I am only twenty minutes into Batman Begins, and my thoughts so far are that it is so good that all the other Batmans and any trace of their existence should be destroyed.
This is the brooding, dark knight Batman that I know from the comics. More thoughts later when I finish it.
*** Update ***
Hands down, the best Batman and the best comic translation to date. Can not wait for the next one. Chris Nolan is a genius- but you knew that because you saw Memento.
Things I liked:
1.) As far as comic book superheroes go, this was the most believable, if you will.
2.) Dark and brooding, but not overly done.
3.) No uber-cheesy dialogue.
4.) The effects when people were under the effects of the weaponized hallucinogen were excellent.
5.) The story drove the special effects, and not the other way around.
6.) Christian Bale. ‘Nuff said.
7.) Gary Oldman. Makes every movie better.
8.) The music was incredible, and not the kind of overhyped nonsense that tells you how you are supposed to feel. it flowed.
9.) I don’t know if you guys have home theatres, but this was the best sounding movie I have ever watched.
10.) Batman seemed to have a fighting style I had never seen before, with a lot of elbow moves. Very cool.
What I didn’t like:
1.) The car seemed over done, and the rooftop bit was too much.
2.) The car, at peak speeds, seemed to make the same exact sound as the racers in the jungle in Return of the Jedi, which bothered me for obvious reasons. Or maybe it was the racer young Anakin used. Same sound effect, regardless.
And that is it. The movie was awesome.
[/dork lovefest]
srv
Yeah, I can’t fathom people who liked any of the earlier movies. Spiderman II and BB were way beyond my expectations.
Mike in SLO
It is the best of movie of the year so far, no doubt. What a concecpt! An action hero movie that is actually a story! Glad you got the chance to see it. It should be winning Oscars in my opinion…
Mike S
Agreed.
r4d20
yup. its the best
TH
I hope you paused that movie for an urgent call (whether of nature or by phone, I don’t care), but stopping a movie to blog about it is deeply disturbing.
KC
Totally agree. I always thought the other Batman’s were fairly lousy, even the Keaton ones.
Ned Raggett
Yes to all the above, a majestic film. I had some slightly disconnected thoughts here shortly after it came out. I strongly recommend reading this interview with Christopher Nolan that just got published on the BoxOfficeMojo site last week — thoughtful stuff and a good look ahead at where he’s going next (doing The Prestige will be great!).
guyermo
i love love LOVE this movie. even more impressed once i learned Christian Bale is a Brit.
and the first Michael Keaton Batman movie wasn’t THAT bad.
Eural
I agree – on another post I mentioned another trait of the movie – it gets better everytime I watch it. Nolan is a genius and the casting, scripts, etc. are almost perfect. Did you get the deluxe DVD with the “mini-comics”? That was cool!
Best line –
“You are in Hell and I am the Devil!”
“You’re not the Devil, you’re just practice.”
Stormy70
John, didn’t you see this over the summer? I thought you had a movie thread on it. Everyone told you to see it, but you ignored us as usual. ;)
This movie is great because Christian Bale is great. I like the realistic look of it, and the fact there were no clown-like colors in it.
Stevo
Movie of the year… perhaps the decade.
Now that you mention it I think I will put the thing in again just now and watch it for the fifth time.
It gets better every time.
Stevo
Oops.. well, I apologize. I briefly forgot Peter Jackson for a second. This movie is that good!
erez
Agreed. I saw it in the theaters twice and bought a bootlegged copy in China. It is more fun to watch each and every time. It reminds me of the batman cartoon I used to watch and love after coming home from grade school each day back in the early 90s.
TallDave
The difference is this is a real movie. The others were campy special-effects vehicles.
Stormy70
Peter Jackson is the Decade winner of moviemaking, Stevo. I really want Narnia to be of the caliber of LOTR.
Stephen
heh, oddly enough, i’m watching begins right now too. on a glorious 52′ hdtv. sadly, it doesn’t compare to the 4 times i saw the movie at the IMAX. we are all chris nolan’s slaves.
