To be perfectly honest, I do have a small bias. Burton's films made me a fan. So I can accept the errors, especially considering that at least Burton has some excuses and brought us films that were so rich in subtextual meaning. But I can freely admit the errors that Burton makes.
But you've got here a reasoned and intreaguing counter-argument. Let's see what we have here...
What I can't understand is why Begins can be criticized for things that Burton's films get passes for.
Largely, my dislike for
Batman Begins lies in the fact that the film was a new chance, it had the Burton material to show the way. Therefore, it had the chance to correct these mistakes and in some cases, didn't. That's a little sloppy, don't you think? Second, I have a bias against
Begins because the majority of people that just eat it up disgust me, to them, there are no flaws and I'll be damned if you could get them to admit it.
BATMAN is my most favorite film of all time and you won't catch me necessarily criticizing it, but I can freely admit its flaws. So part of my animosity against
Begins springs from its reaction. It was really overwhelmingly offensive. But in an argument, I won't hold this animosity against the film for the sake of the argument.
You think Nolan improperly handled Bruce's distaste for guns? Fine, valid complaint.
But if that's how you feel, then you should have a serious problem with Burton, who completely disregarded this angle (one that's dominated Batman comics for the majority of his existence), whose Batman committed frequent homicides at the barrel of a gun (not to mention rockets, explosives, etc). Now most people write this off as Burton drawing inspiration from the early comics (a valid point), but why then could you not extend the same rationale to Begins, speculating that perhaps Nolan wanted to hint at Batman's darker, homicidal past by showing this temptation, while ultimately leading to the modern, more traditional "no-gun" policy?
I don't see this, unfortunately. Without any room for interpretation, you're left to what Nolan presents us, and there's no "wiggle room" to think that he may have done something this deep. The film is so simplistic on obvious levels that I have trouble believing that Nolan had anything going on between the lines, and if he tried, he failed so far. Burton gets a pass because of the admitted source used (the original material, like you said), but also between his two films, he set up an obvious arc for Bruce. He doesn't kill
prior to the last act of
BATMAN, and Bruce stopped killing in the last third of
Returns, which ties into finding his parents' killer and seeing himself in Selina so that he pulls back and questions himself. This theory is backed up from Bruce's Burton-written monologue in
Forever about revenge becoming your whole life, it happened to Bruce in the previous two movies.
However, to be fair, you wouldn't have picked up on this arc just from
BATMAN, so it's entirely possible that Nolan is setting some things up which will make subtext clearer by the next film, but judging by
Begins.... I doubt it.
And another point.
How can one criticize the "lack of training," aside from that by Ra's, in Begins, but accept Burton's, which doesn't even attempt to gloss over any training? Now, the most obvious answer to this is "well, Burton's movie wasn't an origin film; Nolan's was."
Ah. Interesting point.
Burton's film was an origin film, he just left the romanticism in Batman. A little too much mystery? I suppose. But the fact remains that little hints are dropped. The suit of armor was purchased in Japan by Bruce ("I bought it in Japan"), so we know he's been in Japan, probably around the world. He's obviously a master martial artist, among other things, etc...
At least, if Burton didn't want to give explicit details, he left puzzle pieces, gave us that option to make up our own minds. A great idea. Not exactly inaccurate to the comics, if anything, it broadens just how true the film may be. Bruce had never really relayed his stories of world travel to anybody in the books, we only know it because the narrators of the comics (the supreme DC diety) shows us flashbacks. So it's not something you could label "inaccurate". Now, should he have divulged the details? I'd say for a perfect adaptation, yes. But if you're not going to do that, at least don't
disallow anything about his origin from the books, which Burton really didn't do. In every way, Nolan did this by re-writing the origin.
The most offensive thing about what Nolan did to the origin in the film is that he presented it poorly. He says a large inspiration was "The Man Who Falls" by Dennis O'Neil. Well, he seemed to miss the meat of the story. Some minor artistic interpretation is one thing, but Nolan switches Bruce from a man of many teachers to just one, makes him self-taught and disallusioned. Bruce in the books was never so scatterbrained. He went from one country to another, etc... knowing exactly where his life was headed. Bruce never was "truly lost" in the comic books, it was an invention by Nolan, is it's insulting to the Batman of the material. That's the antithesis of Bruce, not just Batman, but Bruce. Ever since his parents died, it's said he became Batman, well, that's true. He became as focused, as determined and as serious as he was as Batman. He didn't "grow" focused or determined after a while. Experience in the suit, better being able to predict what criminals might do? Yes, that came later, as "Year One" shows us. But he never wandered around the world adrift in his emotions.
To Burton/Keaton's credit on this matter, at least Keaton played a Bruce who gave off that aire of focus and intelligence. We can assume that his origin followed that of the Bruce in the books, that he did his worldly business in order and in good sense. People say Keaton played an already-experienced Batman. Not necessarily, if you'll notice, Bale's Bruce didn't fail beyond the realm of what's reasonable. The difference between the two is that Keaton didn't have the backstory that amplified any errors he might make into being blindingly obvious. And Burton didn't try to accentuate them, either.
To this I reply -
just like Burton omitted these adventures of Wayne, so too did Nolan omit certain aspects of Bruce's past. All we see is Bruce working with criminals, and training with Ra's. Does this negate any possibility of any other training he could've done? NO. It simply doesn't show it. We are told he studied the criminal mind; and it is pretty obvious that he has trained his body in combat and conditioning (he may not have been able to fight "600 men" before Ra's, but he held his own very well for a rich boy, and was able to climb through the Himalayas without dying).
