Alright, so I know I’m about seventeen years
late on this review and this probably isn’t the Batman video you were expecting right
now, but damn it, Batman Begins is an awesome movie and I always wanted to make a proper
video explaining the reasons why. Shit, and after seven months since my last
one, I should probably put something out, otherwise I’ll have to start calling myself
Cinema Sloth. Anyway, as the title suggests I think this
movie is pretty damn great. It has solid character work, great performances,
a memorable score, excellent production value, and to top it all off, it changed the general
audience’s perception of just what a superhero movie could be. Suffice it to say, Batman Begins has almost
everything you could ever want in a film like this, and it set the bar for everything that
followed. However, even though I’m going to be doing
a lot of stroking in this video, Batman Begins is by no means perfect, and you can bet your
ass that I’ll be addressing all the things that bug me in excruciating detail. But before I dive in, let me provide some
context. So, after Batman became a joke to general
audiences yet again, the folks over at Warner Brothers weren’t too sure what to do next
with this franchise. A script or two for a Batman & Robin sequel
got thrown around, but for years none of those ideas ever seemed to be able to materialize. And thank God for that shit boy. Eventually, the powers that be decided that
it was time to reboot this franchise altogether with a fresh interpretation. And this new take would come from none other
than Christopher Nolan, who was a relatively unknown director at the time. In fact, I think Batman Begins sort of started
the trend of picking lesser-known directors to take over gigantic franchises, and while
that generally works out as well as hiring a plumber to conduct your open-heart surgery,
fortunately, Nolan had a solid vision for the movie he wanted to make. You see, Nolan had this mind-blowing idea
that was so crazy, apparently, no one even thought to consider it before; what if you
treated a Batman movie as if it were any other serious film? I know, it was truly a revelation of epic
proportions, but it was really quite ingenious on his part. He started by taking key elements from the
comics and simply found a way of presenting them more believably than previous iterations. You know, without stuff like this. In fact, Batman Begins is kind of a rare film
in that being realistic seemed to be THE guiding philosophy behind the entire project. Nolan applied his now signature style of making
nearly every aspect of the world as practical as possible. In other words, almost everything you see
seems like it could really exist and function in real life. This philosophy was applied behind the camera
as well, with an emphasis on real locations, practical effects, and so on. Although, beyond merely taking the design
elements and overall tone more seriously, Nolan and co-writer David Goyer also sought
to put some effort into the characters; giving them layers of motivation, internal conflict,
and flaws; kind of like real people. They even elevated the material further by
casting great actors in almost every role. No, not these guys, I’m talking about Katie
Holmes. All in all, they didn’t set out to just
make a superhero movie on this one, they set out to make a good movie, and with that being
said, let me get into why I think Batman Begins really works. To start, this film does a great job of establishing
the character Batman as well the world he inhabits, and it does this by breaking everything
to do with this premise down into very simple, yet effective questions and answers. First and foremost, what would drive a man
to dress up as a bat and fight crime? Of course, this is probably the most fundamental
question the film attempts to answer, but in the simplest of terms, essentially what
it boils down to is our main character’s motivations and how the environment affected
his decisions. In the beginning, we meet Bruce as a happy
young kid, who after having a traumatic encounter with bats, develops a fear of them. That fear causes him to become anxious while
attending an opera with his parents, and so he asks to leave the theater. However, this sudden impulse results in his
parents being killed by a random mugger when they step outside, and that key event is then
what drives him for the rest of the film as he not only seeks justice but also feels intense
guilt for not being able to control his fear. With a setup like this, a natural follow-up
question might be to ask, “Why didn’t Bruce Wayne just become a police officer or
a lawyer or something?” Well in addition to all of that personal guilt,
the state of Gotham City in the film lends a lot of credibility to the idea that Bruce
would take more drastic actions. The audience is both told and shown that Gotham
City has fallen victim to deep-rooted organized crime which has corrupted most if not all
of its major institutions; dirty cops, bent judges, stolen falafel, you get the idea. The existence of this deep-rooted corruption
then makes working within that system in any capacity seem kind of pointless, and therefore
resorting to vigilantism appears to be a more reasonable response for Bruce given the circumstances. Now, while this amount of information is pretty
sufficient for a Batman movie, Batman Begins doesn’t just stop there and jump straight
into an action plot. Instead, it continues to expand on this foundation
and answer even more naturally arising questions about this character like, "What happened
from the time Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed to when he put on the bat suit?”
