Batman disappoints

Rating: 4/10 (26 July 2005)

This film seems to get a lot of very good reviews due to the dark nature of the films appearance and its seemingly grown up approach to a comic book adaptation. For me these are the very reasons that i don't like this movie. How can you take such a dark serious approach to a movie that is essentially about a grown man dressing as a bat. For god's sake, there is nothing dark or adult about it, its a COMIC BOOK. Why try to make the film so serious, you have got to be some kind of super nerd to treat this film in this way. Other comic book films have benefited from the addition of a little humour and the fact that they don't take themselves to seriously. Hellboy is a good example of this. Plenty of funny lines keep the script flowing along nicely. If that film had taken itself deadly serious surely it would have flopped. Not that i think all comic book adaptations should be comedy films, but i think it is a little much to ask grown people to take daft films like this too serious.
The spiderman films that have been so successful of late have made a great effort in making the action sequences as exciting as possible. The same thing goes for the X men, Hellboy and fantastic four. Unfortunately i found the action, especially the fight scenes, in batman begins terrible. They suffer from the same muddled editing that a lot of cheap martial arts films do. This is done in martial arts films, Steven Seagal in particular, to cover up the fact that the star is aging, over weight and no longer able to do his usual stuff. The result is fight scenes where you see a leg here an arm there a guy flying through a window, etc.. But you never get a real sense that this is really happening. You never get to see any real moves being pulled off. They got around this in the Spiderman movies by using a lot of computer graphics. During the action sequences the camera is a good distance from the action and you can see exactly what is happening. Obviously Christian Bale is no Bruce Lee so you can't expect him to pull of the most amazing moves during the fights but i feel the director and fight choreographer are responsible for getting around this problem. The result is a film full of action scenes that just don't excite. The romance side of the film is pretty lame as well. Its all a little rushed and leaves the viewer feeling unmoved. Maybe batman is waiting for his "friend" or should i say gimp Robin to make an appearance.
The supposedly adult nature of the movie also manages to deprive the viewer of a decent bad guy. Rather than the usual flying, walking through walls type bad guy we are used to in this kind of film we get a shrink with a sack on his head. This is an obvious attempt to get away from the unbelievable feel most these type of films have and make the plot more convincing. But seeing batman struggling to beat this enemy only makes the lead character seem like a regular guy in a stupid costume. It does not give the film a feeling of reality more a feeling of anti climax.
All in all this movie just didn't work for me and is without doubt one of the weaker adaptations of late. The fact that the end of the movie suggested a follow up movie with the joker as the villain only added to the disappointment. Only 16 years have past since this movie was originally made and there can be no justification in a remake this soon.
Although i am sure the nerds will love it.