Super hero movies have been revived over the past few years, so it was nice to see the Caped Crusader get another shot at stardom. Let's face it, his last two outings were downright horrible, and it seemed that Burton's franchise had been flushed down the toilet. So now, nearly 10 years after the last movie, it has been taken back to the drawing board, starting right over. Yes, this is the origin of Batman, reimagined by excellent director Christopher Nolan. While it does surpass the previous two films, it simply does not live up to the first two. While it does most of the things right, it does some things very wrong.
A young Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) saw his parents murdered right in front of him. Ever since that moment, he became obsessed with the criminal mind, seeking out criminals all over the world. Eventually he becomes a criminal to enter their world, and ends up in a Tibetan prison camp. Here, he is taken out by an associate of Ra's Al Ghul, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). Ducard tells him that he is part of a shadowy group bent on the eradication of criminals and the installation of justice all over the world. And so he trains Wayne, teaching him to become a shadow, and to become what others fear. Fear is a primary focus in this film. When they ask Wayne to execute someone in cold blood, he realizes the follies of this ways and escapes back to Gotham City. He comes back into touch with his faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine), a scientist in Wayne Enterprises (Morgan Freeman, and his old crush, Rachel (Katie Holmes). Yes, this movie has a lot of plot, but it's a decent length, and manages to control it all fairly well. The main villain is, of course, Ra's Al Ghul, but The Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) is also a central character. The movie is creep, but not nearly as demented as it should be.
Got all that? Good. Christian Bale is good as Bruce Wayne, but is great as Batman. His voice change is remarkable, and becomes a part of his character. Katie Holmes is fairly absent, but Michael Caine was an inspired choice to play Alfred. Neeson is very good at Ducard, as he is always a powerful actor. But the sad thing about this is that no one knows who Ra's Al Ghul is, or The Scarecrow to be honest. Sure, they're both awesome villains, but ask yourself: can they compete with Nicholson's Joker? The answer is no. I just didn't find Ra's Al Ghul to be overly interesting. Perhaps this is the fate of it being an origin movie, but he is portrayed as such a cookie cutter, business-suit wearing bad guy. The Scarecrow, however, could have been extremely memorable, and is underutilized.
The action scenes are very cool, but the fight scenes are a blurry mess. The camera is zoomed in way to close, so all we see is a flurry of punches and kicks, which is a shame, since a rarely-used martial arts style was practiced in the film. This is really unexcusable, especially after the intricate fights between Dr. Octopus and Spidey in Spider-Man 2. The climax to the movie is really cool, as Gotham is nearly tearing itself apart, chaos everywhere, and a bigass Batmobile. It's cool in its own right, but it sure isn't the slick convertible I'm used to. I'm used to Batman blowing by everyone, not running them over.
Enough with the bad. Nolan makes fear the focus of the movie, which was a great choice. Fear is driven hard upon nearly every character in the film, but it feels so naturally. Wayne is afraid of bats, due to a childhood incident, and coming back to the mansion, he stands in their midst. He becomes his own fear. The Scarecrow uses a hallucaginec gas which causes freaky images to appear, which account for the coolest scenes in the movie. If any sequels are made to this film, I hope they pick a more memorable villain (the ending showed that they would), and that there is more emotional attachment placed on the characters. Spider-Man 2 all but proved that all you really need are great characters, and the rest comes naturally. Don't get me wrong, I liked the film, but it could have been a bit more.