Darrell's Review

With his debut film, Memento, director Christopher Nolan showed a lot of promise. His second feature, Insomnia, may have been even better than his first. Insomnia lacked the flash and gimmickry of Memento, offering instead a gripping redemption tale and stellar performances from Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Some felt that, with Insomnia, Nolan had delivered on the promise of his first film.

He was only warming up.

Batman Begins is Nolan’s third film, and his best yet. It is, in fact, a movie so good, so thoroughly enjoyable, such a thrill to watch, that Nolan may have cursed himself. Few directors turn out a film this good over 30 years. Nolan may labor in the shadow of Batman Begins for the rest of his career. I hope not. I hope he does get better and better. However, it will probably be impossible to avoid comparing his next film… maybe his next ten films… to his current one. When someone says Ridley Scott, I think Alien. When someone mentions Tarantino, I think Pulp Fiction. If someone mentions the Coens, I think about Fargo. I’d almost bet that, from here on out, the mention of Christopher Nolan will make me think about Batman Begins.

Batman, of course, is the legendary hero of DC Comics. I’m sure you’re familiar with Batman, or some version of him, even if you’ve never touched a comic book. He’s been recast and recreated for TV and the big screen almost as many times as Jesus has. It is, in fact, difficult to consider the many TV and movie versions of Batman without thinking about parallels between them and the many TV and movie versions of Jesus. I’m not trying to trivialize Jesus, I am myself a Christian, and I’d never compare Jesus to Batman. I am, however, willing to compare Hollywood to Hollywood. Stay with me, here:

Think of the DC Comics Batman stories as the Batman version of the Gospel. The original source material; the foundation and the groundwork. Like the gospel, those comic book stories have been filmed a number of times, with mixed results.

The campy 60’s Batman TV series was akin to Jesus Christ Superstar. It was silly. It wasn’t about the source material as much as it was about having a good time. The dark parts were stripped away or trivialized, and the final product was just goofy.

The animated Batman TV series is very good, and compares favorably to the animated Bible stories some of us remember from Sunday School. They were faithful to the heart of the source material, but the mature elements were toned down for kids, and a clear moral was present at the end of each short episode. As it was with those shorts, so it was with each episode of the Batman animated series.

Tim Burton’s Batman films (Batman and Batman Returns) were pretty good, and in this analogy, they compare to the epic Christian movies and miniseries that showed on TV every Easter when I was a kid (like Jesus of Nazareth and The Greatest Story Ever Told). They were stylized to some degree, and they took a few liberties, but the hearts of the film-makers seemed to be in the right place, even if the final product seemed a little sanitized. However, both with Burton’s Batman films and the Christian epics, the real depth of the hero wasn’t really explored, and the darker sides of his journey were barely acknowledged. Still, for the faithful, they seemed to be as good a cinematic offering as we were likely to get, so we didn’t complain about them.

Then there’s Joel Schumacher’s two movies, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin… or, as I think of them, The Last Temptation of Batman. Those films had basically nothing to do with the source material. They had more to do with the director’s personal vision than with Batman himself. Like The Last Temptation of Christ, Schumacher’s Batman films were offensive to the faithful. They took a central character we knew and loved and changed his motives, changed his nature, changed his story and his reason for being. If DC Comics were a church, comic book readers would have protested Schumacher’s Batman films in droves.

Now comes Batman Begins, which compares favorably with Mel Gibson’s amazing The Passion of the Christ. Each of those two films is a labor of love, made by men who are clearly devoted to the subject matter. It’s clear, in both instances, that the director is more concerned about telling the story than about re-writing it. Both movies take some liberties with the source material, but when they do, it’s so their films can impart some honest, important truths about the subjects. Both films fly in the face of Hollywood convention. Both films were exactly what the faithful had been hoping for all along, and never expecting to really see. It is a miracle that either film got made.

I could fill pages praising Batman Begins. I haven’t got a single complaint with the film. The cast is great, especially Christian Bale, who gives the best cinematic performance as Batman ever. In fact, the entire cast (and what a cast it is!) is in fine form. The story is entertaining, fantastic, and emotionally moving all at once. The villains are the best comic book villains to ever hit the big screen, especially Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow, the scariest comic bad guy I’ve ever seen in a movie. The new Batmobile is a car every guy would actually LOVE to own. The action scenes and special effects are jaw dropping… and, most of all, the movie works as human drama, a story of fear and courage. The atmosphere and tone of the film are exactly what they should be. Not one frame of this movie is extraneous, off, or imperfect.

