We have reached a point of critical mass (pardon the pun) and we’ve realized that no matter the quality of the material being produced, we have enough of a built-in audience to make literally any article successful, and therefore, we have reached a nearly unanimous decision on behalf of the stockholders to just stop giving a crap about things like market research, and test audiences. Instead, we’re going to create whatever we want, and market it with flashy CGI, big explosions, scantily clad women, and loud, raucous trailer music that we licensed for a dollar. Also, this is the last article in the series so we really have no need to care anymore regardless of the circumstances. Therefore, we have sacked all of the creative staff, including the guy who was in charge of sacking people, and we’re letting our corporate officers steer this bloated tub!
In all seriousness, I have had a ton of fun with this series because we’ve looked at films of such varying quality. We started with a mediocre film, then we looked at what happens when the reboot goes awry, and then we looked at a really good reboot. This week we’re actually going to look at what happens when reboot does its job too well.
Batman Begins mostly tells the story of a young Bruce Wayne making his transition from anti-social billionaire to cowl wearing, anti-social, vigilante billionaire. The movie was released in 2005 and was directed by cinematic mind game player Christopher Nolan. It’s kind of hard to simply sum up this movie because it spends a lot of time jumping between various time periods in Wayne’s life. But the jist is that we see Wayne’s parents being rich and philanthropic, then they get murdered by Joe Chill, and that sends baby Bruce into emotional turmoil. Once Chill is finally caught and tried, Bruce attempts to kill him, but gets beaten to the punch by a mafia hit person. Bruce’s good friend Joey, I mean Rachel, finds out and slaps him a few times before she tells him how disappointed his father would be. In response, Bruce goes off the grid, and undertakes a multi-year exercise in understanding the criminal mind through acting like a criminal. That more or less covers the flashback stuff.
When we get the ‘present day’ stuff, it’s situated on that cusp moment before Bruce comes back to Gotham City to finally become Batman. He’s somewhere in Asia serving out a prison sentence, and he’s approach by Ra's Al Gul. Gul propositions him about joining a secret group of justice enforcers called the League of Shadows. Bruce gets out of prison, and goes to their dojo, and trains with them, but literally blows the place up when they ask him to execute a thief. After this harrowing experience, Bruce goes back to Gotham to start cleaning up. He takes a low level, dead end job at Wayne Tech working with Lucius Fox, who loans him toys to use to fight crime. We get to see how Wayne built his arsenal, and his methods, and he’s pretty novice so sometimes things don’t go as planned.
Batman is trying to take down the Falcone family, and simultaneously figure out how Falcone members are getting taken out of the general population at the prison to be put in Arkham Asylum under the watch of a Dr. Crane. This leads to uncovering a plot to use a fear toxin to cripple Gotham so that someone can move in and take over. But who? Oh that’s right, the League of Shadows because they’ll do anything to bring justice to the masses. Hence, the latter half of the film focuses on the power struggle between Batman and the League as they fight to administer justice in the ways that they think is right. In the end, Batman lets Ra’s die in a fiery train inferno, and he’s able to save the day. But before we can get too comfortable, Jim Gordon informs us that there’s another psycho that’s threatening Gotham. *Cue heroic music*
That’s a really bare bones synopsis, but, honestly, if you haven’t seen this movie twelve years on, you’re the epitome of a slacker. There’s a lot to love about this movie. First of all, this was a huge departure from the Batman films of days gone by…
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| Thankfully... |
And honestly, Batman kind of needed it…
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| For obvious reasons... |
However, I would also say that this film ushered in the true rise of the modern day reboot. Up to this point, the only modern reboot that I remember hearing about was 2001’s Planet of the Apes. It was not very good, and it’s ticket sales reflected that, but Hollywood has a way of sticking with an idea no matter how little sense it makes.