Stormy70
Ok, I just ordered Begins on DVD. I forgot it came out this week. Doesn’t ROTS come out soon, as well.
We are all geeks here, aren’t we? Buffy, Batman, Firefly, Angel, etc. Does anyone watch Surface, or did I just out myself as the uber-geek here?
Stevo
Storm70: I admit. Next week? Kong? In time for Thanksgiving?
Stormy70
King Kong? All over it, dude. Narnia for Christmas.
oh, and Potter! in November. Serenity was my last movie.
jg
The only part of the movie I don’t like is the batmobile driving on the rooftops.
Stevo
I don’t get out to the theater much. DVDs are my usual fare. But this one is very good.
Stevo
When does Serenity hit DVD?
Stormy70
Serenity is rumored to hit 12/20, but that seems early. Firefly can be bought here for $29 bucks.
Stevo
Thank you, I have Firefly
Vadranor
Not only is Christian Bale from Britain, but it is interesting that in only two of the eleven most important roles in the films were Americans cast (Katie Holmes and Morgan Freeman).
kl
I didn’t much like that walking cold-sore farm that Bruce kept making puppy eyes at. Other than that, great stuff. If you’d never heard of Batman, never seen any of the other movies or shows, you could watch this and say, “Damn, that was a great movie!” It was more the story of Bruce Wayne, a really messed-up guy who comes up with a very unusual way to do something about it, than about a superhero called Batman.
And the little nod to Batty’s archnemesis at the end… nerd heaven.
Krista
I’m definitely going to make a point of seeing that. I don’t even care if I can’t drag anyone along with me.
Chris P
Anyone who liked Christian Bale’s performance should really check out Equilibrium. It came out right around the same time as the matrix, and never got the attention it deserved as a result.
Really cool movie
gswift
And there’s already been a sequel announced. Bale again, and same writer.
Tim F
News:
Jonah Goldberg indicted on fifteen hundred counts of felonious violation of Godwin’s Law.
cd6
how does your “things I like” list not include “Katie Holmes is hot”
HH
The Batman animated series still holds up a decade later, the DVDs are incredible (final volume out in December, with the nearly-as-good Superman animated series). If you never saw that and liked Batman Begins, you will like the series a lot as well.
Don’t watch Surface but Lost is genius, Threshold has potential and Invasion’s awful acting (save William Fichtner) make it a lot worse than it could be.
I am very curious to check out the features (Burton commentary, etc.) on the other Bat-flick DVDs. Apparently Shumacher blames Batman & Robin on the studios and marketing folks.
rt
downloaded the music for Batman Begins for iTunes when the movie came out. the same guy who did the batman soundtrack also did Tears of the Sun.
over it
Christian is one of my favorites….and has been since I saw the movie ‘Empire of The Sun’ (I think that it may have been his first). I second the advice to see ‘Equilibrium’. I also second (or third or fourth) the intentions to see Narnia, Harry, and Kong. ;)
Back to Christian for a moment….ohm’god hot!! :P I always thought that Keaton was dorky looking and even though the other 2 were not hard to look at…they just were not very Batman’ish in my opinion. I think that Christian nailed it and I hope that there are more movies planned with him in the role.
Veeshir
Oh c’mon John, what are you? Some shill for IMAX?
Everybody knows the best Batman is the first one.
Cyrus
I liked Batman and Batman Forever, but for different reasons. The first was all Tim Burton and Jack Nicholson, and the third was certainly no brain trust but just a fun ride. But “Batman Begins” – just, wow. He even looked like the Bruce Wayne from the comics!
Yeah, stuff like that is great. Me and a friend go back and forth about whether X-Men was better than X2 (I say no way), and he does have a point about the plot of X2, but the real reason I’m permanently sold on X2 is the cameos and references to comic book characters that only happen to make the world that much more fleshed-out. (And to make people like me squeal.) There must be easily forty characters or plot points from the comics that you wouldn’t notice without hitting pause multiple times.