and “How did he become such a good fighter?” Well, in the time leading up to Bruce becoming
Batman, we see how his guilt of not being able to control his fear slowly turns into
deep-seated anger as he gets older. This anger comes to a head when his parent’s
killer is released from prison early in exchange for sharing some info about mob boss Carmine
Falcone. Bruce is outraged that this deal is even happening
but ultimately sees it as an opportunity to kill the man who took his parents from him. However, before Bruce can exact his vengeance,
the mob ties up their loose end first, and Bruce seems to get a strange satisfaction
out of watching the man die. You see, after years of dwelling on what happened
to his parents, Bruce has started to conflate justice for their murder with his own desire
for personal revenge, and so he suggests to his friend Rachel that perhaps he should be
thanking the mob for what they did. But, Rachel shuts that shit right down telling
Bruce that if he really cared about justice, he’d look beyond his own pain and see how
the mob creates new criminals and new victims every day using fear to maintain their power. With Rachel dropping this truth bomb on Bruce,
he decides to stand up to Falcone and tell him that he’s not afraid of him. However, good old Carmine quickly shows just
how much power fear gives him over Gotham and in a few brutal sentences basically tells
Bruce to get fucked. So, after getting absolutely dunked on by
Falcone, Bruce decides to abandon his money and notoriety, and haphazardly travels the
world to try to understand not only what it means to be truly desperate, but also how
to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful. Along the way, he becomes a pretty decent
brawler and even goes as far as to commit petty crimes like theft to deepen his understanding
of the criminal mind. However, after living this nomadic life for
some time, Bruce is finally caught and thrown in prison, and it’s there where he meets
a man named Ducard (aka Ras Al Ghul) who offers him a different path. Bruce trains with Ras for years, perfecting
his fighting skills and reaching his physical and mental peak. Most importantly though, Bruce finally conquers
his fear of bats and upon returning to Gotham, decides to use the iconography of his conquered
fear against the criminal underworld. With these kinds of questions answered, the
general audience knows far more about Bruce Wayne and Batman than they probably ever have,
but they still might have a practical question like, where does he get all those wonderful
toys? Well, in the film Wayne Enterprises is shown
to be a company that specializes in cutting-edge technology. For years they seemed to focus on large humanitarian
projects like the monorail system, but since the death of Bruce's parents, the company
started getting into more military contracts and heavy arms manufacturing. So Bruce, having a lot of clout in the company
due to his name, is able to take advantage of these resources and consult knowledgeable
people like Lucious Fox, which in turn, provides a credible explanation for a lot of Batman’s
crazy tech. For example, we’re told that the bat suit,
utility belt, gadgets, and cape, are all just scrapped inventions for advanced infantry
that were considered too expensive to manufacture on a large scale. Similarly, the Batmobile is just an abandoned
prototype for a combat bridging vehicle that was intended to jump across rivers and shit,
which explains why it has that big ass turbine on the back. The icing on the cake here though, is that
while the film is explaining where all Batman’s stuff comes from, we’re also given context
as to why a guy like Lucious Fox would let Bruce have any of this stuff anyway. You see, besides Lucious holding the view
that all of these inventions belong to Bruce’s family, Lucious used to be on the board of
directors when Bruce’s father ran things and he was demoted upon the arrival of new
management. Overall, you get the sense that Lucious has
a lot of respect for the Wayne family, and therefore he has a sort of inherent trust
in Bruce. This is all quite wonderful as it makes it
even more plausible that Bruce could get his hands on this technology. So, by taking the time to build such a rock-solid
foundation and answer basic questions like this, Batman Begins greatly deepens the audience’s
understanding of this character and his world in a believable way. In other words, if you don’t know much about
Batman, this film is a great place to start because it makes it easier than ever to suspend
your disbelief and accept the concept as something that could actually happen. Now that being said, all this character building
and exposition wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the film also fully humanizing Bruce
Wayne by giving him some meaningful relationships that are masterfully intertwined. Firstly, Bruce’s connection to his parents
here, specifically to his father, is made much more central to his character than in
any previous film. You see, rather than just having Bruce deal
with the loss of his parents, the kind of people they were sets a high bar for Bruce
to live up to. Not only were Bruce’s parents very philanthropic,
but the Wayne family, in general, has a long history of selflessly helping others and doing
the right thing. Bruce's feelings about his parents and their
legacy then inform a lot of the other relationships in his life. For one, Bruce is given a friend and later
potential romantic partner in Rachel. Now unlike previous films, Rachel isn’t
