Batman Be Buggered

[angelophile]

Just got back from seeing Batman begins and I have to say, I was really disappointed. Everyone's been raving about it being "the greatest comic book movie ever made" and I walked out feeling completely untouched. I'd rate it on a par with the Hulk, and lower than Daredevil. The movie never really captured the feel of Batman for me.

There were some highs and lows. I was excting a lot more of the stuff from Frank Miller's Batman - Year One movie. Practically none of it survived. A couple of names, like Flass and Loeb, a couple of scenes, but that was it.


The pluses:

Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon - perfect. One the money every time and he was therefore criminally underused. It was good to see a couple of the decent scenes with him from Year One though.

Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox - again, a solid performance. And, again, underused.

Some nice scenery early on.

The Joker playing card.

Bruce's parents.

Tom Wilkinson's excellent Roman.

The minuses:

They screwed up Batman's origin AGAIN, this time to the worst. Now they tried to tie Bruce's parents death into his fear of bats to make him personally responsible.

They also not only had the Wayne's killers found, but had Bruce going to kill him. What the hell?

Dreadful action sequences where everything was just a blur.

The love interest that went nowhere and then she dumped him. None of the Batman "I have to keep you at arms length" thing there should have been from his side.

A convoluted and, frankly, stupid plot that was delivered without any of the knowing tongue-in-cheek from the Burton movies.

Michael Caine, great as always but utterly utterly miscast as Alfred and looking and sounding like he'd just wandered straight from the set of Austin Powers III.

The dullest Batman villains ever. The Scarecrow looked about twelve and had no motivation for any of his actions. He just liked stcking on an oogidy boogidy mask and going BOO! to people. Ra's Al Ghul was bo better, He had motivations, they just made no sense.

Ra's Al Ghul being responsible for Bruce's parents' death. Gah!

I wanted gothic Gotham dammit.

Below average. I kinda regret forking out to see it in the cinema now. Still, at least Sin City lived up to my expectations. This just fell flat.

Comments

[freaky-science.livejournal.com]

100% agreed, bud. I wanted gothic Gotham too.

[shadow-weaver.livejournal.com]

well it just goes to show, different strokes for diff folks. I liked it. It wasn't exactly canon but I liked what they did with it. For once Bat's wasn't KILLING people on purpose. I liked burton's stuff but some having bat's kill doesn't sit well with me.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

I don't recall Bats killing anyone on purpose in the Burton movies.

He sure as hell killed Ra's Al Ghul in this one though, the "I can't kill you, but I won't save you" line just made it more obvious.

But yeah, I figure I'm in a very small minority of people who didn't "get" this movie.

[shadow-weaver.livejournal.com]

mmm how about shoving the bomb into the circus freak guy's pants and shoving him down the man hole?

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

Don't really remember that...

i remember the scene but not that moment.