This reminds me of a really big firework..

Rating: 2/10 (24 June 2005)

By that, I mean one that everyone talks about will be so great, and one you wait for and know it'll be something excellent. But then as it is finally time to light, it turns out to be a great big dud.
I expected something good, something new. We're talking about the Beginning of Batman, obviously enough. What I saw was a great big budget completely wasted on a script that wasn't written all that great. It moves so fast that ten minutes into the film so much has happened and you're left questionable to what the hell is even going on yet. I believe the term is Push-Plot, where they wanted to just skip all the boring scenes that would take their time and have plenty of room for the Deleted and Extended scenes section of what you know will be a special edition two-disk DVD set like every other comic adaptation.
So much happens and so fast that it really did feel like the film makers decided to cut the only ten seconds of action from every well written scene and decided to just paste moment after moment to the point where you see so many jumps that it nearly gets annoying trying to catch up with what happened twenty seconds ago compared to what the hell is happening now. It left me and the few I was with very confused and looking around to mutter "wait, what just happened? Now he's over there ... now he's back.. What just happened??" and the little action there was, like a big firework, promised much and then delivered dully and barely enough to keep the viewers entertained.
Something most might be disappointed on is the fact that this was not a film as promised that goes back to the original comics. But in reality it's a now-days presentation of what the comics would be, had they been written only a year ago by a guy who only had somewhat of a cool idea for a new comic character who dresses as a bat. If anything, it only steals from other newly comic adapted movies, like Spider-man and Superman (with starting him out with a lame costume, and saying Bruce Wayne is the mask Batman hides behind.) and alike all the other previous made Batman movies, hell, even leading back to the old TV show, This just seemed like a movie that wanted as many Big-Name Hollywood stars to be the cast as they could. Don't get me wrong, Bale plays an excellent Batman when he has the chance, and it's not his fault the writing was bad. The villain (Cillian, the Scarecrow) was one of the best characters, and his screen-time was seen more in the previews than it even was throughout the whole film!
Over all it was an utterly predictable movie, with too much fast action and not enough plot to enjoy or even understand what's going on half the time. My biggest complaint is the bat-mobile .. What the hell was the point of making it some lame kind of tank? While the other films got very in-touch with fantasy, and maybe too much even, this was a film that the makers wanted to make a little Too real, and it ended up coming out as an even bigger joke than the rest. It's truly sad to say that the previous films, including the so horrible Batman and Robin was even put together more well than this one was. It's reasons like this that the great Tim Burton backed away from the series, and we all know that's true.
** 2 out of 10. Save your money, wait for it to come on cable instead.