The Importance of Being Idle

A More Up To Date Update

So I've just got back from seeing Batman Begins, and my head is still a jumble of overwhelmed neurons so thoughts aren't that clear, but WOW!
Okay, geek credentials first. HUGE Batman fan, who absolutely unreservedly hated both the Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton Batman movies, the former for being too camp and shite, and the latter for being hyper-stylised and shite. I was pretty glad when Batman & Robin seemed to kill the franchise once and for all, 'cos I've always thought the desire to see Batman on the screen pretty much renders the character ridiculous - you can see its just a bloke in a suit, and a bloke in a suit invariably looks a twat. What makes Batman scary (to criminals) in the comic books, is that they DON'T see him unless he wants them too, he's a mythical presence in the darkness, just waiting to pick them off. Also once you have a bloke in a suit the fanboy arguments start about him not talking right, or walking right, or fighting right... in fact once you get a clear look at him, its all gone wrong. So I was super wary when they announced the development of this new Batman movie, it just seemed that the studios had seen Marvel have a good time with the Spiderman and Xmen movies, and they wanted some of that money. However there were things which gave me much encouragement (the casting of Christian Bale, the hiring of the awesome Chris Nolan as director) and some things filled me with utter dread (the casting of Katie Holmes and early looks at the Batmobile). However, as it turns out pretty much everything was on the money (with the possible exception of Katie Holmes...). For a start, it almost looks like they set out to make a horror movie, and Batman is the monster: you never get a good look at him! There is one scene, early on, I think it's actually his first trip out in the suit, and it plays out EXACTLY like a slasher flick, with sudden movements in the foreground or background, thugs getting picked off in the shadows... even when he finally emerges and there's a fight scene, its not like any other fight scene in a Hollywood movie, its edited so fast and hard that you never get a sense of fight choreography at all, all you see is a black blur of violence and people getting their asses kicked. Then later on when Bats is 'interogating' someone (so that'd be hanging them upside down from a building, shouting and then repeatedly dropping them until he gets the answers he wants) Christian Bale produces this voice, this rasping snarl from hell... that is so perfect its almost unbelievable. I wonder if they did any post on it to make it more scary? Hmm, anyway, basically the whole movie is full of things like that, things that it gets so right it makes you wonder why nobody did them before. And Michael Caine OWNS Alfred, the one thing I'd thought the previous terrible shitty movies had got perfectly right - turns out that even that could be done better. Hell even the over-arching plot is pretty good, and doesn't suffer from the previous movies' "there's no such things as too many villains" ethos (even though it actually has lots of villains!). Oh and the 'escalation' at the end... that's the REAL kicker! Seriously, if the sequel was ready to go RIGHT NOW I'd have marched out of one screen and straight into the next without even bothering to go to the loo. Yeah, it was that good, and I want to see what happens next! Better than X-Men? Definitely. Better than Spider-man? Difficult to tell, I've only seen BB the once, but even on a first viewing its an equal to Spidey.
Wow, I wanna see that movie again!

posted by BadMonkey @ 3:04 PM