Hattrick.

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2005)

You could take that to mean the original two Batman flicks and Begins but I'm certainly talking about the 3 comic book-film sagas that have actually made it above water. 'Catwoman's, 'Punisher's, controversial 'Hulk's, etc give comic book movies a bad name justly or unjustly. 'Blade's, 'Hellboy's and 'Sin City's can subsist for costing less but the big, trans-labelled three are X-Men, Spider-man and Batman. If Superman Returns and The Flash make it next year then it'll be good to have DC back in the light for the Marvel era. RIP the Superman-Batman DC age, 1978 to 1997.
I've changed my position on the original 4 Batmans since seeing Begins. Batman has to be dark, not an MTV merchandising hub. Keaton getting battered and tossed by villains is frustrating, there's the height question to irritate, but I like the darkness, laughs, noir, score, sadistic edge and tragic overtones of Burton that polarize it from otherwise rainbow superheroes. Batman Forever; interesting story, the best Batman portrayer, though unfortunate that Kilmer didn't put on enough muscle for the role, good score, animated performances. It holds up unto itself, but not alongside the others and especially Begins. Where is the credibility in two athletic young bachelor billionaires each scarred by an early family-loss co-existing in the tabloids with two gadget-rife, turbo-powered, militarily-vehicle, thug-slugging city avengers, one barely even under a mask, bearing remarkable resemblance? Robin out. Skip to Drake and Nightwing if totally necessary. Begins is realism.
So Batman Begins didn't exactly wow with its gross, but that was completely predictable. Already the most enduring and arguably biggest comic book movie series, a lot of territory was covered and much of the Batman urgency was spent. Any fallout from the protested part 4, an agreeable renter but no challenge to its predecessors. The appropriate seriousness, subdued tones and discretion of the Begins trailer, not a kiddie puller and heeding to pre-suppositions. Probably above all, there was no popular villains. Scarecrow, though one of the originals, was a lurch from obscurity for the masses  those popularised in the 60s TV show that gave Batman such an edge with modern audiences were Burton or Schumackered. Lastly, there was the shot of that Bat-mask. People were never going to flock to see a mortal in blocky rubber as they had before Spider-man, Xavier's troop and all the rest of the super-powered lot had swung. At first. Initially, it was going to feel like a step back on some level.
But that is the transcendental beauty of Batman Begins and Batman: the superhero that isn't super. He wasn't bitten by a radioactive spider, he was never hit by gamma or radiation, he never left the earth's surface. What he did was don the guise of the bat and struggle manfully against organised crime and equally scarred maniacs for love of a city that had plagued the world's nightmares since metropolises first began springing up. Every thud, every leap, every drop of blood was that of a man no more super than any of us. The mask was what was truly fantastical, an overpass to power, mystery and unrelenting justice. On one side of it was a dark and fearful legend, unnatural in the word of folk. On the other was a face from high society. The cave, the car, the hook, the belt, the batarang, were Batman's super powers; what made him a one-man army where the masses that a dark metropolis could throw at his lone cause might have overwhelmed. Bruce's journey to the point of that transformation is the excitement in precisely the same way his troubles retaining his sanity and humanity beneath the mantle are afterward.
Begins signals his Detective Comics age, where a bit more sunlight is allowable with his movement in the real world. At the height of population there was the entire team of Batman, Robin, Alfred, Gordon, Nightwing, Oracle, Catwoman, Batman understudy Jean Paul/Azrael and others all fighting a global cause. After such a dense and exciting first chapter establishing Batman the hard work is done and we haven't even got to the real fun yet. Do I hear a green-haired maniac's demonic cackle? Bane awaits. It may not have 'Spider-man'-ed or even 'X-Men'-ed at the box office but they'd be idiots not to think they're sitting on a Matrix Reloaded opening with part two (and no more of that legacy). Shame about Holmes, her presence was welcome, the performance was solid, and I don't want this to be the beginning of yet another infuriating Bond tradition of changing women every movie. Fisher taking up the same role is one of the first things we'll forget about once we're watching a solid sequel, but otherwise, coming up with a satisfactory way to write Dawes out is the first hurdle. And in case they're wondering, yes, a certain brain-damaged horse rider does return in part II.
NO TEAMUPS! The biggest fun is ahead. What we're dealing with is the clash of a psychotic shrink with the city's deadliest nutter. I don't want, and I suspect many second the motion, another wussy villain team-up in part 2, or a sidedish baddie. Joker is the villain intent on pushing Batman as close to the edge as possible, and he'll do anything to stop someone killing Batman because that would ruin his fun and his whole cause for being. The movie that it can be at best with yet another dark alliance isn't half what a three-way powerplay can be. Dynamite. NO TEAMUPS! Like the X-Mens and the superb Spider-man 2 they have left a number of threads to take up in the sequel. In Begins they don't get to explore the duality of Bruce Wayne and Batman, where one ends and the other begins. Joker is the tool invented for that very purpose. Great work.