just some lady who shows up in Gotham and wants to bone Bruce because he’s hot and
rich. Instead, she’s a direct connection to happier
times in his life and she’s even made to be an essential part of his character development;
needing to remind him of the type of man his parents would’ve wanted him to be. For example, when Bruce reveals to Rachel
that he intended to kill the man who murdered his parents, not only does she give him a
couple of good slaps, but she follows it up by saying that his father would be ashamed
of him. This one comment seems to knock Bruce on his
ass and is the driving motivation for him to throw away his gun and stand up the Falcone. Another key relationship in Bruce’s life
is his connection to his butler Alfred, who also plays a more significant role than what
we’ve seen before. We’re shown that Alfred essentially raised
Bruce after his parents were killed and it’s clear that over the years Bruce has grown
to see Alfred as a sort of surrogate father. As far as I’m concerned, this dynamic is
the heart of the film with Alfred not only bringing out Bruce’s lighter side but more
importantly providing Bruce with guidance in his moments of doubt. Giving Bruce Wayne real relationships like
this makes the man behind the mask feel like a real person, maybe for the first time ever
on the silver screen, and it does wonders for getting us invested in what happens to
him. Although, beyond providing the audience with
much-needed context for this character and getting us to understand him as a person,
Batman Begins also does a great job of weaving one of the core tenets of the Batman character
throughout the entire narrative. So, if you haven’t noticed already, the
theme of fear runs pretty deep in Batman Begins. Not only does Bruce Wayne use fear as a weapon
to achieve his goals, but the antagonists in the film are all essentially doing the
same thing. Carmine Falcone uses fear for simple power
and control. He does this through good old-fashioned strong-arming,
murder, and greasing palms. It's the most basic form of using fear really;
do what I say. Similarly, Dr. Crane, aka Scarecrow, uses
a fear-inducing toxin on people as a means of personal pleasure. In other words, Johnny likes to throw his
gas in your face and gets off as you hallucinate the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. And last but not least, Ras Al Ghul seeks
to use fear as a destructive agent by trying to unleash Scarecrow’s toxin on Gotham City. It's not often that you see a theme this essential
to a character utilized so effectively across an entire film like this. When you combine that with all the other great
setup and character development, it’s clear that Batman Begins really does get a lot of
things right. However, the time has come to start diving
into the shit that doesn't work so well in this movie. As far as I’m concerned, Batman Begins has
four main problems: two minor ones pertaining to the production, and two major ones pertaining
to the writing. To start with the minor stuff, yes, Christian
Bale's Batman voice is ridiculous, and it stuck to the reputation of this character
like fucking tar. What I mean is that every asshole from here
to Timbuktu now correlates a growly throat cancer voice with Batman and it drives me
absolutely insane. Now, I can understand if Christian Bale really
wanted to get into the role or be different from the other actors, but this over-the-top
voice just clashes so hard with the otherwise serious tone that’s being established here. If I was in charge, I would’ve told him
to cut that shit out day one, but then again, Christian can be a pretty scary guy so who
knows what really went down (“What don’t you fucking understand?!”) The other minor issue with the film is how
the fight scenes are executed. I don’t know why but for some reason almost
every fight scene is edited to ensure that the viewer has no fucking idea what’s going
on. I’m not sure if this was a stylistic choice
an account of Christopher Nolan or if he really didn’t understand how to direct a fight
scene when he made this movie, but a good amount of this stuff makes me want to vomit. Oh well though, I’ll take a good story with
some bad action over the opposite any day of the week. But enough of this piddly production crap,
let's get into the writing problems. Alright, so in keeping with the idea of telling
you everything you need to know about Batman, this film also attempts to explore the more
philosophical aspects of the character, namely Batman's morality and the limits he places
upon himself. You see, it’s one thing for you to be personally
motivated or to have environmental factors contribute to some self-righteous action you
take, but how far is too far? And what exactly is true justice? Like a lot of Batman stories, Batman Begins
answers this moral dilemma through Bruce Wayne refusing to take the lives of his enemies
under any circumstance. It’s an argument of sheer moral principle
really; if deviating from the path of the law is necessary for the greater good, then
that alternate path needs to have limits of its own in order to avoid corruption. This character trait informs a lot of the
conflict between Bruce and Ras Al Ghul and it carries through all the way to the end. However, for as much as I can praise Batman
Begins for even attempting to build ideas like this into the story, I think it makes
a major mistake by making Bruce’s no-killing rule a little bit too ambiguous here. For example, upon reaching the final stages
of his training with the League of Shadows, Bruce is given a final test to prove his commitment
