Starring:
Christian Bale,
Gary Oldman,
Michael Caine,
Morgan Freeman,
Katie Holmes,
Liam Neeson,
Cillian Murphy,
Ken Watanabe,
Tom Wilkinson,
Rutger Hauer
Director:
Christopher Nolan
Genre: Action, Comic, Drama, Thriller
Rating: B-
I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this for a bit, but all
that I can actually think of is “na na na na na na na... BATMAN!” which I suspect you are all now doing. I’ve always had a thing for Batman; he’s probably my favourite superhero and definitely the only DC Comics hero that I like. In celebration of the release of the third and final instalment in Christopher Nolan’s
Batman trilogy I’ve decided to re-watch the earlier instalments before catching
The Dark Knight Rises. Having now dived into
Batman Begins I’m almost questioning just why we love this series so much (almost – I know that the answer lies in
The Dark Knight). While I’ve watched this movie a few times already it didn’t take me long to realize just how unmemorable
Batman Begins was. Sure it’s dark and action packed, but
there’s very little about it that’s awe inspiring and nothing really sticks out
in your mind once you’ve watched it.
The movie tells the origins of Batman, from Bruce Wayne’s (Bale)
initial encounter with bats and the death of his parents, to him making the
decision to free Gotham from its criminal underworld, the training that he
undertakes in order to be able to do so, and his return to Gotham and the
creation of Batman. While training,
Bruce spends time in a Bhutanese prison, where he meets Ducard (Neeson) who
offers to train him as a ninja with the League of Shadows, headed by Ra’s al
Ghul. That’s right, Batman is a ninja. While he trains under Ra and Ducard, he
disagrees with their methods and eventually burns their temple down and kills
Ra, before returning to Gotham. Once
back at Gotham he enlists the help of long time family butler Alfred Pennyworth
(Caine) and high ranking Wayne Enterprises employee Lucius Fox (Freeman), who
has been delegated into a dead end job for opposing C.E.O. William Earle
(Hauer) in the boardroom. Bruce
and Alfred build Batman’s lair underneath the Wayne mansion, while Fox provides
Bruce with the technology needed to make Batman awesome, thus proving that any
billionaire ninja can become a crime fighting unit if he has a secret
lair. Later, Batman’s allies are joined
by Sergeant James Gordon (Oldman), Gotham’s only uncorrupt police officer. Batman’s first target is the ruler of the
underworld, gangster Carmine Falcone (Wilkinson), but what he doesn’t realize
is that psychopharmatologist Dr. Jonathan Crane (Murphy) has an alter-identity
as the Scarecrow, and has been dumping fear inducing toxins into Gotham’s water
supply. Oh, also there’s a girl: Rachel
Dawes (Holmes), assistant district attorney and Bruce’s childhood friend adds
some sexual tension, but really doesn’t become relevant in any way until the
end.
There is nothing remarkable about
Batman
Begins. It’s not that it’s not a
good movie, but in terms of a Batman movie it doesn’t really stand out. It’s not so horrible that it just sticks in
your mind like a really bad dream – that would be
Batman and Robin. It’s not
so ridiculous and over the top that you can’t help but love it – that would be
the Adam West
Batman. Where
Batman
Begins is successful is not in the movie itself but in what it succeeds in
doing for the
Batman franchise and the
superhero genre in general. Previous
superhero movies were prone to being campy and very light; look at the Sam
Raimi
Spider-Man movies, where you
really do expect Spider-Man to say “Gee, golly” as he’s fighting crime.
Batman
Begins takes this genre to a whole new level of grittiness. Gotham is a dark and ugly world, completely
free of camp that has haunted other films.
This film is the push that the genre needed in order to give us the far
superior superhero movies of the last few years, from
The Dark Knight to
The Avengers.
Beyond that, the acting is stellar; Christian Bale is awesome,
although the voice that he does for, well really both Bruce Wayne and Batman,
is a bit ridiculous. I almost wished
that Bale would use his natural voice, although I somehow suspect that Batman
with an English accent would have been a lot easier to identify. He wasn’t the shining star in this movie
though, although Bale did succeed in making Batman stand out far more than his
adversaries (evidently, the trick to doing that is to make the villains not all
that cool). I think the real stars of
this movie were Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman. Seriously, how can a movie go wrong with
these three in it? It’s kind of messed
up when you care more about Alfred the butler than you do about Batman himself,
but then that’s been a problem that’s long existed within this franchise. I love how Caine developed his own backstory
before portraying Alfred; it’s never determined in the film itself, but it
gives him a deeper sense of who the man is and by extension creates a deeper
character. I got a similar feeling about
Oldman and Freeman; they really knew the characters that they were
portraying. It’s also important to note
that the accent that Oldman used in this movie, while not his natural one, was
far better than the fake accent that Bale used. Come on everyone, say it with
me “I’m Batman.”
