Batman Begins Does Not Suck

[Occhidiangela]

OBE equals Overcome By Events.


Went to see it, first day out here. Took my son and his two best buddies.









SPOILERS









1. When the lead was wearing a beard in prison, I thought Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers was the leading actor.

2. Gary Oldman does a great job as Gordon.

3. Michael Caine does an excellent Alfred.

4. The "Chick" (whoever she is) look like an unbusty, young, Linda Carter.

5. Raz Al Gul. Is that a Diablo II Rune Word? I obviuosly missed a graphic novel or comic series, but since Ninja's are officially in, fine. :D

6. I want one of those cars.

7. Outstanding use of the utility belt.

8. I really want some of that psychotropic drug to put in my mace can. That would freak some folks out. :lol:

9. Scarecrow . . . will do. Not all that great, but not bad.

Enjoyed it. No gratuitous sex. Violence not over done, though lots of action and fighting. Decent to solid acting all around. Very good mood and tone, captured the sense of Batman quite well. Soundtrack about average.

Go see it, you will enjoy.

Occhi

[Count Duckula]

According to my geek friends who know more about this than any human being should rightly know, Ras Al'Ghul was in the comics from the beginning and it was he, not the Joker, who did...all that stuff the Joker did. (Trying not to spoil.)

I prefer the Ras Al'Ghul from the animated series. I'm a fan of David Warner--that's why. ^_^

[Ashock]

OBE equals Overcome By Events.
Went to see it, first day out here.  Took my son and his two best buddies.
SPOILERS
1.  When the lead was wearing a beard in prison, I thought Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers was the leading actor.

2.  Gary Oldman does a great job as Gordon.

3.  Michael Caine does an excellent Alfred.

4.  The "Chick" (whoever she is) look like an unbusty, young, Linda Carter. 

5.  Raz Al Gul.  Is that a Diablo II Rune Word?  I obviuosly missed a graphic novel or comic series, but since Ninja's are officially in, fine.  :D

6.  I want one of those cars.

7.  Outstanding use of the utility belt.

8.  I really want some of that psychotropic drug to put in my mace can.  That would freak some folks out.  :lol:

9.  Scarecrow . . . will do.  Not all that great, but not bad.

Enjoyed it.  No gratuitous sex.  Violence not over done, though lots of action and fighting.  Decent to solid acting all around.  Very good mood and tone, captured the sense of Batman quite well.  Soundtrack about average.

Go see it, you will enjoy.

Occhi
[right][snapback]80779[/snapback][/right]

As good as the 1st Batman movie?


-A

[Occhidiangela]

As good as the 1st Batman movie?
-A
[right][snapback]80868[/snapback][/right]

IMO, better. More depth. Better acting.

Occhi

[DeeBye]

IMO, better.  More depth.  Better acting.

Occhi
[right][snapback]80870[/snapback][/right]

This makes me happy :)

[Chesspiece_face]

IMO, better.  More depth.  Better acting.

Occhi
[right][snapback]80870[/snapback][/right]

Yes, best Batman movie to date. And Ras Al Ghul is "Batman's greatest enemy" in the comic books. At least that was the character that he was created to be.

Ra's Al Ghul translates in Arabic to "The Demon's Head" which is the title he goes by. Nobody knows his real name as he is at least 400 years old. (or was until the recent Death and the Maidens series) His long life made possible by the use of a multitude of alchemical baths he has around the world called Lazarus Pits. In the comic books Ra's Al Ghul originally came to Batman with the intentions of Batman marrying his daughter Talia and inherating the Demon's Head empire.

[Ashock]

IMO, better.  More depth.  Better acting.

Occhi
[right][snapback]80870[/snapback][/right]

That's high praise, as the 1st Batman was damn good, IMO.


-A

[Rhydderch Hael]

According to my geek friends who know more about this than any human being should rightly know, Ras Al'Ghul was in the comics from the beginning and it was he, not the Joker, who did...all that stuff the Joker did. (Trying not to spoil.) ...[right][snapback]80792[/snapback][/right]

Joker? The Joker reference at the end was asetup for the sequel. He's not actually in this one.

And if you're referring to The Joker (in reference from the first Burton film) as being the guy who killed Bruce's parents— far, far different than what this new film handled that whole matter. In a powerful way that furthered both Wayne's descent in vengeance and the degradation of Gotham as a whole.


SPOILER LAND

















I did find it amusing that the criminal kingpin who was giving Gotham such a bad destiny turned out to be so small-fry in the grand scheme of things. I mean, Batman takes him down before Act 2 is even halfway through. Of course, the normal everyday villians parted way so that the super-villians could take the stage.

Beautiful turnaround on the theme that you had to be "more than a man" to stop Ras Al Gul, when in fact Batman was relying on Sergeant Gordon, an ordinary man, to doing the actual 'saving of the city' bit while Bats sabotaged the train controls.

