Movie Review Batman Begins (2012)

Batman Begins (2005) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Christopher Nolan 

Starring Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes 

Release Date 

Published 2012 

Henri Ducard: Are you ready to begin?

Bruce Wayne: I-I can barely stand...

Henri Ducard: [kicks him] Death does not wait for you to be ready! Death is not considerate, or fair! And make no mistake: here, you face Death.

And that is how Bruce Wayne began his journey some seven years ago in writer-director Christopher Nolan’s first Bat-masterpiece, “Batman Begins.” It’s appropriate that Bruce Wayne, the man who would be Batman, would be trained as a ninja; the nerd culture that deified the caped crusader are of the same ilk who’ve turned the Asian legend of the ninja warrior into an outsized caricature.

It’s that knowing of what the audience wanted combined with his own particular, peculiar interests that have made Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy both crowd-pleasing and deeply personal. We will see in “The Dark Knight Rises,” Nolan’s Batman thesis statement, just how well the director combines his ability to dazzle the masses with his deep seeded philosophical aims.

“Batman Begins” is certainly a remarkable opening statement. In retrospect it’s much easier to see in the film how Nolan wanted to use this iconic character not merely to entertain but to critique and enlighten. From the opening moments when Bruce Wayne loses his parents to crime informed by poverty to the attempt by Ra’s Al Ghul to raze Gotham City by rotting it from within the philosophical aims of Nolan and his co-writer and brother Jonathan Nolan are vague but emerging.

We will get to the philosophy in a moment; let’s dig in to the surface story first. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) lost his parents to a horrendous murder in a back alley. With years of guilt and anger boiling within Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City from a failed stint in college with the intention of purging himself by killing his parents killer. When the man is murdered by a Mob Boss, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), Bruce needs a new path and winds up somewhere in Asia.

In Asia Bruce meets and becomes a student of a man calling himself Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). He’s allegedly a minion of a man known as Ra’s Al Ghul but we will come to know that Ducard is Ra’s and he has plans for his new pupil that involve the destruction of Gotham City. Ra’s Al Ghul is the head of a secret society that has for years restored the balance of the world by laying waste to areas of the world that have grown decadent and out of control and Gotham City is set to join Rome, Sodom & Gomorrah and others on the ash heap of history.

When Bruce leans of Ra’s Al Ghul’s plans the compassion instilled in him by his late father compels him to hope for Gotham City and soon defend it. Bruce’s decision sets the stage for what will be a clash of will and philosophy that will carry audiences through “The Dark Knight Rises;” Ra’s Al Ghul’s cynical belief in the cleansing fire and Batman’s scarred optimism that good can somehow triumph over even the worst evil.

Is it really as simple as a glass half empty versus a glass half full? Of course not, though Ra’s Al Ghul’s nefarious plot to poison and weaponize Gotham’s water supply has a certain ironic quality in my thesis. The deeper meaning of “Batman Begins” and what carried forward through “The Dark Knight” and comes to fruition, allegedly, in “The Dark Knight Rises” is a belief in hope against great odds; the belief that a once great city or country can be great again but only after a great struggle.

Surely, Christopher Nolan’s vision of America in Gotham City is one on the road to complete ruin. It’s a vision that is littered with the bodies of the brave and beleaguered, the good and the evil, but is still a vision of hope. Is not America’s past stained with the same blood? Are we not hopeful that from the horrors of the past greatness can be recovered?

Hope, dear reader, is at the heart of Batman and “Batman Begins” is a far more hopeful movie than many are willing to give it credit for. Just check that hopeful happy ending as Bruce Wayne and his best friend Alfred ponder a future where the ruins of Wayne Manor are restored to an even greater and more effective glory.

Not having seen “The Dark Knight Rises” my theory of hope among the darkness of the Batman series may be completely disproved but I don’t think so. Christopher Nolan may have dark visions of a rotting society but he’s far too savvy to give into the cynicism that is the true enemy of his vision. Batman/Bruce Wayne himself may not be so lucky, but Gotham City will survive and a new hope will be born from the ruins with Batman, man or legend, as its symbol of hope.

Movie Review: Batman Begins

Batman Begins (2005) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer

Starring Christian Bale, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman

Release Date June 15th, 2005 

Published June 14th, 2005 

Joel Schumacher has committed a number of cinematic sins. His destruction of Andrew Kevin Walker's darkly brilliant script for 8mm or last years 3 hour tin-eared musical Phantom Of the Opera come immediately to mind. But without a doubt Schumacher's most damnable sin is his destruction of the Batman film series. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are atrocious examples of a director completely bent to the will of marketing executives. A director more interested in creating synergistic toy products and fast food tie-ins than in making entertaining movies.