to justice, and that is to kill a criminal. However, Bruce refuses to kill the man in
front of him because he believes that compassion is the only thing that separates him from
his enemies. Naturally, Ras and the League don’t accept
this answer, and in a swift move, Bruce winds up creating a massive explosion in order to
escape. Now the first question I have is how does
Bruce take issue with killing this one guy, but then seems to have no issue starting a
fire that blows up the entire building with God knows how many of the League's members
inside?! I mean, I get it they didn’t seem like they
would just let him walk away, and they did just say that they want to destroy Gotham
(more on that in a bit), but how are they different from any other criminals that he
refuses to kill in other circumstances? Let’s not forget that Bruce does this mere
seconds after we establish his super important moral principle! Yikes! And shit I mean, what even happened to that
guy? He looked tied up and a little hefty, so he
probably didn’t get away. I don’t know, maybe Bruce only intended
to create a distraction here, and burning down the temple was just a happy accident,
but what bothers me is the fact that I’m just not sure what the boundaries of Bruce’s
moral system really are. The best way I can describe it is that it’s
not so much a “no-killing” rule, but rather a “no-premeditated murder” rule. In the film, Bruce doesn’t seem to mind
much if people die as a result of some external factor, even if he's the one that fucking
caused it. And to make things even more confusing, at
the climax, Bruce’s morality doesn’t even compel him to save his enemies from certain
death. When Bruce leaves Ras Al Ghul to die on the
train, he just says “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.”. This statement always bugged the shit out
of me because it makes that line that Bruce won’t cross needlessly blurry. You see, in most other interpretations that
use the no-killing logic, Batman WOULD TOTALLY save Ras from a situation like this, because
by not saving him when he’s clearly able to, he might as well just be pulling the trigger
of a gun. Shit, and I guess I’m not the only one who
thinks so, even the crappy movie tie-in game knows that this is bullshit. Anyway, even though I love that the film makes
this morality question part of the narrative, the ambiguity of it all is just a huge sore
spot in the script for me. What makes matters worse though is that the
external conflict with Ras winds up not even really being tied to this morality stuff anyway. Instead, the whole conflict sort of devolves
into a standard mustache-twirling ‘destroy the city’ plot, which brings us to perhaps
my biggest issue with Batman Begins, the villain plot. Now, while the bulk of this movie is very
thoughtful in how it builds up Batman and raises interesting questions about morality,
a lot of that thoughtfulness goes out the window when it comes to the villain plot and
how it unfolds. You see, after Bruce returns to Gotham and
establishes himself as Batman, the only thing left to do is tie together all the various
plot threads and themes and give our main character a good external conflict to resolve. This is more or less what happens, but there
are just a lot of things about the plot and how it’s executed that really bug me. To start, the League of Shadows doesn’t
reveal their intentions to Bruce until his final initiation. When Bruce refuses to kill the criminal, he’s
told that he needs to be able to do that because the League is getting ready to destroy Gotham,
and they want him to lead the charge. Of course, Bruce objects to ham-fistedly destroying
an entire city (good people and all) just to “cleanse the corruption”. I mean I think any sane person would but,
I guess I just find it both really convenient and frankly unbelievable that A.) the League’s
broader goal was never brought up in what looked like the several years that Bruce was
training with them, and B.) that Ras would fully train someone who he wasn’t even sure
was 100% on board with the mission. It’s kind of like training someone to be
the world’s greatest computer hacker in the name of saving the world, then on their
graduation day, after teaching them everything you know, you drop the bombshell that they’re
actually going to help crash a bunch of airplanes or something. I don’t know, it just seems like a surefire
way to get a lot of people to turn against you, and worse now they're just as dangerous
as you are, so they’re that much more difficult to get rid of if they resist. You know, like this. Beyond that initial weirdness though, the
way that the League goes about their plan seems really silly and over-complicated to
me. Basically, the League gets their hands on
some machine that’s designed to evaporate the enemy’s water supply in desert warfare. They had Scarecrow dumping his fear toxin
in Gotham’s water supply for weeks, and so their big plan is to use the machine to
disperse Scarecrow’s toxin into the air, driving Gotham’s citizens insane. Now while this is pretty cool from a thematic
standpoint I guess; with fear engulfing the city and all, it’s admittedly pretty fucking
silly. Right off the bat, how has this toxin not
created a ton of chaos in the time leading up to the attack? You’d think with the millions of people
taking showers or boiling water there would’ve been mass reports of people losing their damn
minds. I mean come on, someone must have been seeing
a monster in their casserole. Who knows, maybe this was happening a lot,
but the people in the League’s pocket were just covering it up. After all, Ras did say that they’ve infiltrated