[Rhydderch Hael]

5.  Raz Al Gul.   Is that a Diablo II Rune Word?  I obviuosly missed a graphic novel or comic series, but since Ninja's are officially in, fine.   :D [right][snapback]80779[/snapback][/right]

You had the advantage over us all in not knowing beforehand the character of Ras Al Gul. The moment Neeson's 'Ducard' character mentioned that name early on in the film, I knew that Wayne's and Ducard's relationship was ultimately going to end badly.

Late into Wayne's training with the League of Shadows I thought to myself "Watanabe's character isn't doing much. Neeson's character would have made a much better personage as Ras Al Gul..."

D'oh.

When I read those online reviews I cited as wantonly spoiling the plot twist, I knew then (and by the early revelation in the movie) that Wayne's mentor would turn on him and become a villian. But little did I realize that he actually was Ras Al Gul, an antagonist in Batman's world whose villianny makes The Joker look like Ronald McDonald.

There's something to be said about the League of Shadows. It's one thing to have bad guys acting because they like being bad, it's another thing to have some secret society purport to be the enemies of crime, corruption and decadance— then fail to count death and tyranny so as to use mass murder by the broad stroke of tyranny in order to combat crime.



All the other Batman movies prior to this were nothing more than live-action cartoons. The Schumacher films most notably, but even the Burton films fall to this epithet. Sure, they used cameras and human actors and physical sets. But the stories, characters, themes and performances were that of cartoons— two dimensional plays of paint and ink.

The Nolan film here— is a movie. A Batman movie. The first time that the story of the comic book character was presented, in theme and execution, deservingly regarded as a 'movie' first, a 'comic hero feature' second. A human hero. Hell, it had human villians (no millioniares hopped up on performance-enhancing wacky gas or computer-controlled robot arms welded to his spinal column).


This film wasn't made simply for flashy fun like the other Batman films (or most comic-book based films of late)— it was made to tell a story... An act that is, of course, fun when done right.

It's right.




PS: Correct me if I'm wrong, but did the cop on the radio describe the Batmobile as a black dick?

[Chesspiece_face]

Joker? The Joker reference at the end was asetup for the sequel. He's not actually in this one.
[right][snapback]80972[/snapback][/right]

Not only is it a setup for the sequel, but it is a scene directly taken from the Frank Miller Batman: Year One series. Kudos to the scriptwriters from finally acknowledging the Frank Miller book they should look to when writing a batman movie. (see my post in the original Batman Begins thread.)

Hopefully they will continue the practice of farming the right materials when writing the sequels.

Oh and as for Ra's Al Ghul being in the batman books from the beginning, that's a negatory. He was introduced in 1971 i believe.

[TheDragoon]

PS: Correct me if I'm wrong, but did the cop on the radio describe the Batmobile as a black dick?
[right][snapback]80978[/snapback][/right]

He described it as, "It's a black.... tank!"

[Rhydderch Hael]

He described it as, "It's a black.... tank!"
[right][snapback]81029[/snapback][/right]

When I heard what I thought I heard, I assumed it was a backhanded joke on all the other previous Batmobiles, which were very phallic in appearance. Something one imagines the director's commentary would try to justify by "...we never actually got to hear the cops describe Batmobiles Mk. I-III, but if we did, this is how it would have gone down..."

As to the militarized Lambroughini in this film— it rocks for sheer functionality. A superhero cannot rely on pavement alone, and here we have the first Batmobile capable of off-roading.

Of course, there's only one way to go off-road in a place like Gotham City... ;)

[DeeBye]

I just got the chance to watch it tonight, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. I'm even going to agree that this is the best Batman film yet, even outdoing the original Burton film.

My only knock against it were the cheesy one-liner type things they put in it, such as Gordon saying "I gotta get me one of these!" when he sees Batman's car (which is admittedly awesome) and when Batman's car slides into the "Compact Only" space. :rolleyes:

Thankfully these moments were few. I was expecting it, and I'm glad there weren't more of them.

[Rhydderch Hael]

I thought the whole idea of "backup" being turned on its head was rather clever, as well as some of Alfred's jibes ("...actually, I was referring to me.")

Someone else on another forum pointed this out to me: the whole idea of Rachel saying that Bruce's mask was the one he wore without the Batsuit was probably a backhanded retort to what was said in Kill Bill, about how Bruce woke up each morning as 'Bruce Wayne' and had to put on a costume in order to become Batman.

[Chesspiece_face]

Someone else on another forum pointed this out to me: the whole idea of Rachel saying that Bruce's mask was the one he wore without the Batsuit was probably a backhanded retort to what was said in Kill Bill, about how Bruce woke up each morning as 'Bruce Wayne' and had to put on a costume in order to become Batman.
[right][snapback]81464[/snapback][/right]

Actually this is a common thread through many of the Batman graphic novels and the continuity books. Batman's presence in Gotham isn't only a presence of "escalation" as the movie describes but also a not-so-subtle irony that the only person strong enough to battle the "crazies" is fairly psychotic by any rational standard. Batman's "real" face is the mask on the batsuit, because there is no Bruce Wayne. The entirety of his formative years were spent destroying any semblence of a person he was.

