I did a one day marathon of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Batman, and it’s remarkable how derivative The Batman is narratively. There’s not a single idea Reeves brings to the table that either of the first two Nolan films didn’t do it first and better.
From Falcone having the city in his pocket and being taken down by another villain when he overplays his hand, Gotham being so corrupt that it’s beyond saving and has to be purged, with gassing by Ra’s and with flooding by Riddler, Thomas Wayne being a stubborn idealist who might have cost the future of Gotham but ultimately is a good guy in Begins, and a stubborn, protective husband that might have cost the future of Gotham but ultimately is a good guy in The Batman, to Bruce starting from a perspective of personal vengeance and ultimately understanding he has to be more than that, something he learned in the first act of Begins, and he learns at the end in Reeves’ version.
The technical aspect of the film is fantastic, the cinematography, the score, the sound design are impeccable. The problem for me is that it’s a terrible detective story, Batman neither figures the perp, nor the motive, he doesn’t stop any of the murders, nor figures out the bombing plot, let alone stops it, and he never would have, had the Riddler not surrendered. Which he does because the script demands it, or because another film it liberally borrows from, 7even, did it first with John Doe. On top of that, instead of writing an understandable antagonist, which it seemed to do for the majority of the film, it turns him into a hysterical 4chan buffoon who kills thousands of innocent people, ornamented with a truly awful, over-the-top screeching performance by Dano. It’s a very similar film to “Joker”, a derivative film that has no mind of it’s own, and seems entirely stitched from other, better movies.
Batman Begins has some of faults of it’s own, but it told a rich, lived-in story that never had been told when it came out. It took a bold approach, and though it stumbled here and there, it re-energized an entire mythology and served as a springboard for one of the greatest and most acclaimed films of the century. Reeves, like J.J Abrams, seems incapable of writing anything original, anything that isn’t a remake, continuing someone else’s story or following a blueprint that other writers already put out with diminishing returns.
Begins will never get the due it deserves because of the film that followed it, but only people who lived through the 90’s will understand it’s massive impact, when Batman was culturally a joke, and a project after project failed to gain any traction until Nolan came and single-handedly made Batman cool again. It’s difficult now to imagine after the trilogy, after the Arkham trilogy, success after success, that Batman was ever unpopular, but that’s what Begins was faced with and that’s why it’s an impressive achievement on every level.
