Batman Begins

2005 superhero blockbuster

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: Following the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne (rich punk) decides to dedicate his life to fighting evil. He stumbles into Schindler's School for Ninjas where he's trained by Schindler himself to not be a pansy any more. By this time, Gotham City has become a wasteland of corruption and despair. With the help of his butler, Gary Oldman, and the wife of a renowned scientologist, and the narrator of March of the Penguins, he attempts to use his rich boy toys to clean up Gotham City. He becomes Batman, delivers a bunch of clever one-liners, and runs into something even more sinister than expected. Everything finishes right in time for the sequel.

This was recommended by numerous people who promised me a great new start to the franchise. It's ok and certainly better than those other cheesy Batmen blockbusters, but it's not without its problems. The direction is really heavy-handed, the dialogue is bad (especially the overuse of repeated lines), Christian Bale is in it and just not very good, it's stuffed with improbable or hard-to-follow action sequences, it lacks a really engaging antagonist, and it finds itself trapped in cliche too many times. While it avoids the trappings of those cheesier comic book movies and is never goofy, it does seem to borrow quite a bit from the recent Spiderman movies with an attempt to find a Toby McGuire, the moodiness and angst and other thematic elements, and an overall darker, more mature tone. I guess I did sort of like the Scarecrow character, but he wasn't developed enough to be really interesting. I had worried about Christopher Nolan's ability to direct something like this since I don't think he's even very good at what people think he's good at, but there's a chance that he'll hit a groove with these things.

Here are Jen and I wondering where Devito's at: