A Look Back At Batman Begins

In my mind, The Dark Knight is the unquestionable winner of the title of greatest comic book movie of all time. It's an endlessly precise, splendidly acted, and masterfully paced crime epic that took the genre places it had only dreamed of up to that point. It's not easy living in the shadow of a film like that, but as far as second fiddles go, Batman Begins plays with skill. It's been a while since I first watched this movie, but to expand my library of movie reviews, I'm going to systematically enter a review for every movie in my Blu-Ray collection - almost all of which are movies I have already seen - starting with Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's visionary 2005 reimagining of the Caped Crusader. Forgive the absolute chasm between my skill as a writer when I wrote my articles for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises and my skill as a writer today, and let's review this thing.

On the level of the timeline, the editing of Batman Begins is quite good - for the most part. It conveys emotion when it needs to, gets your attention when it wants to, and otherwise goes blissfully unnoticed. In fact, the micro-scaled editing of this movie is one thing it likely does better than The Dark Knight, even though it set something of a noticeably under-par standard for fight choreography. Granted, this flaw probably had less to do with camerawork and editing shortcomings and more to do with the fact that Christian Bale couldn't turn his head when he was wearing the Batman costume for this movie, an issue they actually broke the fourth wall to address in The Dark Knight.

On the upside, Nolan's insistence on the extensive use of practical effects and filming on real sets and real-life locations is extremely impressive, adding a lot to this movie that likely would have been lost in a set of 0s and 1s today. A lot of the location scouting in Far Eastern Bhutan was particularly inspired, painting some truly breathtaking panoramas. Some impressive pyrotechnics work is just the cherry on top of a gloriously crime-ridden cake, beautifully rounding it out. Thematically, I like Nolan's emphasis on using this trilogy to explore philosophy, a pursuit that came full circle with Joker's reasons for his twisted games in the follow-up. It's nice to see a superhero movie that has its mind set on more than being just a superhero movie, because Batman origin stories have been done to absolute death, and so someone finding a new angle to tell this story from is refreshing. Additionally, Nolan's dialogue is outstanding, intelligent without being contrived, witty without ever feeling forced.

On the level of performance, Cillian Murphy's performance as Scarecrow in this movie is likely the highlight of the film. Murphy's delivery of his dialogue is impeccably restrained, the unspoken threat boiling behind his every word incredibly unsettling. He's an apex predator; he knows it, and we know it, too. As for Bruce himself, his character arc is fantastic, his development wonderful and each moment of personal growth remarkably well-realized. However, his chemistry with Katie Holmes's Rachel Dawes leaves a lot to be desired. Their dialogue is good, but their connection is superficial. I never once watched the two of them on-screen together and thought these two people love each other.

What's more, the discontinuity between the first half of the movie and the second half is more than a little disorienting. It's like Nolan rolled two completely different Batman movies into one, and it doesn't entirely work. Also, some of the fight scenes in this movie are where some of the seams begin to show. The editing is too quick, the camerawork too shaky to easily follow what's happening. But from the perspective of strict visual craft, I do like how each movie in this trilogy has a distinctive color and aesthetic. The Dark Knight is blue and utilitarian, The Dark Knight Rises white and militant. But Batman Begins is brown and grimy and very much crafts its very own distinct visual style that does it a lot of favors.

Whereas The Batman was about the failures of Batman's methodology, Nolan's trilogy is a celebration of the aspects of his worldview that work, and it all started here with Batman Begins, a movie that very often gets overlooked because of the masterstroke that the universally-lauded The Dark Knight was and is. And this is a little bit sad because even if it's not perfect, Batman Begins is a more-than-worthy member of a trilogy that's become rightfully renowned the world around. It was a fresh and distinct take on a much-loved character from a time when Hollywood was more open to taking big risks with household names, and it set a standard for creative and nuanced storytelling in the superhero genre that it seems only other Batman movies have ever been able to touch, Nolan yesterday and Reeves today. No amount of board meetings can best artistic vision and no business model for a franchise can compete with well-realized and well-organized raw talent.

Though imperfect, this trilogy was a testament to that fact then, is a testament to that fact now, and will be a testament to that fact forever.

Batman Begins - 8/10

Psalm 82:1-4