Batman Begins Changing perceptions.

Superwoman Prime

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This movie was on a cable channel today, and I sat down to watch it. Why? It was the only interesting movie on at the time. While my sentiments for Batman Begins have started to decline over the past several months, something happened while I was rewatching it (for the eighth instance probably).

I'm not going to act like this new perception of BB came out of nowhere. Several people on these boards have mentioned that while BB does have some dry realism, we could take the Arkham break-out as a sign that the Nolanverse's reality is going to start taking a turn for the... entertainingly wild and fun. If you'll notice, things already did start getting wild/fun near the third act. When Crane was in his cell, sitting there, and the Scarecrow mask is returned to him, there's almost a 'rite of passage' that Nolan & Co. took. With that in mind while rewatching this movie, it turned out to be WAAAY more acceptable. Instead of throwing us into the middle of a fantastical world, they gradually helped us transfer over to it.

If you take the movie for what it is... the premise, the characters, the action, all start intertwining into an action comic book movie that eclipses many other movies of that genre.
 
This movie was on a cable channel today, and I sat down to watch it. Why? It was the only interesting movie on at the time. While my sentiments for Batman Begins have started to decline over the past several months, something happened while I was rewatching it (for the eighth instance probably).

I'm not going to act like this new perception of BB came out of nowhere. Several people on these boards have mentioned that while BB does have some dry realism, we could take the Arkham break-out as a sign that the Nolanverse's reality is going to start taking a turn for the... entertainingly wild and fun. If you'll notice, things already did start getting wild/fun near the third act. When Crane was in his cell, sitting there, and the Scarecrow mask is returned to him, there's almost a 'rite of passage' that Nolan & Co. took. With that in mind while rewatching this movie, it turned out to be WAAAY more acceptable. Instead of throwing us into the middle of a fantastical world, they gradually helped us transfer over to it.

If you take the movie for what it is... the premise, the characters, the action, all start intertwining into an action comic book movie that eclipses many other movies of that genre.

Well said. It's not perfect but still very good for what it is. And like you said, it seems to hint at a crazy sequel. Nolan has said that TDK is all about how things have to get worse before they get better. Something tells me that chaos will rule TDK. Hopefully amongst the chaos, we get to see Batman beat the crap out of a lot of criminals including the Joker. :yay:
 
I'm not going to act like this new perception of BB came out of nowhere. Several people on these boards have mentioned that while BB does have some dry realism, we could take the Arkham break-out as a sign that the Nolanverse's reality is going to start taking a turn for the... entertainingly wild and fun. If you'll notice, things already did start getting wild/fun near the third act. When Crane was in his cell, sitting there, and the Scarecrow mask is returned to him, there's almost a 'rite of passage' that Nolan & Co. took. With that in mind while rewatching this movie, it turned out to be WAAAY more acceptable. Instead of throwing us into the middle of a fantastical world, they gradually helped us transfer over to it.

Exactly. I'm glad you got it, because so many people don't. They use the first two thirds of Begins to judge what TDK and beyond will be like, which is entirely wrong. Using that last act as a barometer will prove much more accurate.

It was a very calculated decision by Nolan, to start his series in "our world" and give us a front row seat to its degeneration into the freakshow that is the Gotham of the comics. It apparently didn't work for some, and they misinterpreted it as a dry realism that would persist throughout the series (apparently they slept through that final act).

It's right there, plain as day. "Not Crane, SCARECROW!" Jonathan Crane is a supervillain there, the first of many. The escalation speech, etc.

It's a transitional movie. And I think its the perfect way to do a Batman series. If you enter directly into a comic book world, you can't surprise the audience with anything. Anything is possible, right from the get-go.

What people don't understand (I think they finally will in TDK) is that Nolan never intended to sap the "comic-bookness" out of these characters. He'll actually manage to heighten their freakish nature by placing them against the backdrop of a (what once was) normal world.
 
This movie was on a cable channel today, and I sat down to watch it. Why? It was the only interesting movie on at the time. While my sentiments for Batman Begins have started to decline over the past several months, something happened while I was rewatching it (for the eighth instance probably).

I'm not going to act like this new perception of BB came out of nowhere. Several people on these boards have mentioned that while BB does have some dry realism, we could take the Arkham break-out as a sign that the Nolanverse's reality is going to start taking a turn for the... entertainingly wild and fun. If you'll notice, things already did start getting wild/fun near the third act. When Crane was in his cell, sitting there, and the Scarecrow mask is returned to him, there's almost a 'rite of passage' that Nolan & Co. took. With that in mind while rewatching this movie, it turned out to be WAAAY more acceptable. Instead of throwing us into the middle of a fantastical world, they gradually helped us transfer over to it.

