The dark & gritty Batman comes to the big screen

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2005)

What we see in this movie is the "dark & gritty" (TM) Batman, which was introduced by Frank Miller in 1986 in the comics mini-series Dark Knight Returns, which was an alternate future version of Batman. But Miller also gave the "real" comics Batman the dark & gritty treatment in the seminal Batman: Year One story, which is perhaps the greatest Batman story ever created (also because of the effective artwork of the excellent David Mazzuchelli), and which chronicles, among other things, Bruce Wayne's initial (pre-Batman) martial arts training in a remote mountain region. In the comics, a creative force as strong as Frank Miller was bound to yield massive imitation by less original comics creators - and so the early 1990s saw the Batman character getting consistently and increasingly dark & gritty, to the extent that the entire Batman universe was based on that darkness and grit.
So the question is, does this work in a movie? Well, in my opinion it didn't even work in the comics, so, no, for this and other reasons I don't think it works in the movie, either. I always preferred the pre-Miller Batman, whose comics were driven by the stories and not simply by mood and style.
Batman Begins is not a bad movie. It has many good things. The story has lots of great ideas. Most of the changes to the Bat-mythos were thoughtful and effective. I even loved how the Batmobile had to jump over a moat every time it left and entered the Bat-Cave.
Unfortunately, the movie is atrociously directed. Everything is much, MUCH too dark, and considering how bad-looking the terribly cut fight scenes are, the fast-moving action and scatter-shot dialog are particularly grating. Most characters beside Bale's and Neeson's don't have enough to do, or get no significant characterization. Oldman's Gordon is wildly underplayed, and I could never separate Michael Caine from Michael Caine, which I needed to do if I were to find him convincing as Alfred. I think the structure and editing of the movie was terrible, and the decision to make a comic-book movie so dark that you could hardly see what was going on, was a monumentally bad one. It was a decision made, no doubt, to emphasize the medium of the movie over that of the comic, and it made the director attempt to create some kind of art movie - and apparently many people feel he succeeded. I didn't.
And I thought the special effects were another big problem. There were too many of them. Why did the plot need a hallucinogenic drug, so faces could twist and horses could breathe fire? Because, I'm certain, the movie-makers felt they had to deliver the special effects spectacular that they thought superhero movie audiences have come to expect. A commercial decision, thus, to blow some dough on unnecessary SPX, just because the audience probably would think it was a cheap and unimportant movie if it didn't have any. So, no, I was not impressed at all; rather the opposite.
And unfortunately I have to make one more serious complaint. Ra's Al Ghul was very cool and very well played and everything, but his scheme was ridiculous in the extreme. Through centuries and even millennia his "league of shadows" (the actual size of which is never shown) would destroy civilizations (oh, or just cities) at the height of their decadence, like God striking down Sodom and Gomorrah. And now they'd decided that Gotham City should be destroyed? I'm sorry, but I find it ridiculous on at least three levels. First, wouldn't they target more than a single city? What use will it be to destroy one city? But, of course, this would depend on their man-power, which we are never made privy to. Maybe they're just, like, twelve guys. It certainly looks that way. Second, Ra's had been planning to destroy Gotham for, like, twenty years or more?! So, basically, he's been focusing all his resources on just Gotham for at least two or three decades, while events in the rest of the world has had no bearing on the situation? That's preposterous. And third, where's the sense in going in to help exacerbate the decadence and crime and corruption before delivering the death-stroke? They are totally becoming the very thing they would destroy. And sure, they're the bad guys and all, but shouldn't their scheme have SOME modicum of logical coherence? Apparently not. So anyway, not a great, successful movie as far as I'm concerned, but the typical commercial fluff with a hurried narrative and a holey rusted plot, Batman.
6 out of 10.