It is heavily implied that he was self-taught in every matter, only recieving training from Ra's. The Bruce from the comic books wouldn't have gotten himself thrown in jail just trying to study criminals. He would have had a more direct, scholorly approach. The Bruce in
Batman Begins is overly vengeful and pigheaded, really. He rushes into things (pre-Batman) just to experience it. It ties into what Nolan was trying to do, but that's a spin on the material that shouldn't be presented in an
adaptation.
What Nolan does is craft an overall good movie, with an interesting character and a decently-written film overall, but it's only hardly half of what the guy in the comc books is. It's a poor adaptation but a good film on it's own, in spite of some parts of it....
So why didn't Nolan show the rest of his training? I don't know; maybe he wanted a more focused story - accomplished by the focusing in on one main aspect - Ra's, and his conflict of ideals. But all this is heresay, and ultimately irrelevant.
My sense of the material makes me think that he wanted to craft this overall theme that is detrimental to the comic material, and then shove it down our throats, when most of us got the point from the get-go, he repeated it for Joe McNobrains.
The question, again, is this -
Burton didn't show any training. His "ideas" of what shaped Batman are not even touched upon. It's just, how Bruce says, "something I have to do". And that vaguery is great, it works. But I don't see how complete lack of is better than tried at least.
Well, Nolan didn't try to do it like the comics showed us, he created some wild new spin on it. And like I said, ambiguity is great if you're not going to do it right, so at least it doesn't "trample any toes", so to speak. If Nolan had shown Bruce training with the real Ducard, Japanese senseis and others, it would have been good enough even if not perfect. But he didn't even try to do it the correct way.
Yet another point would be the Joe Chill situation. People say "I hate how Joe Chill was caught and then killed by the mob" and "I hate how Bruce almost killed him." Once again, valid points. But how could those same people say they didn't mind Joe Chill not even being the killer, and Batman actually killing his parents' killer, The Joker. Isn't an "imperfect" Joe Chill better than no Chill at all?
Once again, imperfection is fine, if you're trying to do it right. Nolan tried a completely other apprach and failed to make it very insightful. He tired, but it didn't work, at least not for me. And at least Bruce was kept in the dark about Naiper in
BATMAN, making his role as Batman less out of avenging his parents' deaths and more out of keeping himself sane, like the man of the material. Bale's Bruce does what he does out of guilt. Bruce, in the books, doesn't feel responsible for their deaths. He knows there's nothing he could have done at the age of eight. Rather, he sees it has his responsibility to their memory, that to keep himself rational and being able to get out of bed every day, he has to do what he does, at least try to make a difference, to "prevent what happened to [him] from ever happening to anybody ever again", as Val Kilmer so eloquently put it in
Forever. Nolan's Bruce says this is his intetion, to "Save Gotham", but this claim isn't consistant with his behavior in the film.
When Bruce finds Naiper as the murderer in
BATMAN at least Burton did it for two reasons. One, as I've said before, for the arc. Bruce is allowed to make mistakes, and because of
BATMAN being an origin story as well, he does make errors, and the error was killing Naiper (or trying to, he didn't actually succeed, not directly), which he learned because he recognized his aborrent vigilante behavior in Catwoman, noticing that he was hardly any different. It's not too much of a "trample your toes" alteration to the comics. It's actually not so much an alteration as an addition. An abstract analysis of the character. Second, he did it to try and bring in the sense of bitter, long standing struggle between Bruce and the Joker with it. With the film being the Joker's origin as well, Bruton couldn't simulate the relationship between the two that was in "The Dark Knight Returns", which he really dug, and I do too. We all do, right? Well, if they're fighting for a month or so, they aren't going to come across as bitter enemies. Hence the tie to Bruce that the Joker has... that Jack ruined his life from the get-go, and the added angle of Bruce not only causing Jack to go insane (though not intentionally), but also that (with the added "Homicidal artist" angle), Batman keeps bruising the Joker's ego and is a constant thorn in his side. Thus, you can get a sense of the archenemy vibe between the two in the end fight.
If you really think about it, what Burton did perfectly simulated the Joker's killing of Jason Todd in an abstract way. In the comics, the Joker hadn't done anything like that before. it can honestly be said that the Joker ruined Bruce's life in some ways. By having the Joker kill somebody just as imporant to Bruce (and why not tie in Bruce's origin as well?), you can swing it that the Joker in the film does something just as traumatic to Bruce in the film as he had already done in the books.
I just noticed that. Burton, you bloody genius, you.
I just don't understand how one movie gets a free pass for completely omitting and changing huge aspects of the character while another gets bashed for "not doing those aspects good enough" for your taste. I'd be much more understandable for people to dislike BOTH. That I would get completely, as they both changed aspects of the character. I just don't understand how people can forgive the changes by one and condemn the (even smaller) changes of another.
As I said, I've got a bias, but in light of what Burton brought, I can accept the alterations (First off because they really don't change too much as it is), because of what they brought to the films. Nolan's film should get more guff because it didn't really do any better than what Burton did, in my eyes. If anything, it was worse because for all of the changes it made to the material... it didn't have any kind of deep, intellectual and subtextual payoff. It wasn't "art house" like what Burton gave us, when really, Batman is the most artistic superhero there is. Burton brought us that powerful, mythological Batman that we love to admire. I always say that the difference between DC Comics and Marvel Comics is that DC's heroes are the ones you look up to, whereas Marvel's characters are the ones you relate to. This is how Nolan failed and Burton triumphed, in my eyes. I look up to Keaton's Batman. I'm too close to empathizing with Nolan's Batman, and that's not Batman. I mean, and I'm being hypocrticial here, I can relate to Keaton's Wayne more, psychologically (His Social Anxiety Disorder and the like), but he's still got the mythological quality of the guy from the books. But Nolan made Bruce
too human, if that makes any sense.
How true.
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