Batman Begins

Batman and I go way back. He may not be one of my best buddies like Spider-Man, but he’s certainly one of my many fictional idols, embodying personality traits I’d like to possess myself. Like, you know, being able to brood and not have it come off all whiny. And being able to punch a guy really hard. These are things I wish I was able to do HALF as well as Batman does. He also fights some really cool bad guys (Joker! Two Face! Killer Croc! Solomon Grundy! Mr. Freeze!) and has been the subject of work done by some of the very best writers and artists in the comic book medium over the last few decades.

He has not, however, had much luck with the movies. Barring the animated stuff — from the original FOX series to the straight-to-video movies (particularly MASK OF THE PHANTASM, which is tremendous) to the WB Series with Superman and, later, the entire Justice League — Batman has not had a smooth transition off the printed page. Burton’s stuff, particularly with the original Batman, is well regarded. But, in retrospect, wasn’t much of the film’s critical success credited to Jack Nicoholson’s awesome work as The Joker? Sure, people were surprised that Michael Keaton actually somewhat worked as Batman, but it wasn’t a movie about Batman so much as it was a movie about The Joker. And, come on, PRINCE did the soundtrack. What the hell was Batdance about, anyway?

Burton’s total disregard for the source material is pretty evident in the 89 Batman (he apparently went out of his way NOT to read any of the Batman comic books), but Batman Returns took that ignorance to a whole other level. In Returns, Burton just went ahead and made stuff up. And it’s not that I am usually bothered by character differences between source and screen, but Burton’s stuff DID bother me because it just wasn’t Batman. It’s, you know, clowns and sewers and Danny DeVito with webbed fingers and black stuff falling out of his mouth. It’s a giant Bat zamboni and a Penguin army and Christopher Walken hanging around for no reason other than the fact that Burton really liked some old Dracula movies.

And then Joel Schumacher came around and gave us… something. I am not sure what. But it’s Joel Schumacher so I do not particularly mourn those movies as grand artistic failures. Instead, they’re failures on a studio level, as it doesn’t take some kind of genius to NOT give a movie to Joel Schumacher. Schumacher, the one director who made the Vietnam War seem sort of gay. The Burton movies may have bugged me in the sense that I didn’t feel they were very good at capturing the spirit or character of Batman, but at least they were both better-than-average films. The Schumacher stuff was just… wrong. Like bugs under your skin sort of wrong. Like you’re watching and suddenly you realize that Alicia Silverstone, Chris O’Donnell and George Clooney just unfroze Gotham City using a giant magnifying glass and, then, you get this dull pain behind your eyes.

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins succeeds where both Schumacher and Burton failed. His film is both a better-than-average film and also captures the spirit and character of Batman in fantastically innovative and entertaining ways. Working from a surprisingly plot-heavy script, Nolan takes a radical approach and makes his Batman movie all about Batman. And, as Batman, Christian Bale is pretty damn good.

You know, the role of Batman probably isn’t very demanding. It’s not a showy role. You’ll never see Batman break down in a torrent of rage and tears and outward anger. He never gets to give long stirring monologues — he shouldn’t, anyway — and he doesn’t even get much in the way of love. This, more than anything else, is why all the big movie stars gravitated towards the far more colourful villain roles in the Batman movies, who are made ESPECIALLY colourful in order to contrast from the dark, quiet Batman character. It’s why you get Nicholson declaring it “PARTY TIME!” and vandalizing a bunch of art in Batman or Michelle Pfeiffer licking a lot of stuff in Batman Returns. It even goes a long way towards explaining why Tommy Lee Jones yelled a lot and jumped around and put on random accents in Batman Forever. Though nothing will ever quite fully explain that one.

Bale works, though. He’s able to play the two sides of the coin nicely, as both Batman and Bruce Wayne. His gruff Batman voice is a bit off-putting, but not so much that I’d call it a major black mark against the film. He’s both boisterous as Wayne and quiet and dedicated as Batman, and Nolan nicely expands the character with some great flashback scenes with a rather talented child-actor whose delivery of the “It’s my fault” line is really damned awesome.

While it is about Batman, there are, of course, villains in the film. The Ra’s Al Ghul stuff comrises much of the plot and is done well. I really liked Liam Neeson as Ducard, but then I like Liam Neeson in everything because he is both tall and talented and that is not as common as some might think. The show stealer, however, is actually Cillian Murphy, who brings the rather one-note Scarecrow character to life with only a handful of scenes, making for some of the most memorable parts of the movie. I hope we see him again in later installments to the franchise.

And I do hope there are later installments of the franchise. More than anything, Nolan and Bale (and supporting players Gary Oldman and Michael Caine who, as James Gordon and Alfred, are nearly pitch-perfect in their roles) lay an incredibly strong foundation. The closing scene made me wish the film could just continue. Had they launched into another 90-minute plotline with the hinted-at villain, I would have been pretty damn happy to just sit and watch. That’s something special, right there, when you develop characters to the point where your audience wants to continue to follow them after the end of your film. That’s not only the hallmark of a good movie, but the hallmark of a good franchise and Batman — my good friend — can now lay claim to both.

Go see it!