Batman Begins: The Thread

First of all, let me state that I do not hate fun. I belong to the minority of people who actually thought Batman Forever was a good film, due to it's deliberate camp and playfulness. (I never saw Batman and Robin, so I have no comments on that.) But I do think there's room for dark and serious interpretations of Batman as well; if any superhero deserves them, it is Batman. However, if you choose the serious road, you have to accept all the baggage that comes with it. With Batman Returns Tim Burton found a great balance between darkness and playfulness, so that the film was serious enough not to be camp, but not serious enough to feel "real". It was a modern fairy tale, and one of the great things Burton did there was to focus as much on the villains as on Batman. Batman Begins, on the other hand, puts the focus pretty much on Bruce Wayne, and chooses seriousness over play and fantasy, and that is where both it's strengths and weaknesesses stem from.

I like how Batman's origin story was told to such great detail. His motivations, his history, his inner conflicts; watching all this unfold was extremely enjoyable. Similarly, the scenes which dealt with the practicalities of becoming Batman - preparing the equipment, the suit, the Batcave - where among the best in the film. Batman's story, however, is essentially a revenge story, and this where the film's seriousness betrayed it. In general, superheroes are vigilantes, and so is Batman. Vigilantism is extremely problematic, but most superhero stories sidestep the issue one way or another. It is exactly because these stories are non-realistic that they make the audience forget the more serious implications of superheroics. But because Batman Begins is such a serious film, it doesn't ignore the problem of vigilantism but tries to tackle it full-on.

The Batman of the film is not "pure" hero but a violent avenger. He lets Ducard fall to his death and does nothing to save him. Some would say that doesn't make him a killer, but remember that he himself asked Gordon to shoot the monorail down. So he is, in essence, responsible for Ducard's death. Also, earlier in the film it looked pretty clear that Bruce Wayne was about to shoot the guy who killed his parents, despite the fact that the killer repented. However, the film cleverly dodged the question whether he would've done it or not by letting someone else shoot the guy. In addition to that, during the car chase scene Batman endangers the lives of several innocent policemen by crashing their cars. For a while I thought the film was really gonna show Batman as a not-so-respectable character after all, since the shooting scene was followed by Katie Holmes saying, "Your father would've been ashamed of you!" (spot on!), and the car chase caused Alfred to chastise Bruce for not caring about other people's safety. But those threads led nowhere, and in the end Batman was supposed to have been a triumphant hero, even though he had both literal and metaphorical blood on his hands.

The problem with the serious approach to superheroics is that in the real world most folks would not like the idea of a superhero taking justice into his own hands. Of all the revisionist superhero writers only Alan Moore seems to have realized this: in his Watchmen citizens protest against superheroes. Non-revisionist superhero stories, such as the two Spider-Man films, are able to sidestep politics exactly because they are so clearly non-realistic, and because they focus on other issues than revenge and vigilantism. Batman Begins, on the other hand, has the same exact as flaw as Dark Knight Returns. The Miller comic was the first Batman story to say, "Take me seriously!", but what if you did so? You found out all the vigilantist, downright fascist implications a "realist" superhero story has. And the same applies to Batman Begins, even though it doesn't hold it's right-wing sympathies on it's sleeve as visibly as Miller does.

Funnily enough, as serious as the story of Bruce Wayne was, the same didn't seem to apply to his opponents. Liam Neeson played Ducard with all the sternness of a drama actor, not realizing that that was in direct conflict with how ridiculous, downright goofy, the whole idea of the League of Shadows, it's goals and ways of getting there was. That was another major flaw in the film: Neeson simply wasn't a good villain. He was too solemn, too little over-the-top for that. And he didn't even have a costume. Cilian Murphy's Scarecrow would've been a much better main villain, but he was given precious little screen time. In fact, I think the film wouldn't have needed a villain at all. The whole "Gotham is in danger, can Batman save it?" latter part of the film felt too short, lame, and kinda tacked on, when the main focus was on Batman's origin story anyway. Ideally, the film should've presented only the origin story, so that it would've ended when we see Batman in costume for the first time. But I guess the big showdown at the end was necessary for commercial viability.

Summa summarum: Batman Begins was an interesting enough reintroduction to the character of Batman, hopefully the sequels can offer us better villains and less dodgy politics.

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*Gary Oldman felt perfect as Gordon, but he didn't have to much to do in the film except look confused. Hopefully the sequels will expand on his character. Ditto for Cilian Murphy.

*I thought Katie Holme's performance was perfectly okay. The aforementioned scene in the car was quite important, and the final scene with it's "Bruce Wayne is the mask" speech was interesting, though the film showed too little interaction between Holmes and Bale to make it as effective as it was supposed to have been.

*Bale was great as Bruce Wayne, and the film should've shown more scenes of him as an asshole playboy. His Batman did look kinda silly, but thankfully the film showed Batman sparingly, which fitted nicely with the idea of him as an myth that raises fear in the hearts of the wicked. However, all the talk about Batman as a symbol and not a man felt like the film was trying to dodge the aforementioned problematics of vigilantism and revenge, because Bruce Wayne so clearly human and not an icon.

*Morgan Freeman played the same role as he always does. I don't doubt he's a good actor, but he's seems to be more terminally typecast than any other Hollywood actor. Michael Caine was brilliant as Alfred, probably the best preformance in the whole film, and the scene he shared with Freeman was charming.