Eight years after Schumacher killed it, and through three years of torturous development Batman has risen from the ashes once again and in the hands of director Christopher Nolan, an artist and auteur of the highest regard, Batman is not merely back, the D.C Comics franchise is better than ever. Rivaling Raimi's Spiderman and Singer's X-Men, Nolan's Batman Begins is a visionary comic book film worthy of the icon status of the character.

Batman Begins is an origin story that brings fans into the mind of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) before Batman and shows us why a millionaire playboy would put on a bat suit and fight crime. Locked away in some far off Asian prison a scruffy but handsome American certainly sticks out. Battered and bruised Bruce Wayne has fought everyday he's been in this prison but his latest battle against several large thugs at once brings him to the attention of another handsome westerner, Henri Ducard played by Liam Neeson.

Ducard is a representative of Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe), leader of the League Of Shadows, a thousand year-old order dedicated to vigilantism. The League Of Shadows fancy themselves ninja crime fighters and in Bruce Wayne they see an asset both physically and otherwise. The League is preparing to raze Gotham City, purging the city of its criminality and anything else that might be in the way. Bruce has a choice: join the League and destroy Gotham or return alone to defend the innocent people of the city.

Returning to his home in Gotham City (Chicago standing in, not New York in this version) Wayne finds the metropolis in ruinous poverty. Crime rules the streets led by mob boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). Among the few good people of Gotham are Bruce's butler, Alfred (the superb Michael Caine), and his childhood friend, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), who works as an assistant prosecutor fighting a losing battle with corruption.

Bruce's fortune is intact, the family business is under the control of a corrupt executive played by Rutger Hauer and working in the shadows is a former family friend, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), whose work on various military projects for the company will certainly come in handy when Bruce Wayne is ready to transform into the caped crusader. It is Lucius Fox who creates the suit, the gadgets and the new military style Batmobile, even cooler than the sports car version from Tim Burton's Batman.

The film plumbs the depths of Bruce's past, the biggest factor to his becoming Batman. A childhood accident bred in him a fear of bats. It's a fear that is also linked to the death of his parents in a mugging outside a theater when Bruce was eight years old. A taste for vengeance is what led Bruce to his Asian adventure and the teachings of Ducard are what lead to his taking his fear of the bat as his symbol when he finally decides to take a stand against crime.

It's an extraordinarily detailed and logical story that fits perfectly into the dark atmospheric universe that director Christopher Nolan and writer David S. Goyer, of Blade fame, have created. This Gotham City is in part the vision of Frank Miller's Year One graphic novel balanced with the Auteurist vision of Nolan who nods to Miller but makes the look and feel of the film his own.

Christian Bale is the perfect blend of movie star handsome and brooding maniac, the essence of the Bruce Wayne-Batman dichotomy. Though Batman holds the typical moral values of a superhero-- he captures but does not kill-- he has a definite weird streak.  As Bruce himself points out, "A guy who dresses up as a bat clearly has issues". Those 'issues' are given a thorough and complete examination in Batman Begins and as played by Mr. Bale, they are given the depth and emotionality that the character has lacked in his former movie incarnations.

The supporting cast is exemplary, especially Gary Oldman as "Sgt." Gordon who we all know will someday be Police Commissioner Gordon. This is his origin as well and, with Oldman in this pivotal role, we have a solid basis for further great stories to be told. Katie Holmes is much better than expected in the role of Bruce's childhood friend and adult love interest. She looks too young and innocent for the position of District Attorney fighting the worst of the worst criminals but she has an unexpected steeliness to her that sells the character.

The villains, the most obvious weakness from the Schumacher films, are given a similar comic book realism to that of Batman. Based more in the reality and logic of the story, the villains in Batman Begins are not super villains with grand schemes of mass murder or world domination but logical extensions of the established corruption of Gotham City. Cillian Murphy is terrific as Dr. Jonathan Crane whose alter ego, the Scarecrow, is no psycho du jour but a functionary of a larger, more logical and ordered plot.

Obviously Nolan's Batman Begins cannot help but be compared with the lofty achievements of Bryan Singer's X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spiderman and it is without a doubt worthy of the comparisons. Batman Begins ranks only behind Raimi's Spiderman 2 as the best comic book adaptation I have seen. An awesomely entertaining and involving action packed feature, Batman is back and better than ever in Batman Begins.