Batman Begins

Fear is a powerful thing. And it’s at the heart of the darkest Batman yet. In fact, this may be the darkest super hero movie yet. (Of course, I haven’t seen Spawn. And that has evil clowns in it. Could be WAY darker.) There were previews, but I’ve had enough of War Of The Worlds, personally. Tom Cruise is REALLY starting to annoy the shit out of me. At least Katie’s been pretty quiet about everything. She hasn’t jumped on fucking couches, anyway. The ONLY reason I’m going to see that movie now is because it’s a Spielberg movie. Fuck Tom.

THE NEW WORLD—This one, however, I’m going to see with full interest. (Colin Farrell hasn’t pissed me off…yet). This longer preview basically just shows some beautiful shots from the film with little dialogue. But this is a Terrence Malick film. Do we really expect a lot of dialogue to get in the way of beautiful scenery? I’m for it.

Now, back to The Bat.

And all I have to say is to quote a friend of mine who text messaged me right after the first time he saw it: “Oh my God. The Bat is back!”

This time out, though, we get the whole fuckin’ story. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale, who may just be the best Batman yet) sees his parents die. (Ok, he’s played by Gus Lewis at this point.) He also learns to be afraid (VERY afraid, actually) of bats after falling down a well. We get to know his parents this time out, too. They’re played by Linus Roache and Sara Stewart with full-tilt sweetness and good parenting intact. They are the concerned billionaires who try to help Gotham City back on its feet during the Depression. (No, not The Great one…just a normal Depression. But still with a capital D.) All it really got them, though, was killed.

Bruce travels the world trying to get away from his past. But you can’t, as they say, outrun said past. He meets Ra’s Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and his second, Ducard (Liam Neeson). Ducard teaches Bruce how to be a Jedi, er, Samurai/Ninja. He teaches him every lethal and semi-lethal fighting skill on the planet. (We get to see Bruce Wayne sword fight with Qui-Gon! It’s fucking awesome!)

Bruce ends up back in Gotham where he becomes everyone’s favorite Dark Knight. He reunites with his childhood love, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), and finds out just how bad Gotham has become. There are only four people he can truly trust: Rachel; his butler, Alfred (Michael Caine); Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who works in the development department of Wayne Enterprises; and Sergeant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, who is getting good at playing good guys), the only honest cop in Gotham.

Bruce/Bat finds out that, not only is the whole city run by a gangster named Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), but the doctor who runs Arkham Asylum, Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), is more insane than most of the folks he’s put under his own care. He has found a way to make peoples’ worst fears come to life in their own minds. The mask that he wears to keep himself safe from his own experiments looks like a scarecrow, hence his evil persona.

Batman has always been pretty dark. (Well, except for that stupid 60s sitcom crap, but that’s another story all together.) But Batman Begins goes beyond dark. Not only does it take humanity’s main failing, fear, and exploit it to it’s fullest potential, but it turns into a fucking zombie movie towards the end! (It almost makes up for me not seeing Land Of The Dead this weekend.) And, even though the Scarecrow isn’t the main villain (not really), he is a pretty fearsome foe. In normal life the mask looks a little silly. But to his victims it becomes a squirming mass of ugliness and decay that is up there with just about anything Lucio Fulci might have dreamed up back in the 70s. Hell, even Batman looks pretty ugly when they see him.

And speaking of Batman, I just watched The Machinist yesterday. Good GOD it’s good to see Christian Bale back to fighting weight. He was pretty scary in that movie. Here he does an awesome job of being the billionaire playboy by day (with shades of an only slightly less menacing Patrick Bateman) and a dark crime fighter by night. In fact, he does such a great job that it’s easy to forget who he is when he has the mask on. He hides completely behind it…and that’s a good thing.

Everyone else is almost as good. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman do their usual amazing jobs as two of Bruce’s new father figures. Alfred cares for Bruce as much as his own father did and he lets him know it every chance he gets. (He even gets to kick and ass or two in this one.) Lucius just met Bruce, but he knows that whatever it is he’s doing is good for the city. He does everything he can to help Bruce out with whatever gadgets just happen to be laying around the basement of Wayne Enterprises. (Funny what they have stored down there.) And Jim Gordon (not yet Commissioner Gordon) is willing to do anything for Batman even though he has no clue who the guy really is. All he knows is that his city is broken and the Bat is out to fix it. Gary Oldman has to play Gordon a little bit older than he actually is and he does a great job. He’s a compassionate man who is almost not allowed to do his job.

The weakest link here is, unfortunately, Katie Holmes. She’s not bad by any means. She’s a talented girl. But she just can’t quite hold her own with the rest of this powerhouse cast. Then again, who could? These are all great actors at the top of their games. She’s a pretty good actress who is still climbing her, um, game…or something. I hate metaphors.

Director Christopher Nolan (Memento and Insomnia) and writer David Goyer (the Blade trilogy, Dark City) have done more for Batman than even Tim Burton did back in the late 80s. And keep in mind that I LOVE the two Burton Batman flicks. They’re just the right amount of darkness and over the top action. But Batman Begins has all of that and more.

The only problem that I have with it is the way it sets up the Joker for the next movie. Part of the “fun” of Batman is that he made most of his enemies what they are today. He turned Jack Napier into the Joker. Her turned Harvey Dent into Two-Face. Now, maybe that was just a construction of the movies, but that’s a really cool construction. The Joker is just spontaneously on the loose at the end of this movie. No one knows who he is, but there’s no way that Batman turned him into the Joker because he just got back into town.

But, in a way, he kind of made EVERY criminal in Gotham. See the movie and you’ll understand. It’s just not quite the same as in the other movies.

Go see this movie. Even if you’re not a big fan of the Bat, go see this movie. It’s pretty damn awesome.

And listen for a couple of references to the first Tim Burton flick.