Truly Disappointing.

Rating: 1/10 (17 June 2005)

I went into this film with such high hopes, but walked out of it thinking that I might have wasted money. I know there'll be a lot of other people out there who'll jump down my throat for what I'll say, but I don't care.
First off, let me say from a technical standpoint, meaning design, direction, dialog, and all that sort of thing, Batman: Begins was a huge step up from the last two Batman films. On its own, it is a very good movie, but I'm looking at it from a comic book fans point of view, and I have no choice but to look at it so. Bale makes a better Batman than Clooney ever could, but he still has his flaws. In the first half of the film he alternated from looking like his character from Reign of Fire, and when shaven looking like an older bigger version of Toby Maguire circa Spiderman. He was believable as Batman until he spoke, where it sounded like he was brimming with rage with each line, even though he was supposed to be in control of it. You don't have to growl and gargle your lines to sound dark and edgy.
Second the villains. Let me say that Scarecrow was the wussiest villain in history. He wasn't menacing at all, just kinda weird. It seemed he was only in the movie to develop his fear toxin, and then pass it on to Ghul. In the end, Batman doesn't even take him out, he gets punked out in the end by the heroine. He looked so cool in the commercials, but they really dropped the ball with him. I don't see the point of bringing in Ken Watanbe to play an Asian Al Ghul, even though Ghul isn't even Asian, and then just swerve the audience and reveal that he's just a figurehead. I'm not even gonna mention the twist at the very end, as that just annihilates any hope of continuity, not just with the other movies, but with the original source material.
There were just so many other stuff they changed with the movie, and in some ways that can okay, like in Spiderman, where they changed the source material to update it, but kept a lot of it to keep the fans happy. Things like the Batmobile were changed just to makes things "new" and "cool" when the original Batmobile was cool enough without having to be this ugly tank thing. There were just so many things, that its no point to nit pick. I'm looking forward to the next one, only to hope that they don't screw up the Joker.