The title should have been: Boredom Begins (and Never Ends).

Rating: 1/10 (8 January 2009)

You can argue with my opinion until we're both nauseous, but you can't argue with numbers. That's why I did the one thing I never thought I would have to do: I literally timed the amount of pointless scenes in this movie. After the cliché "hook" opening, there was literally no action for the first 38 minutes of the film. From there, you have a generic 2-minute action scene, and then from there Batman Begins goes into pointless drama (which I'll talk about later) for 22 minutes. That was when I was so bored I stopped timing. Either way, you see my point. More than 3/4ths of Batman Begins is completely irrelevant to the cliché plot (which I'll also talk about later). This movie is so bloated with dramatic cliché subplots and overstuffed with pointless dialogue, honestly, how is it even remotely considered and action movie? I've literally seen straight-out dramas with more action. This is the single, condemning flaw The Dark Knight had, and Batman Begins only elaborates on it to the point it simply isn't even watchable. It is so ridiculously boring and lacking in entertainment, it's a lot like watching a black piece of cardboard in the shape of a man get talked to, talked to, and talked to again for the 140-minute runtime. And none of that dialogue even has anything to do with the generic plot. Why do ACTION MOVIE directors feel the need to inject literally over 2 hours of inane dialogue into their "action" movies? If there is a single movie that has ever been made that proves the action genreyou know, the one that actually has actionis dead, bloodied, and buried, it's Batman Begins.
Aside from the boring dialogue that plagues the entire film from open to close, the viewer is bashed over the head countless times with clichés. Batman Begins uses even single parody-worthy dramatic cliché that has been used since the beginning of cinema. For example, the opening of the film shows Batman as a generic child with his generic childhood girlfriend, where he has a generic encounter with bats that later shapes his generic personalityall done with cheesy flash-cut directing. Instead of taking cues from the immensely superior (and immensely more original) graphic novels (such as Arkham Asylum) with Batman's back-story, Christopher Nolan does exactly what he does best: he uses clichés such as the one I just listed as an example. This trend is shown through the entire film to the point Batman was so trite and clichéd, he was more laughable than the Batman in the old 70s TV shows.
The plot is exactly that: a plot. Bad guy vs. good guy. While this is a kindergarten concept to even the youngest viewers, it apparently wasn't to Nolan. It's an unwritten law in Hollywood: "If you are working with a kindergarten plot, don't let the audience know it's kindergarten. Add some sort of flashy plot twist or cute spin on how you tell the storythat will throw them all off for sure." No one, not a single director alive today, knows and follows this flawed law more than Nolan. If you look at his body of workfrom Memento to The Prestigethey all involve pathetic, unoriginal plot lines that he makes seem oh-so-"intellectual" through his cute metafiction storytelling. Instead of using that here, he does something even worse: he bloats and expands the kindergarten plot out to the point it becomes a self-parody. Batman Begins could have literally been told in 2 minutes, but with Nolan behind the camera, it takes over 2 hours. This is not suspense-building or characterization, this is straight-up being childish with the amount of utterly pointless scenes. It's a 3rd grader bloating out his 2-paragraph English paper to 20 pages just to show off. Or in this case, to win the acclaim of "fine cinema"-whores who find anything less runtime-conservative than Gone with the Wind to be a waste of time. I'm so glad I have enough intelligence to see past that ridicules thinking.
Other flaws: (1) When the action does happen, for a whole whopping 5 minutes, it's just as generic and dull as the dialogue. (2) Scarecrow is unintentionally hilarious due to his cheesy motives and lines. (3) This movie is NOT dark. It just rehashes old dramatic clichés, as I said. It's hilarious to me how movies like this get considered "dark", and the mass media uses that in a good way, while truly dark films get critically trashed for being "disgusting". Either way, the only thing dark here is the use of dull cinematography. (3) Batman has as much personality as a black piece of cardboard. He runs around yelling, "Stop! Stop, you bad person!" over and over again, and this is supposed to be the oh-so-awesome Batman everyone is raving about? He's serious, yes, but he's also cliché and dull and utterly the most forgettable interpretation of Batman ever envisioned. (Again, Nolan should have used the Batman character from the Arkham Aslyum graphic novel, which was both serious and had an actually dark personality without seeming like a piece of black cardboard.)
Overall: Batman Begins is not watchable. It's sad so many people will settle for such a pathetic attempt to make Batman serious, ignoring every flaw. Let this be a lesson to Hollywood. You can't just take a black piece of cardboard, put it on film, give it a dramatic back-story, let hundreds of people talk to it about nothing important whatsoever, have a few people punch it, and call it entertainment. Well, then again, considering the success of Batman Begins, maybe you can.
1/10