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mylescorcoran at 09:53am on 24/06/2005
mylescorcoran at 09:53am on 24/06/2005I saw Batman Begins last night with a couple of friends.
This new take for film by Christopher Nolan on the Batman story has a lot of baggage to overcome, or at least ignore, in the shape of the previous films. I think Nolan managed to put his own stamp on things, and Christian Bale's performance as Wayne/Batman is good, more underplayed than Keaton in the Burton films, while managing to capture some of that balancing act between vengeance and justice that Batman should have.
I was annoyed by some parts of the film. The long initiation sequence at the beginning dragged, and I questioned the morality of the man who forced (repeatedly) cars off the road, into pile-ups and collapsed a monorail into a busy down-town district rather than blow up the microwave transmitter with the generous supply of grenades we saw him load up with only a couple of scenes earlier. I realise the big fight with Ra's Al Ghul/Liam Neeson was a certainty, but I would have liked Batman to at least try to blow up the microwave transmitter first.
Michael Caine was good in the role of Alfred, and I'm always glad to see the faithful retainer get screen time. Batman is portrayed as the quintessential loner superhero, certainly in the DC stable, but he's strongly reliant on his allies, Alfred, Gordon, and in this film, Lucius Fox.
There was also just enough boardroom and playboy hi-jinks to give a taste of the Wayne side of the character, which was always something I thought Burton got right in casting Michael Keaton in his 1989 film.
However, as usual with films produced by Hollywood, the focus is always on the hero's relationship with his father. As one of my friends said as we left the cinema, what was going on with the mother? Nick Lowe made this point in a recent Interzone. Hollywood cares about father/son relationships, to the point of dysfunction. I wonder if it's because most films have several white men producing, holding the money, and paying for therapy to work through their own histories?
That said, it's not particularly canon to care about Batman's mother. I can't help but wonder what sort of a hero he could have been, if only he'd listened to his mother.
This new take for film by Christopher Nolan on the Batman story has a lot of baggage to overcome, or at least ignore, in the shape of the previous films. I think Nolan managed to put his own stamp on things, and Christian Bale's performance as Wayne/Batman is good, more underplayed than Keaton in the Burton films, while managing to capture some of that balancing act between vengeance and justice that Batman should have.
I was annoyed by some parts of the film. The long initiation sequence at the beginning dragged, and I questioned the morality of the man who forced (repeatedly) cars off the road, into pile-ups and collapsed a monorail into a busy down-town district rather than blow up the microwave transmitter with the generous supply of grenades we saw him load up with only a couple of scenes earlier. I realise the big fight with Ra's Al Ghul/Liam Neeson was a certainty, but I would have liked Batman to at least try to blow up the microwave transmitter first.
Michael Caine was good in the role of Alfred, and I'm always glad to see the faithful retainer get screen time. Batman is portrayed as the quintessential loner superhero, certainly in the DC stable, but he's strongly reliant on his allies, Alfred, Gordon, and in this film, Lucius Fox.
There was also just enough boardroom and playboy hi-jinks to give a taste of the Wayne side of the character, which was always something I thought Burton got right in casting Michael Keaton in his 1989 film.
However, as usual with films produced by Hollywood, the focus is always on the hero's relationship with his father. As one of my friends said as we left the cinema, what was going on with the mother? Nick Lowe made this point in a recent Interzone. Hollywood cares about father/son relationships, to the point of dysfunction. I wonder if it's because most films have several white men producing, holding the money, and paying for therapy to work through their own histories?
That said, it's not particularly canon to care about Batman's mother. I can't help but wonder what sort of a hero he could have been, if only he'd listened to his mother.