okey dokey. i just woke up. so i'll give the long version of the story and my reasons for not liking it. i'll try to make it coherent. (wow...its really long and rambling... i guess i failed) and i'm gonna put it all behind a spoiler tag because the title of the thread doesnt say spoilers.
(random idea, rather than weeks early review threads and rate threads and what not. how about 3 threads for every movie. 1> before. 2> after without spoilers 3> after with spoilers. )
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i DID go into the movie expecting it to be bad. I've been saying so in this board all spring.(but Mimic, why would you get that out of me noticing the lack of reaction in the theatre?) But I don't see why that would be a bad thing. It is impossible to go into a movie with NO expectations and usually when people go into movies with low expectations, they wind up finding a movie BETTER than it really is. And they find it worse when they have high expectations.
I can back that up with my own expectation history. I went into X-Men fearing the worst, and wound up loving the movie. With re-watching, I realize that it is good, and it is the first comic book movie to do it right (so it gets bonus points) but it isnt as great as i though coming out of the theatre. i loved it so much because it surpassed my expectations.
I'm also convinced that this explains why people liked Revolutions better than Reloaded and Sith at all.
One more personal preference: I like my Batman crazy. I like my Batman = real, Bruce = the mask. I like my Batman angry and untrusting. I like my Batman to not let anyone close to him at all except Alfred and any other sidekicks he has hanging around the cave. I'm a 20-year comics fan, started as a Marvel fanboy, in the last few years, I much prefer the direction of the DC Universe. I really like the current company-line on Batman but mostly that works so well in how he plays off the other heroes.
Prefering crazy Batman is one reason why I expected to not like the movie. If we're at "batman begins" then he isn't completely insane yet. My most recent pre-movie opinion is that it might be a good movie, but it wouldn't be a good batman movie. I don't think it even suceeded on that level, but maybe if this wasn't trying to be Batman I would have bumped my score up to a 5.
The movie chooses to start with a really long, tedious take on Batman's origin. The reason why people haven't gone into much detail on the training of Batman is because it would be mostly boring. Just a lot of meditation and sparring. And if youre not gonna bother to show me the fights and or make them cool because you don't want to spend money making it look good then why bother giving me batman vs. ninja training at all. (You could invent the "its supposed to be fast and brutal" excuse...but then don't have fight scenes please)
The Ra's "swerve" was obvious from as soon as Liam started talking at the top of the mountain. And as "real" as this movie is trying to be, the best they could come up with for a master plot involved the "microwave emitter". Whatever. How is this any less campy than any of the other movies? The fact that the invented science fiction clashes with the feel f the rest of the movie just makes it worse.
The tweak of Batman's "real" origin was pointless and annoying.
First, a minor annoyance, the reason why every other retelling of the Batman origin kept the show Bruce sees with his parents as the movie-version of ZORRO is because Zorro is a masked crime-fighter and its supposed to give young Bruce his sense of justice and the whole masked vigilante idea.
Second, a MAJOR annoyance, was that they chose to make Bruce feel responsible for his parent's death. Guilt should not be a motivation of Batman. Spider-man might sue, and Batman is all anger.
The fact that he was going to kill Joe Chill with a gun irritated me to no end. Letting Rachel be the one who changed his outlook was embarassing. The Rachel character was so weak and unconvincing that giving her such power over Batman's "origin" just doesn't work.
The movie suffers from a definite vibe of trying to hard to be cool. The tank, the demonic Batman image,the ninjas. It came across as "how can i squeeze all these SUPER COOL things into this SUPER COOL movie. better add more SUPER COOL EXPLOSIONS too"
It also tried to hard to tie everything into a pretty little bow. Rachel is tied into Batman's origin. Falcone uses Crane, who is also working with Ra's who is also tied into Batman's origin. Plus, both Falcone and Ra's have a thing against the Waynes. Enough already.
Hey look, Its Mr Zsasz. Look there he is again. No, he's not gonna actually do anything, but hey, he was there.
After getting gassed the first time, why is Bats acting like an idiot in front of Lucius and Alfred? He doesn't have to at like dumb-Bruce with these two. Yet he asks Lucius to dumb the conversation down for him. Maybe this Batman isn't smart, he sure as heck wasn't a detective. This is obviously a comics-gripe. But really, if you just want gadget-guy with no detective skills, why make a Batman movie?
Worst part of the movie: the bat-tank chase sequence. Not only is the tank beyond lame (especially the fact that you have to get horizontal to fire the weapons) BUT batman leads the police on a chase with a complete and total disregard for the safety of the cops or the civilians. This is inexcusable. Batman is the one hero who doesn't cause random property damage, always makes sure to protect the civilians and would never put a cop's life at risk.
Then the writer has the nerve to give Alfred the line "It was a miracle that nobody was killed." The writer basically admits that he wrote a stupid irresponisble chase sequence and hopes I'll forgive him because "nobody was killed"? No.
So movie-Batman is willing to risk other's lives to save his friend because he's still to human and attached to people. Yet he tells Rachel he has no friends, and they whip out the "Bruce is the mask" line at the end of the movie? SORRY, YOU LOSE. you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you write human-Batman, you can't use that line.
This is a big problem with the movie. It grabs at the bruce-mask line, it grabs at the "super-hero existence creates more dangerous super-villains" , it grabs at all these cute little modern comic psycho-analyzation theories without backing them up in anyway whatsoever in the movie. You aren't deep or introspective just by bringing up one comic quote.
The final fight with Ra's was also ridiculous. Another mess of a fight scene, followed by complete destruction of the city's infrastructure and Batman leaving Ra's to die.
What? Oh wait, he (and Alfred) also left at least one guy to die in the burning Wayne manor. If comic book Batman left so many bad guys to die, we wouldn't have any left.
The final nail in the coffin: He told the dumb girl his secret identity. AGAIN. This is what almost made me walk out of the theate in the 2nd batman movie. And they did it again. WHY? Dear god, why? I weep.
Caine's Alfred didnt work for me. Too impersonal. Of course, that could have been attributed to the fact that he kept saying "Master Wayne" instead of "Master Bruce". nothing says cold and impersonal like calling your "pseudo-son" by his last name.
Rachel was your typical pointless, unlikable, love interest shoe-horned into an action movie.
Liam Neeson was Liam Neeson as old wise mentor. Sometimes I wonder if he just doesn't use dialogue from other movies to see if the director catches it. Can we NOT use this guy in any more old , wise mentor roles? Please?
Cillian Murphy was very good as Scarecrow, but there was one scene where he seemed to be channeling Jimmy Fallon that really bothered me. The scarecrow effects were pretty good for the most part.
Gordon's role left him a non-factor in the movie, but look, young Gordon was the cop who was nice to young Bruce the night his parents were killed. The tie-everything-together disease continues.
Bale's Batman didnt excite me. He never came across as cool, scary, smart, or competent. The Batman-voice thing was inconsistent. He wasn't awful. But he didnt convince me either.
Overall, the movie fails in trying too hard to be clever and cool and serious that it forgets to be fun, exciting or interesting. It felt like it was just going through the motions.
With nothing to make me smile or get excited, the only thing I take out of the movie is all the things that made me cringe and wince.
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