Batman Begins is the best movie so far this year. I didn’t expect to see a better movie than Sin City, and after the laughably bad final Star Wars film, I was a little apprehensive about this Batman prequel. It didn’t let me down, though. In fact, it’s the best comic book movie I’ve ever seen. Better than The Crow, better than the first two Blade movies, even better than Spider-Man 2.

You can see this film knowing nothing about Batman and still enjoy it. In fact, the less you know about Batman going in, the better, probably. I think the ideal situation would be to go to see this movie knowing nothing about Batman. Anyone lucky enough to actually do so will leave as a convert.

God bless you, Christopher Nolan, and good luck in your future films. I hope you actually top Batman Begins someday. If you don’t, though, you’ve still pulled off a miracle. Batman Begins is one of the best movies of this decade.

Wendy's Review


Yesterday we saw Batman Begins. We were pretty hyped to see it because we had been following it’s making for a few years now. Every time we saw a still from the film, we would marvel at it. Every time we read about the cast, we would smile gleefully. And every time we saw a new preview, we would get our hopes even higher for it. We had our hopes so high that we figured it Batman Begins could never live up to our expectations. We were wrong.


Batman Begins is so much better than we could have ever dreamed it would be.
I am a fan of Christopher Nolan’s previous two films, Memento and Insomnia. When I first heard that he would be directing this installment of Batman, I was thrilled. He is such a talented director, and I figured he would do Batman justice.

I haven’t been a fan of any of the previous Batman movies. In fact, I never saw all of the first Tim Burton’s Batman because Joker scared me so much. And I never saw Batman Forever because I just didn’t care. Batman Returns is pretty good, and Batman and Robin is the biggest piece of crap. However, Batman Begins is a complete masterpiece.

Batman Begins has an amazing cast. If I had sat around one day dreaming up the best possible cast for a movie, it would include the actors in Batman Begins. First, you have Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Then there is Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Tom Wilkinson, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman to list a few. That is one impressive list of actors.

Beside the wonderful list of actors, and all of their fine acting in Batman Begins, the most impressive thing about the film is the sound. I have never heard such good sound in a movie (that I can think of). The sound is so loud, crisp, and effective. It absolutely draws you into the movie.

The sets are amazing. I don’t know how they did it, but it all looks so real. In fact, I don’t want to know how they did it because it would ruin some of the mystery. Gotham looks amazing. It looks how Gotham should look. They even went so far as to make nice little touches like reworking the Illinois license plates to say Gotham where it typically says Illinois.

Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow is very good. It proves that you don’t need a fancypants costume to be effective. Scarecrow is one scary villain, and his whole costume consists of a badly made homemade mask made of burlap.

The new Batmobile is the coolest car I have ever seen. I want one so bad. In the other Batman movies, the cars were so pretty and stylish looking, but the new Batmobile fits this film so well. It’s edgy, just like the film. It rough and tumble, just like this new Batman. This car isn’t about looks, it’s about function. Batman doesn’t need a good looking car. He needs a car that will do the job. This car WILL do the job, and so much more.

Batman Begins is rated PG-13. I know that a lot of people have been very cautious about taking their children to see it. That is understandable. It’s a very dark movie, and Scarecrow is pretty darn scary. However, we brought our three kids to see it. My eight year old stepson and six year old son were completely unphased by the scarier elements. But, they eat up scary movies. My seven year old daughter was a little more scared then they were. She did cover her eyes a lot. However, when I asked her what she found scary, she told me the sound were the scariest part. That is understandable, it gets pretty loud. The sounds of the bats in the cave are
very realistic. It makes you feel like they are in the room with you. All three kids enjoyed Batman Begins, and they left the theater excited about eventually owning it on DVD so they could see it again.

My only complaint with Batman Begins is that it was over so soon. It’s well over two hours long, but I just wanted more. I was so exhilarated after it was over, and I can’t wait to see it again this week.

Batman Begins is amazing. You don’t have to be a fan of comics or Batman either to enjoy this film. It’s an amazing action film, a compelling drama, and a great character piece. It’s by far the best movie I’ve seen this year (sorry Sin City you’ve been bumped), and definitely the best comic book movie I have ever seen.

¶ 9:17 PM