And Hank McCoy as a talking head on TV news – it’s perfect for him.
Otto Man
Were they responsible for the nipples and codpieces? And casting Arnold as Mr. Freeze?
Thank God the new movie has wiped the slate clean. Let us never speak of the Schumacher movies again.
Otto Man
According to this site, the next movie will introduce Harvey Dent and the third one will have him become Two-Face. They say Liev Schrieber is getting the nod, which could be very cool.
HH
Yeah it’s just too bad that they didn’t have Kelsey Grammer play Dr. McCoy in X2 for consistency.
ppGaz
I’ve gone over the original post twice. No mention of any babes whatsoever.
If I just want to watch a cool guy in a fast car with great sound effects, I can just fire up the Mustang and look in the visor mirror. To get me to a movie, you are going to have to have at least one babe.
CaseyL
I have to admit, Katie Holmes did a good job in BB. I didn’t feel much chemistry between her character and Bruce/Bats, but she was otherwise quite good. Forceful, competent, and never played the “Helpless Heroine Who Trips Over Her Feet.”
It’s really too bad she decided to become Tom Cruise’s Living Doll/Incubusbator.
Veeshir
Incubusbator.
Now that’s funny.
jg
I’d have preferred Angie Harmon. She’d been playing that role fro years anyway, and is much more believable than Katie.
‘You know what its like, you’re out at a pary and someone’s passing around a weaponised hallucingen…’
Nat
Re the batmobile: if you read “The Dark Knight Returns” by Frank Miller (the graphic novel, or actually a mini-series, credited with reviving the character in the mid-80s), the Batmobile in there is very similar to the one in this movie. There’s a throwaway line at one point in the comic about how stupid a name “Batmobile” is for something that looks like a giant tank. So for those of us who are Frank Miller fans, the movie version was perfect – much more realistic than some low-riding penis extension.
Dave Ryan
Schumacher blamed it both on Warner Brother’s meddling (insistance that the next Batman be more kid-accessible and toy-friendly) and on his own decision to direct a movie inside the year of the prior’s release.
He admits it wasn’t as grand, but the success of ‘Forever’ allowed him, in his mind, to go campy as hell.
Batman Begins, however, is excellent. You can watch the Schumacher interview on the Batman & Robin DVD. It’s quite interesting to hear O’Donnell and Schumacher discuss their let-downs in the movie, but how much fun they had doing it.
And, of course, how many toys they sold.
jaime
IF you’re a Frank Miller fan, you would have loved the Batman that was on the drawing boards before this one. Miller co-wrote a version with Darren Aranofsky, the director of Pi and Requiem for a Dream.
His plan was to make it ultra gritty. Think ‘The French Connection’
M. Scott Eiland
The Batman animated series still holds up a decade later, the DVDs are incredible (final volume out in December, with the nearly-as-good Superman animated series). If you never saw that and liked Batman Begins, you will like the series a lot as well.
Those two series also more-or-less provided the continuity for Justice League, which remains the best superhero cartoon around after four years on the air. Definitely not the brain-dead (though admittedly hysterically funny in retrospect) crap that Super Friends was back in the seventies and early eighties.*
*–careful of that link: not completely work-friendly.
M. Scott Eiland
I’d have preferred Angie Harmon. She’d been playing that role fro years anyway, and is much more believable than Katie.
If they were going to cast a thirty-something, I wouldn’t have minded seeing Charisma Carpenter in that role. For that matter, she wouldn’t make a bad Lois Lane, either.
It’s really too bad she decided to become Tom Cruise’s Living Doll/Incubusbator.
The scary part is wondering who the other lost soul is who will end up marrying the little spawn someday, in that generation’s version of the Lisa Marie Presley/Michael Jackson wedding. Those two were unnerving enough–I don’t even want to *think* about what the 2030 Scientology version of it would be.