Batman Begins

Rating: 6/10 (15 February 2013)

I saw Batman Begins in theaters and I wasn't impressed. In fact, I really didn't like the movie at all. I was in 4th grade so that really doesn't mean much, but if I knew The Dark Knight was a sequel, I probably would not have seen it. Since I loved The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, I decided to watch the original once again, and of course it was in Blu-Ray.
I had a few problems with this movie. There was no real villain. The Scarecrow, Ra's Al Ghul, and the mobster. There is a lot going on and it turns into am mess. The action isn't that great. Yes, the train sequence at the end is really cool and batman's fighting scenes are awesome but this movie just wasn't that good. It was sloppy with all the different villains and it got a bit confusing. Scarecrow has this gas that makes people afraid and they see it when he wears his mask. I don't even know, it makes no sense, and the mob boss just becomes unimportant when in the beginning he was the big deal in Gotham. I would have liked to see Ra's Al Ghul more. We see him train batman to become batman, they have their little standoff, and then he disappears and he is forgotten.
Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Craine were also in the movie, but they were not nearly as important as they were in the following movies. Alfred is more of a butler and less of a father figure or a mentor. Gordon is just a cop in this movie and he is even almost irrelevant. He has that one important scene when Bruce is a child but that's really it. Rachel is a different actress from The Dark Knight and she was just awful. Her character really seemed unnecessary in this movie as she didn't really connect with Bruce Wayne. They were childhood friends, best friends, and when Bruce comes back to Gotham after years of being away, she acts like nothing happened. She was bland and emotionless. She doesn't actually become important until the last act of the movie.
This movie wasn't all bad. Christopher Nolan does a great job setting up the character Batman. Bruce Wayne's origin story is really interesting when he is in the well and his fear of bats. Watching him evolve into Batman was something fans can enjoy. I liked how Ra's Al Ghul became Batman's mentor and trained him to be Batman. His involvement and departure from the League of Shadows needed to be portrayed correctly for this movie to work, and Nolan knocked it out of the park. Hans Zimmer does an outstanding job with the score to this movie. Nothing feels more right than Batman standing of a rooftop, cape blowing in the wind, and the epic sound of low brass ringing out. Zimmer really knows how to make music come alive in a movie.
Overall, Batman Begins was a disappointing show. I didn't like it when I was in 4th grade and I still don't like it now at the age of 18. The acting was below average, there was a confusion to who the villain was, the story was sloppy, and characters were irrelevant and boring. There were a few shines of light and that pushed into the next two movies and really exploded. There is a reason why Batman Begins came out in 2005 and The Dark Knight years later. Most people were surprised that The Dark Knight was a sequel so that really doesn't say much for Batman Begins. I give this movie the WillyT A For Effort.