As I said, there’s a lot to love about this movie. It’s got a really engaging story that keeps the viewer entertained throughout. It does move slowly, but the way in which the story is presented keep the viewer on edge, wanting to know what’s going to happen next, and so it doesn’t feel boring. The whole film is seething with atmosphere. It’s dark, it’s mysterious, and even for Batman, it’s seriously dangerous. No one feels safe in this version of Gotham outside of the crime bosses, and that can be unsettling in itself. The action sequences are really cool. And there’s equal parts fist punching, and car chases, which just makes the whole experience that much more fun. Nolan does a really good job digging into the psychology behind Batman. He looks at all of the events that led up to the genesis of the Dark Knight and puts them in a well defined space within the narrative. Speaking of well defined, the whole entire thing is well grounded in reality. You see Bat toys, and you never think, “Oh that’s just ridiculous!” Instead, you find yourself believing that the toys being used could actually exist in our world. Finally, I really like the way Batman is brought to light throughout the film. Nolan does an exceptional job at teasing out the reveal until the very last moments before he finally lets the audience see Batman in his final form.
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| *Spoiler Alert: It's not this. |
Now let’s get to what’s not to love about this movie. First, and foremost, I didn’t like the way Nolan handled Gotham as a setting in the physical sense. In the comics, Gotham is as much an active character in the narration as everyone else. There’s a very distinct style, look, and feel to the city. While Nolan captured the feel pretty well, he neglected the style, and the look. Because of this, I kind of felt like any of the cityscape scenes could have just been any city at all. I feel like this was a hugely missed opportunity that stems from one of the strengths of the film and turns it into a weakness. The strength is that everything felt grounded in reality. That’s super cool when we’re talking about gadgets, or the Tumbler because we want to believe that we could own those things. But when we’re talking about the movie’s primary setting, and characters, I feel like more effort could have been made to maintain a bit of those fantastical elements that separate reality from fiction. Ra’s Al Gul doesn’t die, he goes to a Lazarus pit, and gets resurrected after all of his ‘deaths’. This, in turn, syphons off some of his sanity, and makes him a more dangerous, and unstable villain for Batman to battle. Scarecrow was done well, but I feel like the movie might have benefited from just a tiny bit more of him. Gotham needs that sort of stylized appearance to set it apart from both other real world cities, as well as other cities within the DC universe, like Metropolis, or Rapid City. Those cities look pretty mundane by comparison. These are all little things, but in my opinion, they’re necessary to remind the viewer that they’re watching a Batman film.
My biggest peave with this movie actually has nothing to do with this movie directly. I love this movie for all of things that it did well with the Batman mythology. However, I loathe what it did for movies in general going forward. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:
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| We have the dark, gritty RoboCop. I kind of feel like this works... |
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| The dark, gritty Fantastic Four... |
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| The dark, gritty Superman... |
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| The dark, gritty James Bond... |
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| And finally, the dark, gritty Star Trek |
Much like Celine Dion’s heart, or the Energizer bunny, this list just goes on, and on. Batman Begins was so successful in its formula that every other franchise decided that the best thing that they could do is follow suit. For crying out loud, the entire DCEU is built upon the foundation that was laid by Batman Begins. What this has led to is movies that are moapy, and dour, and brooding, and not very fun. Gone are the days of colorful, fun movies with light subject matter that can simply entertain moviegoers in a way that said moviegoers find universally satisfying because Hollywood is too busy chasing the Batman Begins dragon. Hollywood is so intent on recreating that success that they’ve forgotten what it means to have fun producing a film. I’ve already mentioned this quite recently in another article, but I recently went to see the Power Rangers film for a second time, and I was thoroughly impressed with the fact that even on the second viewing, I was grinning throughout most of the movie. Now, this may speak to my level of intellectual maturity in some way, but it’s also a really good demonstration of the kind of audience reactions a movie can get when the movie is fun, and also when those involved in the film’s production had fun making it. But alas, this newer breed of movie take themselves way too seriously, and rightfully so. Hollywood dumps hundreds of millions of dollars into the production and marketing of blockbuster movies these days. That’s a lot of financial risk coming from people who have no idea what they’re doing. So there’s a lot of pressure to strike gold using all the dumb luck that can be amassed. This whole thing speaks to so many problems inherent in the film industry, but a lot of it can be traced back to Batman Begins. Unfortunately, it’s a film that’s a victim of its own success.
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