every level of Gotham’s infrastructure. Although, if that’s true, then why is there
also a weird ticking clock element to this plan? You see, we’re told that if Ras gets the
machine to the water mains under Wayne Tower, it will cause a chain reaction and cover the
entire city in the gas. But, for how powerful and far-reaching Ras
and the League seem to be, why is their plan to start the machine in some crappy part of
town, put it on a train, then ride it all the way to the spot that they actually need
it? I don't know, this all just seems like an
artificial way of drawing out the climax to me. As if all that wasn’t confusing enough,
it’s also revealed that all this cover the city in fear gas nonsense is actually the
League's second attempt at destroying Gotham. This means that the League was responsible
for creating the environment that made common people desperate enough to turn to crime which
in turn, led to the death of Bruce’s parents. Now, this is just way too coincidental for
me. What are the odds that the key event that
motivates Bruce Wayne would be tied directly to the antagonist who he meets by chance in
a random prison? I’m no expert, but I’m going to say that
that’s extremely fucking unlikely. Unless we’re meant to assume that Ras coming
to Bruce here was part of the plan all along, but even that doesn’t work because there’s
no way the League could’ve known the kind of guy Bruce would turn out to be or the things
he’s want in life. Let’s just say it would’ve been pretty
awkward if Ras came to recruit Bruce and he was just some weirdo. Either way, I think shoehorning the League
into Bruce Wayne’s origin like this just stretches things a little too far and makes
this world feel smaller than it needs to. It would’ve been so much better in my opinion
if Gotham was just a crappy place and the League’s plan to destroy it didn’t come
about until after they heard Bruce’s story about the rampant crime and corruption. Although even if that were the case it still
wouldn’t fix what I think is probably the biggest issue of all here, and that is that
the League's actions both in the past and the present are completely antithetical to
their apparent goals. What I mean is that if the League's end goal
is to defeat evil, I don't understand how acts like causing Gotham to have an economic
downturn or covering the city in fear gas are meant to do that in any way whatsoever. Regarding their first attempt, what does making
a city hungry, poor, desperate really accomplish? I’ll give you a second to ponder that, but
the answer is it creates more fucking crime. When it comes to their latest attempt with
the gas, making everyone lose their shit seems like it would just create an even bigger mess
than there already is in Gotham. So, if anything, the League seems to only
make criminals more powerful and brings out the worst in everyone on purpose. Of course, with a bit more tweaking, the idea
of the League creating messes as an excuse to destroy shit later could've been interesting,
but with their stated goals in mind, I’m afraid the actions they take just make them
seem completely insane. At the end of the day, when you take all these
issues into consideration, it becomes clear that there were definitely some missed opportunities
here. Instead of the plot centering around the League
wanting to destroy Gotham City and Bruce simply wanting to stop them, perhaps everything could’ve
been more focused on that initial moral argument that Bruce and Ras had about taking the lives
of criminals. Like I said earlier, I think any normal person
would want to stop a city from being destroyed but deciding what to do about evil people
is a much more nuanced and controversial topic. Maybe Ras could've wanted Bruce to return
to Gotham to specifically target the criminal underworld, and you know, NOT kill everybody
else. If Bruce’s moral system was better defined,
maybe we could’ve seen a real philosophical debate play out between these two that would’ve
highlighted the pros and cons of each approach. Come to think of it, that sounds kind of familiar. However, because these aspects of the film
do get oversimplified early on, a decent amount of damage is dealt to an otherwise great story
and that’s a real shame. Fortunately, though, I think the strengths
of Batman Begins still manage to shine through regardless, and aside from these issues, there’s
not really much else to complain about here. So, I guess it’s about time to wrap this
up. Although I ragged on some script issues quite
a bit here, I still think that almost every aspect of the filmmaking in Batman Begins
is firing on all cylinders; a precise and fresh vision, compelling performances, a powerful
score, top-tier production value, and a story that despite some significant technical flaws,
is still pretty damn good compared to most others in the superhero genre. With all that being said, it’s no wonder
why Batman Begins ended up being a huge success, spawning two gigantic sequels and cementing
this interpretation of the character well into the public consciousness. In sum, Batman Begins changed the way that
movies based on comic books are made and got the audience to see Batman not just as a shadowy
action hero or a fucking toy, but as a real character who we could relate to. While it’s unfortunate that this film has
sort of been overshadowed by The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, I still think it
holds up pretty well and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to sit back and watch
a good movie. Until next time.