If you take the movie for what it is... the premise, the characters, the action, all start intertwining into an action comic book movie that eclipses many other movies of that genre.

Opposite to you, the more I watch BB - which is not very often - the less I can get over the flaws.

The first half, which I always considered the best part, now I find little to really care about. Once you know the dialogues, there's little to rescue about them. While trying real hard to keep a serious tone, they're no more than clichés and "serious" morals wannabe that try but never surpass the original 'With great powers...' You'll say that they're more 'deep' than in any other Bat-movie. Well, they try to be. But the rest of Bat-movies didn't try to play to the this-is-the-ultimate-seriousness game so you don't miss the depth, while BB tried to play a game that was too big for Goyer's writing skills.

Am I saying that being 110% serious is bad or wrong for a superhero/comic movie? Hell no. But Goyer just screwed it up. If you want to play the serious tone game you have to do more than just 'sound' serious. Ironically, his one liners - trying to healthily break the seriousness - were crap. Most of them, if not all, just ruined very good moments (I know I'm complaining a lot but there are very good moments in Batman Begins.)

I think I'll refer to Thomas Wayne in a longer way in another time and thread but that character did nothing for me either. Showing him as the - unbelievable - epitome of the kind and concerned father on Earth is the most obvious way on Earth to make his death tragic.

In the second third, you have to wait way too much to see finally Batman. I love when they hold the hero first apparition, don't get me wrong. But wasting minutes and minutes and scene after scene showing the most uninteresting details about how he got every single device - when once you got where and how he got the suit and car, it's obvious he got everything else the same way and in fact, they showed that was exactly the way it happened - is just to waste minutes maybe thinking "the more I hold this the most interesting it automatically becomes." Doesn't work that way necessarily. Holding for the sake of it is holding does not make anything more interesting. I still feel this part as an over-stretched sequence that is more of a yawn than geniunely valuable and vital history to tell. Things that we, the audience, MUST know.

And finally, when you have Batman in the movie, most - if not all - of his action scenes suck. And big time. The MTV shaky camera worked just the first time, then I never ever got a shot of Batman that surpasses the good shots of every other Bat-movie. The worst part is the ending. Once you can't even see who's punching who, and therefore you can't see whether Batman is in danger or actually winning the fight, everything crumbles down. I still feel that part as something that I hope ends quickly in order to see what the hell is happening. I don't need to mention how boring at this point is to watch giant explosions one after the other, no matter how imppresive the effects are.

And if you're thinking Nolan was showing us the criminal point of view of Batman's ninja skills, then I must ask why the first battle in the jail between Bruce and the "Devil," the fight in the frozen lake with Ra's and the Tumbler pursuit sequence are shot the same way. It was just a matter of style - the wrong one - not justified by the story.




But now for the positive; this was a valuable effort from Nolan to make superhero movies something new. Watching how much better Memento and Insomnia are, I don't doubt the studio was peressuring a lot to have some crappy elements they're convinced that sell movies.

Now Nolan proved he's right for the job I hope they're going to leave him alone for TDK. Holmes (by far the worst acting job of the movie) is gone and Goyer is not writing dialogues anymore (I must recognize he was great at developing the plotline of BB, including the inclusion of the villians into the main storyline, a thing that almost no one gets right) so I believe TDK will be a much better movie. I trust on that.

Ok, I'll try to make a post of the good things pf BB to compensate. BB is not a movie I hate but my problems with it, explained here, are far from dissarearing with repeated views, that was the point.
 
Exactly. I'm glad you got it, because so many people don't. They use the first two thirds of Begins to judge what TDK and beyond will be like, which is entirely wrong. Using that last act as a barometer will prove much more accurate.

It was a very calculated decision by Nolan, to start his series in "our world" and give us a front row seat to its degeneration into the freakshow that is the Gotham of the comics. It apparently didn't work for some, and they misinterpreted it as a dry realism that would persist throughout the series (apparently they slept through that final act).

It's right there, plain as day. "Not Crane, SCARECROW!" Jonathan Crane is a supervillain there, the first of many. The escalation speech, etc.

It's a transitional movie. And I think its the perfect way to do a Batman series. If you enter directly into a comic book world, you can't surprise the audience with anything. Anything is possible, right from the get-go.

What people don't understand (I think they finally will in TDK) is that Nolan never intended to sap the "comic-bookness" out of these characters. He'll actually manage to heighten their freakish nature by placing them against the backdrop of a (what once was) normal world.
Very interesting... the problem, at least for me, is that the third act is the least interesting precisely because it lacks the dry realism that was established in the early parts of the film.
 

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