*The "humorous" one-liners ("Nice ride!" etc.) felt stupid; it was nice that the film had a bit of humour in it, but it was only funny when it was an organic part of the story, such as the quips Alfred made.

*From what I gathered from the film, and from the comics, the "fear gas" produced by Scarecrow is not an ordinary hallucinogenic; it's supposed to make your worst fears come true, otherwise the whole plot to destroy Gotham wouldn't have worked at all. However, the effects of the gas seemed to be highly selective.

I recently watched this movie again and I gotta say, Burton's version is crap. Aside from some nice design work here and there, the acting is uniformly terrible (Nicholson excepted, but only partially), the plot goes nowhere, the action scenes are stiff and pointless, the whole thing feels very claustrophobic and directionless at the same time. Nothing ever feels like its at stake, since you can't take any of Nicholson's "crimes" remotely seriously (there is no genuine horror or drama in his violence - no matter how much Kim Basinger shrieks). The world created does not feel or look like anything more than a soundstage, populated by a handful of people who are goofily overacting. Easily one of Burton's worst.

the second one is much better.

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I have nothing against against Batman's crypto-fascism as such, but I don't like stories which
A) despite his vigilantism present him as serious, "realistic" character, and
B) make him the hero.

I like only the Batman stories where either A or B applies, but not both of them. As I said, if you want to take Batman seriously, you have to take his politics seriously too.

you must hate "Taxi Driver".

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Dan, that should answer your question. If Batman fights against vampires or Joker's cunning plans, I don't feel the need to dissect his politics. And no, I don't like Taxi Driver.

And in any case, I don't think, from Batman Begins, you can really say what Batman's attitudes are. He's confused and plagued by doubt!

I wasn't saying that, I was just saying I don't like films where vigilantism is portrayed heroic. Superhero stories in general are so far away from real life and real politics that you don't much care for their ethical implications. Dark Knight Returns and Batman Begins, however, are much more political and realistic, and therefore you have to choose whether you accept the morality of the story or not.

That was one of my favourite parts of the movie!!!
This bit (which is completely absent in the comics Bat-Mythos) shows young Bruce as much more human than the whole 12-year-old making a vow at his parents' gravesite did. He spent most of his life just pissed off and angry at the world, and it took seeing his long-fostered revenge fantasy being played out--only by someone else!--to challenge that.
So of course, once he puts the cape and cowl on, seven years later, he's still generally not that concerned with the world beyond his own immediate goals. He's reckless and shows callous disregard for anyone beyond his little cadre. Asshole Bruce Wayne isn't entirely the mask Batman wants us to think it is.
Hopefully, the sequel will give us Batman Matures and we'll see him forced to deal with some of the consequences of this stuff.
Like maybe Gordon will get his ass kicked by his fellow cops for being buddies with the guy who sent so many of them to the hospital.

But I don't think Batman Begins does that. I'm probably almost as much as a pinko liberal as you, but the film didn't offend me, because I didn't see it as pushing a simple "vigilatism-is-good" line. The overall feeling one got was one of a lack of moral resolution. You don't even have to identify with the particular ethical struggle he's going through to respond to him as a conflicted, morally serious human. We all have struggles of our own of some sort.

this happens in Miller's "Batman: Year One" (actually the cops try to kill Gordon's baby - after their initial beating fails to dissuade him), and I'd be surprised if something close to it does not come into play in the films.

you're telling me?

Huk-L on Every Major Batman Storyline of the Last 20 Years

I have nothing morally convoluted protagonists, but I don't see them as heroes. The guy in Taxi Driver is not hero. The problem with Batman is that, according to the superhero logic, he still needs to be hero. And that what makes taking him seriously problematic.

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I agree with Ebert, but he apparently sees this as a strength, whereas I see it as a weakness.

Given the quasi-fascist tendencies inherent in Batman, there are still different ways one could treat the story. One Batman could be so campy, clownish, and nonviolent that he's basically a stand in for the revenge fantasies that are buried somewhere in everyone's head. Another Batman could be an unabashed celebration of fascist vigilantism. Or as Tuomas says, Batman could become an anti-hero whose killing puts him on the same level as his enemies. I felt like Batman Begins fell in between all of these approaches and ended up being weaker for it.

Seriously though, I don't see how the League of Shadows changes anything I've said. Basically the point of view of the film is that yeah, Batman may break a few eggs when he goes on his vigilante rampages but hey, at least he's not trying to bring down the whole society! It's a similar dynamic to the Bush administration's defense of the use of torture or the war in Iraq. "What we're doing may be bad, it may be technically illegal, but hey we're fighting these other guys who are much worse so can't you see that we're heroes?"

And I think that as Tuomas pointed out Batman is already a hero by default, based on the character's cinematic history and the nature of the superhero form itself. So it's a huge uphill battle to sell that idea of a ambiguous, conflicted Batman to an audience that is just there for the action and destruction.

It's such a huge uphill battle that the movie has made over $100 million in the US alone! Clearly no one wanted to see a movie like this.

you correctly assume that I (and others) would argue that this is a dubious assertion, that "superhero" = inspirational role model. The term itself is misleading, as it is derived from the most lillywhite of morally virtuous characters, Superman. But most of my favorite superhero stuff functions more as allegory, or myth, or cautionary tale, or morality play, etc. On some juvenile level, as a kid, sure I thought dressing up in long underwear and beating up people would be TEH COOLEST - but as I grew older I found myself gleaning different "lessons" from this kind of material.

(cue Stan Lee: "with great power comes great responsibility!" etc.)