Batman Begins: The Thread

I'm tired of comics fans who hate the Adam West Batman because it's not reverent enough and doesn't show the proper respect for the seriousness of the comic book form.

Let me open myself up to further ridicule by making a wild and poorly thought out analogy:
Batman TV show = Drunken Master
Batman (1989) = Shaolin Soccer
Batman Begins = Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

I venture that if you knew someone's opinion of one set of those three films relative to each other, you could predict their reaction to the other set of three.

It's not like this was the downfall of the movie (that would be, uh, just not really adding up to much), just a convenient plot contrivance (like Holmes' last speech) that stuck out to me. They needed to show Holmes acting heroic and maternal and then have the kid say "see, Batman will save us!" setting up the "I'm not really a spoiled billionaire playboy, I'm a bat" moment.

OK everyone else is already like going at you for this hallucinogen madness BUT I have to make the point that at this point in the movie Rachel Dawes would have no idea that Batman was there protecting her, hence Batman would appear as a menacing, unknown figure. The little boy, OTOH, had already been with Dawes before the water main break AND had already met Batman, making neither an unknown or menacing figure to him. Although xpost roffles ok yr argument is worth it for that playboy v. bat comment.

ALSO xpost
Let me open myself up to further ridicule by making a wild and poorly thought out analogy:
Batman TV show = Drunken Master
Batman (1989) = Shaolin Soccer
Batman Begins = Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Yes you can open yourself up to further ridicule. A) I don't think anyone here so far has hated on Adam West Batman??? B) CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON IS ONE OF THE MOST UNBEARABLE MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Take that as you will.

If we're using "rockist" as "purist-to-be-pandered-to", this doesn't hold up, as in the comics, it's pronounced (though it's actually never really pronouced) RAYz Al Ghul, not RAHZ Al Ghul, and Batman thinks girls are icky.

xpost I fell asleep the first time I saw CTHD. So I was forced to watch it, again. Ugh.

It's implicit in the argument that Batman Begins is the best portrayal of Batman because it's the most serious. The idea is that Adam West (and by extension Burton's movies) don't capture the true spirit of Batman because they are silly, flamboyant and ridiculous while Batman begins has believable characters and an authentic looking city.

Hero is less boring than CTHD.

I almost put Hero in there instead. The analogy works either way. Batman Begins, like CTHD or Hero is widely praised by critics and people who generally find superheroes or kung-fu films to be silly and beneath them.

Or not!

Um, hi, I'm still here refuting your lazy and wildly OffTM assertions. (Also you should have looked at the companion thread linked upthread on I Love Comics before forming your theory.)

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/hukl/getout.jpg

I have no idea what you're talking about Dan, but thanks for checking.

I would watch Adam West before I watched the '89 Batman, for sure. This Batman is, I feel, the best not because it's serious (quite frankly I don't see the supposed humorlessness of this Batman, actually, I thought it was played a lot more along the lines of the XMen films where there are jokes made but it's treated like a serious story) but because I feel the casting was perfect and they didn't treat it like a huge joke. I'd actually say the same thing about the '60s Batman--I mean, yeah, it's completely ridiculous but they go whole hog for it, there is no explanation, it's completely silly and by embracing that and not really giving ANY heft to the serious, darker themes in some of the comics, it makes it a more honest portrayal as well, if this makes sense.

XPOST I agree 100% with Milo about Hero except it wasn't as awful as CTHD, mainly I guess for the final scenes where something actually vaguely appeared to have happened.

so walter I don't know what to make of any of your weird generalizations.

There was no fun to be found in Hero, it was just beating me over the head for seven hours with 'look how pretty this swooping figure is,' and 'this is supposed to be deep, I'm not like (insert kung fu director here) with his silly fun, meditate on it for a while 'k'?
Batman begins was plenty fun, I just found that it tried to straddle two or three impulses (series pilot, action film, drama) without focusing on one to my satisfaction.

as I said upthread, the late 50s-60s Batman comics are TOTALLY silly, flamboyant and ridiculous - and that is just as legitimate basis for film/TV interpretation as Batman:Year One. The 60s TV show is, in this respect, just as "true" to its roots as Batman Begins is.

And not to be a pedantic quibbler, but when Bale et all talk about "being true to Bob Kane's vision of Batman" they are talking out their asses (from a pedantic quibbler's POV), as not 10 adventures of Batman the lone vigilante of the night went by before THE SENSATION CHARACTER FIND OF 1940...turned the strip into lighthearted boys' adventure.

xpost, I think you are OTM, Jordan.

-- Huk-L (handsomishbo...), June 22nd, 2005.

the cartoon was way better.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say. Not even in reference to the comics (which I haven't read) but Batman as a larger cultural icon. I got the impression that a lot of the praise for BB was centered around the idea that "finally someone got it right."

That's right, you slept through the bits where Bale had his shirt off.

Given that up to now no one had successfully made a "serious" portrayal of Batman (ie, one rooted in Denny O'Neill and Frank Miller's interpretations) those people (among whom I count myself) are completely correct. This film did get the "serious" Batman mythos right, and no one else had ever even really attempted it.

Before "Batman Begins," my favorite Batman film was Shoemacher's "Forever," because it's sexy and fun. I have a fondness for the pop art camp of the 1966 series. Shoemacher essentially tried to remake "Forever" with "Batman and Robin" but the script tries to juggle too many characters and the action scenes are much sloppier; there was a rube goldberg efficiency to a lot of the choreographed action in "Forever." Good or bad, Schumacher's neon camp is clearer in what it's about than Burton's pointlessly plotted and tonally confused goth camp.

That being said, most of the dissapointed reactions to "Begins" seem to spring from an expectation for some camp element in the psychosexual thematic forms they've taken either in the 60s series, Burton's "Batman Returns," or as the primary fixation of the Schumacher versions. This seems to be the gist of Stephanie Zacharac's review in Salon even if she seems unaware of it in her lazy, quip-filled dismissal. The psychosexual is one element of the Batman mythos that draws people to it and keeps coming up again in the different incarnations. Given Christian Bale's recent statement of wanting more sexuality in the second film indicates that this might be a thematic focus which it couldn't be given room for in the 1st, because their was too much work to be done towards giving meaning back to the myth itself.

Despite having this camp hope and expectation for Batman films, "Begins" involved me in its story by bringing life back into the basic concepts of the origin, grounded in the minimally philosphical language of much of the dialogue. I enjoyed the conceptual artist-like wording Bruce Wayne utilizes when telling Alfred about his plans to become a "symbol" to remove himself from openess to corruption. With Nolan's naturalistic straight take, for the 1st time Gotham city becomes a landscape which is opened up for analogies to be drawn to our world and history. I somwhat grateful the filmmakers took the risk of boring people.

xxpost

OTM.

This was one of my favorite bits of dialogue in the movie, too. I also liked the rationale for dressing up like a bat.

I think most of the disappointed reactions are coming from people who were open to a serious Batman but who think BB failed to deliver.

http://www.screencaptures.net/b/brewer18.jpg

Yeah, every fight scene in BB was a complete and utter shambles. The film was overlong and laughably ponderous. It looked great though, so that's alright.