Darth man, Breath man, Badman, Bedman, what is this?

Rating: 1/10 (23 July 2008)

Normally i don't read comments from others before a movie, but now i did, cause i was wondering why this movie got such a high rating. A lot of people say its fantastic and i read some people who really hated it. Im not a Bat Man fan, though i had bat toys as a kid, a long time ago, so i went in pretty open minded.
I still don't know why this movie got such a high rating. I fell asleep 2 times during it. OK, I'm a bit tired lately, but a good movie sure keeps me awake.
The story is kinda lame. The classical batman story is good versus bad, pretty simple and straightforward, but the writers chose to abandon this theme more or less, stating that 'good' will always turn to 'evil', given enough time. Yea, sounds pretty deep, but isn't. Go read Nietzsche. I found it all pretty predictable and where it wasn't, it was too far fetched to ever be realistic. It leans on the psychology angle to pressure people to chose 'bad' over 'good', kinda like 'Saw' (and others), but not as good as that. Actually that theme gets worn out pretty fast. The pace seems way off, in the beginning i was like "Huh, whats all happening?", going way too fast, other passages are too slow (prolly where i fell asleep). The art of telling a story - any story - is to take the listener (or viewer) along for the ride with all possible means. This just doesn't happen. It's not the worst movie ever, but surely not the best either. The acting is pretty OK, Freeman and Caine always deliver. Batman obviously has a cold as soon as he puts his cape on, or watched Darth Vader too often and replicates it as a 10 year old. The Joker is totally not funny and where he should portray the madness, the only thing he knows to show is to stick his tongue out periodically. Didn't find him scary at all, not funny, nor interesting. They nominated the guy for an Oscar ?!?! The only reason i can think of why that is, is cause he's dead? I'm not saying his acting is bad, but it's by far not *that* good. "You either die a hero, or live to become a villain", has to be made true by awarding a posthumous Oscar?
Effects and stunts are OK, but nothing new or exiting.
All in all its doable, but i wouldn't recommend it to anyone over ~13. Gave it a 5, cause its not all bad. Maybe i just outgrew Batman.
No, we're not destined to do this forever and in fact, before redoing a Batman, you need a really good angle on it. So think twice.