Critical Update for Age 19-24 Generation

Rating: 7/10 (16 June 2005)

You know I have to try to watch my reviews and opinions of movies, cause they seem to change sometimes and sometimes they don't. For example when I saw the movie "Saw" I had not seen a good movie for some time, I was depressed, and easily excitable. I said that the movie was "awesome" and "one of the best". Later I ended up determining that Saw was one of the cheesiest movies of his kind, and used shock values to mess with my head, the movie clearly sucked. You know the same thing happened with "Sideways." I was depressed(real depressed), and "Sideways" was about a white guy who depressed like me and had a happy ending, so I liked it, now I hate "Sideways"! But I think I can get it right with "Batman Begins," that is only if I think carefully about what I am writing. First of all I don't want to give away the movie, unlike other movies in the franchise, this actually has a plot worth not spoiling via trailers and movie reviews; most are respecting that. The movie was dark, definitely something aimed away from a family environment into a more adult market, though I am sure there will be an amount of little ones seeing this only to be disappointed and scared stiff halfway through. The movie is clearly the story of batman, and batman's story owns all. Bale is the perfect batman, plain and simple; hopefully they use him again for (sigh) the sequels. And the movie was done almost completely old school 99.9%; all stunts, real explosions, and camera tricks. I loved this movie, but it has its problems (there seems to be a chunk of the movie missing, and there is not much to the scarecrow character after all)... I think it was rushed out by producers thinking with "Episode III", "War of the Worlds", "The Island", etc, that people will flock to see it now, compared to the fall. The truth is this movie is set up for a blockbuster record-setting situation that wont likely happen. I don't think it will flop WB, but no way in hell are people going to flock to see another batman movie, and once word of mouth flies about the type of movie it is (the grim nature of it), people are just going to wait to rent it. And I did state way above, you see very clearly, I loved this movie.. But you know that's me, I like dark movies with good endings... that sort of makes me retarded, but oh well, Ebert liked the movie too! The only bad thing I have to say about the movie is that it's not a new concept, Burton did the same thing (dark batman) almost 2 decades ago, and although this movie stomps Burton like a bug, Its not new; all your doing is making a new movie draft of the graphic novel version of batman(which is the real basis for this movie, not the 1939 comics). For that freshness factor I can't give this movie a 9 or a 10, and because of the a critical plot error I felt existed, I cant give it an 8 either. It's not new concept, but a critical refresh to the Batman for my generation (19-24) that Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher never could achieve. "Momento" director Christopher Nolan did well and the acting power never fell too short to bring the movie down. I recommend this movie.