COMBATIVE CRITICS OUR WARRING REVIEWERS ARGUE OVER... BATMAN BEGINS By: Wayne Smith and Andre McGarrity Thanks to Joel Schumacher, the franchise that started out so promising ended as a joke. Sad when you think about it. I mean, Warner Brothers owns DC Comics, so you think they would do their comics proud. Seems Marvel Comics has the better idea: sell your characters to others who know how to make movies, with a few exceptions like Man-Thing and the absolutely horrible Hulk! [Man, didn’t Man-Thing suck! Which means you should have loved it] Still, Marvel has been ruling the box office with its XMen, Blade and Spiderman m o v i e s producing h u g e lines at t h e ticket
booths. Now, it is time for DC to step up and take command… or so you would think. Batman Begins starts off erasing everything from all the previous Batman movies. Director Christopher Nolan, of Memento fame, has been given the dreaded task of reintroducing us to the Dark Knight. And he sure takes his sweet damn time doing it. [And I say that is not necessarily a bad thing.] The first half of Batman Begins concentrates on Bruce Wayne, where he’s been, what he’s been doing since his parent’s death, which is basically making an idiot out of himself by getting arrested. I’m sorry; Most people might call this "Soul Searching", but to me Bruce Wayne in the first half of this movie is nothing more and a whine-@$$. After being freed from a Middle Eastern prison by Ra’s Al Ghul (sorry you’re not suppose to know that, but come on, who the hell didn’t see that coming?) Bruce Wayne is introduced into the League Of Shadows- A ninja clan who basically run the world.
MOVIES [Once again, Wayne, you got almost everything wrong here. One, I believe he’s in a Mongolian prison (that’s Asian to you). Two, The League of Shadows WANTS to run the world, and Three, the first half of the movie is very close to the comic book origin of Batman, as far as him brooding over the death of his parents and training in martial arts around the world. I guess you see mourning over the death of your parents as whining. I’m sure your parents are glad to hear that.] To them, Gotham has gotten too corrupt and must be taken down a few notches. They teach Bruce to use his fears (bats, yes, they have him afraid of bats- how %$#@ing stupid, huh?) to strike fear in the hearts of evildoers in Gotham. Oh, wait-a-minute, no, that’s not right. They want him to help take Gotham down. [Now I agree that it’s pushing the lameness factor to make Gotham the focal point for world domination, but the fear of bats thing wasn’t so bad. Weren’t you afraid of crack for a while before turning it around to cause fear in hearts of trailer parks everywhere?] Well, needless to say Bruce will have no part of that. He fights back, but saves the life of Ra’s Al
Ghul (like a true comic book hero… or idiot, it all depends on how you look at it). There, after reading that, you can skip the first part of the movie, that’s all you need to know. Now, armed with technology made at the Wayne Foundation for the military, but never used, Batman begins (sorry, I couldn’t help it) to help clean up Gotham. Where does the Scarecrow come in to all this? Yeah, I kinda wanted to know that myself. 16 Sure he’s there, but doesn’t 17 really do much as the footman for the League Of Shadows. Still, his character comes across as cold and calculating… at first anyway. Then, later on in the movie, he turns into the Joker spouting, "He’s here… the Batman!" Totally out of character, and it makes you wonder if they had planned for him to be one way for the movie and then forgot how he was for the other part of the movie. [You forget to mention that the reason for the Joker-esque behavior is because he has inhaled a large amount of his own fear-inducing chemicals.] Liam Neeson does an adequate job as Ra’s Al Ghul, but we really don’t see much of him either. In
COMBATIVE CRITICS fact, the only character we do see a lot of is Bruce Wayne… and there’s too much of him. Honestly, there should have been a bit more of Batman. [Of course I disagree. Considering this is Batman BEGINS Christopher Nolan did a very good job with the hard job of introducing all the elements of Batman’s origin (loosely based on the comic Batman: Year One) and tying it all together with the villains he had to work with. I actually found the half of the movie focusing on Bruce Wayne as entertaining as the half filled with the Dark Knight.] Speaking of seeing more of… I would have liked to of seen more of this fighting style that they supposedly made for Batman, cause you can’t see it in the fight scenes. They are filmed so closeup and fast that it’s all a blur. If you’re starting to get the idea that I think this movie fails on so many levels, you’re right. But [I then again… agree that the fight seems were a failure, but the movie succeeds on way more levels than it fails. And compared to the two Joel Schumacher pieces of
crap (Batman Forever and Batman and Robin) this was a masterpiece!] Nolan does manage to get some things right. Batman in this film is more vicious than previous movies and that’s good thing. [Here, Here!] At one point in the movie he has a lackey bouncing up and down from a skyscraper and when the guys screams, "That’s all I know, I swear to God!" Batman answers (in his best demonic voice), "Swear to me!" Great stuff. And this is where the movies strengths lay, in the characters. The dialog is great and the one-liners are very funny. The movie, for its length and drawn out beginning, does pick up pace towards the end and keeps you on the edge of your seat. The Scarecrow, much like Two Face and Poison Ivy before him, is pretty useless and a w a s t e d character. It’s the one thing that Nolan didn’t learn from the previous movies. [He may not have been used much, but I do think for the time that he was in there he was portrayed well very creepy in and out of his mask. And his tie-in to Archam Asylum was a
OUR WARRING CRITICS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD... he looks pretty cool in the redesigned bat suit] Oh and David Goyer, your partly redeemed for that $#!%y @$$ Blade Trinity movie. But you still have a way to go. [I can’t give him credit for this one because Nolan co-wrote the script. Goyer’s going to have to give a great solo writing effort to make up for Blade: Trinity.] good twist. It explains why Batman’s vilians are so crazy and demented.] In closing, Andre will undoubtedly find this a good movie and on that, I agree with him. It’s good, but it’s not GREAT, which it should have been. [It may not have been Spider-man or X-men, but it was far closer to great than you give it credit for] DC won’t be topping Marvel as the comic book box office giant anytime soon, but at least Batman Begins will be better than Superman Returns… even a good script can’t save how god-awful Brandon Routh looks in that suit! [For once we totally agree. If they keep that god-awful suit Superman there will be no way to save Superman Returns] Least Christian Bale looks the part of Batman. [And I must point out that
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