This concept is most notable in the "Arkham Asylum" graphic novel. Batman goes into the overrun asylum, trading himself for hostages, and the inmates put him through a gauntlet of torture. The first scene where he is in the asylum and the inmates are deciding what to do with him one offers the idea to take his mask off: "I want to see his real face". To which the joker replies: "oh don't be so predictable, for christ's sake! That is his real face."

The tragedy of the character is that he has spent his entire life disassembling his identity and creating another one based on the loss of his parents, but as time goes on, like everything, all the real connections he has to his parents (and his whole reason for being what he is) fades away leaving him a shadow of a person, stuck in the suit because it's the only thing he knows how to be.

There's a perfectly telling sequence in the recent "Broken City" series (Batman #620-625) where Batman is imagining back to the night his parents were shot and going through it the way he would have liked it to happen. In one scene he has all his martial arts knowledge and he crushes the mans hand, and in the other there is 3 shots instead of 2 and a scene of little bruce laying with his parents with a bullet in his head and a content smile on his face with him thinking "but it's just a lie. A dream that won't come true".

[Rhydderch Hael]

...This concept is most notable in the "Arkham Asylum" graphic novel.  Batman goes into the overrun asylum, trading himself for hostages, and the inmates put him through a gauntlet of torture.  The first scene where he is in the asylum and the inmates are deciding what to do with him one offers the idea to take his mask off:  "I want to see his real face".  To which the joker replies:  "oh don't be so predictable, for christ's sake!  That is his real face."...[right][snapback]81471[/snapback][/right]

Clever. Insightful. And true.

Still, nowhere near as whiney as Spider-man. Who'd ever think insanity would provide clarity? ;)

[Doc]

Clever. Insightful. And true.

Still, nowhere near as whiney as Spider-man. Who'd ever think insanity would provide clarity?  ;)
[right][snapback]81619[/snapback][/right]

Insanity providing clarity?

:whistling:

Where have I heard that before.

[Mithrandir]

I enjoyed Batman Begins quite a bit. I wasn't a fan of any of the earlier Batman movies, but this one really blew my expectations out of the water. Batman Begins really validated Christian Bale in my eyes - he did a superb job and proved to me that his performance in American Psycho wasn't just a fluke. I'm looking forward to seeing him in future movies. I expect Christopher Nolan to become a real force in Hollywood as well with Batman Begins, Insomnia, and Memento under his belt now.

I wasn't that impressed with how they did Scarecrow, but to be honest I'm not quite sure how else they could have done his character without making him completely ridiculous. He just didn't seem like much of a "super villain" to me. Perhaps that was their intention though, since much of the Batman mythos seems to be more about actual semi-normal humans, rather than science gone wrong (Spider-Man) or mutants (X-Men).

Also, the fight scenes were extremely disorientating. I think that Nolan was trying to keep working with the "always at the corner of your eye" way Batman works and therefore tried to make the fights blurry and dizzingly fast, but sometimes I just ended up really confused after 5 seconds of blur and a couple random punching and kicking noises all the bad guys were unconscious. Matrix-style slow-downs would definitely have been horrible, but at the very least it would have been nice to have seen a complete karate move every now and then :)

But on the whole, it was a great movie and I really enjoyed it.

[Occhidiangela]

Also, the fight scenes were extremely disorientating. I think that Nolan was trying to keep working with the "always at the corner of your eye" way Batman works and therefore tried to make the fights blurry and dizzingly fast, but sometimes I just ended up really confused after 5 seconds of blur and a couple random punching and kicking noises all the bad guys were unconscious. Matrix-style slow-downs would definitely have been horrible, but at the very least it would have been nice to have seen a complete karate move every now and then :)

But on the whole, it was a great movie and I really enjoyed it.
[right][snapback]81665[/snapback][/right]

How many real life fights have you ever been in? I was in more than I should have been from ages 7-23. There is a lot of confusion in a fight. The more often you get hit in the head during a fight, the more tunnel vision you tend to acquire. In that respect, the flash action technique used was, while not perfect, a good representation of the chaos of a fight in progress. It is also a nod to the blipvert method of presenting information. (Max Headroom, the original, ROXORS!!!)

Occhi

[Mithrandir]

How many real life fights have you ever been in?  I was in more than I should have been from ages 7-23.  There is a lot of confusion in a fight.  The more often you get hit in the head during a fight, the more tunnel vision you tend to acquire.  In that respect, the flash action technique used was, while not perfect, a good representation of the chaos of a fight in progress.  It is also a nod to the blipvert method of presenting information.  (Max Headroom, the original, ROXORS!!!)

Occhi
[right][snapback]81667[/snapback][/right]

That's definitely true, but when I watch an action movie I actually want to *see* the butt-kicking going down. I don't go to movies to get accurate representations of the real world - I go there to be entertained. I can understand what he was trying to do, but I think that it didn't work out too well.