"Batman in his true form"

Rating: 10/10 (18 June 2005)

I was 14 years old when Tim Burton's Batman came out in theaters. I loved it. Before that movie, all I knew was the cheesy 60's series filled with so much corny campy stuff, I always wondered why the Batman comic book covers looked so different in comparison. I blame those shows from the sixties for making me overlook the comics and pass them by and opt for the Marvel comics instead. But after 1989, I began purchasing Batman Comics and I realized Batman was a grim, dark tale of a person with split personality fueled by rage. Oh the comics were so different and I Instantly became a Batman fan at the age of 14.
Burton's first 2 movies were dark, and his first was a Masterpiece due to great acting by Nicholson and Keaton's unemotional pokerfaced, cold portrayal of the dark knight. Burton's created a nice dark world, but it still was cartooned and campy. It came down to Burton being booted from directing the 3rd film because they said his movies were too dark for the children, and Burger King wasn't selling it's batman toys because Kids were not attracted to the films, so in comes Joe Shumacher and brought back the sixties all over again.
Oh now the 3rd generation Batman is here. Sticking to the comic roots and I thank Chris Nolan for realizing that Batman can't be tampered with anymore because he is the darkest superhero. This film is filled with disturbing, depressing, and intimidating images of the dark knight, the way Bob Kane envisioned it. Too bad Kane could not be alive to see it. The character development engulfs the viewer, the direction seemed a little rushed in the beginning, but it slows down and builds slowly. When you see how the cave was conceived, the bat suit assembled but various military prototypes, and a realistic Batmobile, or should I say the "Tumbler". The movie has nothing in it that says, this man could never exist. Who engineered the bat-mobile in Batman Forever? those batwings and over the top gadgets are not here. Batman uses stealth as his main weapon. No flashy kung-fu fighting in this film, Nolan intended to show flashes of Batman, hiding and striking, hiding and striking, like some sort of Splinter Cell and Ninja assassin. But whoever has second thoughts about Christian Bale as Batman, then think again and just go see this film already. He is the best Batman, sorry Micheal, but you weren't scary enough, you didn't scare the hell out of me when you spoke. You were cold, but not a caged beast who had just been released from his prison, of not knowing his destiny, and not knowing his purpose. This film is great, the acting, casting , especially Neeson, Caine, and of course Bale. I give it a 10 out of 10. It's an 8.6 right now, and I think it might go down eventually, because despite that the movie is a little flawed--because Nolan is not really an action director. Some of his shots are too jerky jerky. The movie is not the greatest in terms of hand to hand combat. I know Nolan intended it to be this way, and Batman is still young here, so he still has time to get better. His Gadgets will probably get better in the next film, but despite my inability to accept Batman in this realistic depiction, and despite the fact that I didn't see some over the top action scenes, I still marvel as Nolan's filmmaking ability and cannot deny this film the title of masterpiece!