Let there be dark... (Batman Begins (2 DVDs))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Batman Begins (2 DVDs)
Date:	09/02/06 (124 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great 'origins of' storyline done properly. Good cast and acting.

Disadvantages: Can any sequels get better?

I was very apprehensive about Batman Begins for a number of reasons. The first being that I thought Christopher Nolan had a hard job following up Tim Burton's excellent Batman and Batman Returns, which I adored when they were first released. However, I was also very wary that Batman Begins could be a continuation of the camp, garish adventures that were Batman and Robin or Batman Forever.

When his chance at revenge against his parents' killer is taken from him, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) takes to wandering the planet incognito, studying the criminal mind. Part of this journey has seen him incarcerated in an Asian prison where he regularly gets into trouble with other inmates. After one such altercation, Bruce Wayne is taken away where the mysterious Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) offers him a chance to fulfil his goal.

Released from prison the next day, Bruce Wayne seeks out Ducard who teaches him the way of the ninja in order to take a role within the League of Shadows (a vigilante cult run by Ra's Al Ghul). Upon his return to Gotham City, he takes the advice of Ducard and creates a symbol to strike fear into the criminal element in the city. Along with his friend and butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), and Wayne Enterprises employee Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce Wayne builds the legend that is Batman and encounters some hauntingly familiar enemies at the same time.

Bruce Wayne: "People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne, as a man I'm flesh and blood I can be ignored I can be destroyed but as a symbol... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting."

For a long time, I had often wondered how a high-profile billionaire such as Bruce Wayne could construct the legend of Batman without being found out while also being the high-profile CEO of a huge business. The building of the batcave and the batmobile especially would surely lead to the discovery of Batman's true identity? How and why Bruce Wayne becomes Batman are the core elements in the story in Batman Begins and I found it all the more enjoyable for that reason. The previous four Batman films had done the sensational bad guys as the focus of their story, so the scriptwriting team of David S. Goyer (the Blade trilogy) and Christopher Nolan (Memento) made an excellent decision to switch the focus of the story to something else.

I thought the casting for Batman Begins was excellent. Christian Bale makes both an excellent Bruce Wayne and Batman. Unlike Tim Burton's "new" Batman in the 1989 film, here you can see this Batman struggle to cope and adapt to his new role. There are subtleties in the two characters that are more evident than in previous Batman films. Batman is quiet and brooding speaking in a lower tone than his real persona whereas Bruce Wayne's public persona is more light-hearted and irreverent. It helps overcome the feeling that anyone should surely be able to recognise Batman by the mannerisms and voice, as had been the case previously.

There are a lot of big name and well-known actors that could have been a negative factor, but generally performances were superb. Cillian Murphy is creepy enough as Scarecrow/Dr. Crane and Katie Holmes provides her usual girl-next-door image as needed, albeit with an extra edge as District Attorney Rachel Dawes. Gary Oldman was excellent as Commissioner-in-waiting Jim Gordon as he goes from the only straight cop in town to an unofficial partner in the Batman team. Neeson's Henri Ducard is pretty much the same as his Star Wars Qui-Gon Jinn character, only without the woolly dialogue and Jar-Jar Binks.

Michael Caine's Alfred was a huge and pleasant surprise. Gone was the stiff, reserved employee who always seemed to be serving a sentence and in came a new, relaxed family friend who, while still the butler, is as much a part of the Batman team as Bruce Wayne himself. Whether the character was written with Caine in mind or if he made the character this way himself is probably irrelevant (after all, it seems like any other Michael Caine character), but I think this new Alfred helps make the character (and legend) more real.

Alongside Alfred, Bruce gains a new ally in Lucius Fox, an old friend of his father's. Lucius was once a board member of Wayne Enterprises, but has been shuffled out of the way by current head honcho Earle (Rutger Hauer) to a dead end department that, handily for Bruce, contains all Wayne Enterprises prototypes for various pieces of technology. I really liked the character and thought that it again helped with the legend. Bruce Wayne is an intelligent man, but asking people to believe that he designs all the technology that Batman uses as well as his other responsibilities is asking too much. By introducing the Fox character (which Freeman plays magnificently), the Batman legend plants itself a little bit more in a world not entirely different to our own.

This is what I believe makes Batman Begins (and similarly, the two recent Spiderman movies) work. The hero may be 'special' in some way, but the world he inhabits could well be the one in which we live and at this early stage in the Batman legend, he's still learning the ropes and is not infallible. Even Batman Begins' Gotham City is based more in reality than Burton's gothic or Schumacher's more Las Vegas inspired cities. I believe it's modelled on Chicago (certainly some shooting was done there) and only the presence of the huge elevated train system and the Narrows shantytown indicates that it's not a real city.

Nolan's direction is good and he seems to have made the decision to keep the CGI special effects count as low as possible. This also helps with the feel of the film as you don't see characters with super-human agility/ability or vehicles that defy gravity. The tone of the film is still quite dark, despite the 'real world' setting and that's reflected in the visuals that can range from stark to muted, but are never overly colourful.

Overall I enjoyed Batman Begins a lot more than I thought that I would. The film really answered the questions that I had asked myself in a setting that I felt reflected the characters better than the previous comic-esque films. If you enjoyed the Tim Burton Batman movies, then I think you'll probably enjoy this. If the 1960s TV series or the Joel Schumacher films are more to your taste, then you might not find what you're looking for. Christopher Nolan has set the bar really high with his interpretation of the Batman legend and it's my opinion that this is the best of the bunch so far. There's plenty of scope for further films in this franchise, so here's hoping for future films when we can see more of the Rachel Dawes, Alfred Pennyworth, Jim Gordon and Lucius Fox characters alongside Bruce/Batman.

Summary: The origin of the Batman legend.