why the hell were penquins living underneath a city anyway??), but the rest were a bit riduculous. Ok im going to jump off a building and hopefully a litter of cats will eat me magically resurecting me as a super powered feline! Jim Carey was a good choice for the Riddler imo so i dont have much to say about that except except I would have wanted it to follow the canon a bit more. The rest were either stupid in portrayal or or werent fleshed out enough (Two Face for instance).

The reason I am rehashing how ridiculous the old villains got is because of the obvious change in the new movie. Rah's Al Goul (sp?) was quite normal, obssesed with his cause, and dare i say 'cool'? (I was quite happy to see Liam Neeson not dying for real a third way though a film for once

The scarecrow wasnt a real baddy in this movie to the end. Until that point he was a corrupt psychatrist and the movie explained how he could scare people. His transformation into the sacarecrow at the end was competed by the same means of himself being infected by the toxin.

The fact that an entire section of Gotham (the Narrows) was 'lost' as Gordan puts is referring to the fact that the people infected there could not be helped and gives a perfect explanation why a load of insane enemies dressed in theatrical costumes. This can also be combined with a means to confront Batman on his own terms in disguise.

the gadgets are expalined and the creators dont just expect the audience toaccept that Batman just has them and thats that.

The car/tank was not a Batmobile but a kind of prototype (he didnt have Wayne enterprises in his control and so could not develop a car to suit his needs perfectly). Besides, its much better than the Batmobile.... it drives through walls and 'jumps'!

My problems with this movie are few but i didnt like the addition of Katie Holmes. It bored me a bit to be honest... his love interests should have been a facade of Bruce Wayne not some childhood sweetheart

I too, like JSBB said, did not see the point in characters popping up more than once. This leads onto my second gripe; crappy one liners!!!! "Nice coat" my god I was almost sick. Some were ok and some were good but alot were awful!

Anyway, ill end this rant here I can't wait for the sequal and i'm glad to see that we have to wait until 2008 as they may actually do a good job, although an extra year wouldn't have hurt them. Imo to make a really good movie they need 4+ years of development.

[ July 09, 2005, 09:50: Message edited by: Malovae ]

 

I agree with Taluntane about Caine -- But then I don't like Caine much anyway. His only acting talent seems to be his accent.

I have been trying to convince my wife to go see it, but she refuses -- says it look too dark and depressing.

Do the rest of you think that it was depressing?

 

No, it wasn't really dark or depressing.

I thought that Caine did a decent job of playing Alfred - he wasn't as good as Efrem Zimbalist Jr. but I would put him pretty much at the same level as Michael Gough.

 

Not depressing at all. And if you lift weights or take a martial art it even gives extra motivation

It couldn't because he was the Riddler

 

whoops, you know what I meant though

 

This movie was really great...mostly because as the title says...its Batman Begins...not Batman per se...whcih is why they concentrated most of the movie on how he came to become Batman from Bruce Wayne in the first place...

Very well done, except for Katie Holmes. Totally unnecessary IMHO.

 

yeah, the training scenes were definitely the best. there was that one part:

"your parents' death was not your fault. it was your father's"

"he had a gun!"

"would that have stopped you?"

"I've had training!"

"Training is nothing. It is the will. The will to act."

im quoting from memory so it may not be exact

 

(Will not contain spoilers)

...

This was not a movie, this was reality. I do not cry in movies, I don't get emotional over them even if I'm very good at immersing myself with the story. But I found my eyes moist after this one.

When I was expecting a *damn* good movie, I found myself wrong. If there is a thing called a perfect movie for any given scene, perfect in a way that only divine will can forge it, this was but one step from that goal. It has minor things that you have to look for, that aren't exactly 'realistic' or don't exactly fit. The kind of things that in a normal very good movie you find thousands if you start thinking about them. This movie had like under 10 such things. Can't tell what I mean more precisely than that as I will not spoil anything.

The soundtrack was Hans Zimmer's best. That guy being among the top-10 in the business, it's a supernatural accomplishment. The sound-effects contributed to what the movie was about: realistic. The gunshots, explosions, car crashes and burning rubber against the asphalt, everything was real. Not the kind of typical soft effects you have in other movies, this was so real, so aggressively explosive (as someone who's been in the army I can tell the gunshots were *realistic*), that it was like you were in that movie yourself.

The acting was superb. I've never liked Katie Holmes because of her teenage looks, but none of that mattered here. There was not one mediocre actor, everything was beyond what I could imagine being the best. And Christian Bale.... he's Batman. He's a better Batman than Batman ever was in any comics or in my own mind.

For not wanting to spoil anything as I said, I can't tell much more. Someone might think differently, but to me there is no doubt about it:

This movie far surpasses Tim Burton's Batman's 1 & 2, movies that I thought to be the best you could see about a subject such as this. This movie far surpasses any superhero movie ever made, and even though I'm not a special fan of superhero movies (I like them, I don't idolize them or prefer them over others), I can tell this movie gets right there with the top-1 divided winner list of best movies ever that I've seen. Such as LoTR, which being such an epic and a perfect fantasy movie that is exactly what I like, you'd think would surpass a mere Batman easily.

This movie cannot be explained, it is so real, so convincing, that you feel more than you can think with your intellect alone. There are actually things about this world and the characters that you are not explained, you simply "feel" them. And it was obviously intended. It's not a movie, it is real, and in some universe, this all has happened. That, is how good Batman Begins is. Or at least, how strongly I feel about this masterpiece.

The only sad thing about it is that the number 2 they're making cannot be anything more than a step backwards. It requires more than supreme skill, skill which there certainly was, to make a movie like this. It requires some amazing luck.

 

Great movie first off. But I created a username solely for the reason of addressing the fight scenes and they way they were shot.

It seems like the latest action movies are all shot with that same harried manner about the camera, and the too-quick cuts. Obviously with the camera jumping about like that it is impossible to tell what is really going on.

I don't know if this is supposed to be stylistic or what, in reality however, it just plain sucks. (I guess this might be a spoiler)Star Wars 3 really abused this and it made the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan into an emotionless farce. That fight should have been a focus on the emotional struggle of two best friends fighting, ultimately, to the death,

Instead it was a mindless blur of angle changes and blue light. I imagine this was intentional in order to draw a younger audience. Like with the Bourne movies as already mentioned.

Yet, if I remember correctly The Matrix fight scenes were filmed in wide angle and clearly expressed to the viewer the action that was occuring. This could clearly be attributed to experienced wuxia directors from Hong Kong, and painstakingly choreographed action. I think Kill Bill was filmed the same way.

The fights in Batman Begins were filmed in a similar format to Attack of the Clones, but I think it was intentional to a degree. The first part is more of an excuse really. Christopher Nolan has never done an action film before and was likely led to this style of filming by the commercial success of movies using the same style.

Fear was clearly the theme of the film and is clearly the premise upon which The Batman is founded. What the fights needed most to convey is the fact that Batman dispatches foes almost solely through fear. It's not vital to know whether his right cross to the jaw was picture perfect kung-fu or if his hip toss was A+ Judo(I confess to a lack of knowledge of fighting styles.)

I think the way the scenes were filmed expressed to the audience the speed and ferocity with which The Batman reduces threats to negligiblity. Since the audience is mostly left in the dark as to what happens to who, it is probably very similar to the way criminals feel when The Batman surprises them. Confused, a little lost, and well, they are more afraid than an audience in a theater, but the message still comes across.

As an afterthought I imagine there was time on the set to choregraph these fights more clearly, like the early combat training with Ducard, but the decision was made to make the fights more emotional than technical.

I think I rambled and I am apparently enamored with run-on sentences but hopefully I made sense.