Product: Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (2005)
Rating: 5.0
A long lost legend is back
If George Clooney said that he had killed the Batman franchise, Chistian Bale had revived it.In fact it is not truly fair to say George Clooney killed the franchise because the last series of franchise were killed by greed and bad screenplay. Michael Keaton was unhappy with the direction the seies went and decided not to reprise the third time. History proved that he was right. Nonetheless, Batman Begins breathed new air into this stagnant fossilised franchise and brought it back to life.Batman begins adopted the same dark tune that Tim Burton had set for the series but the emotion in this one is even darker. There was an in depth study of Bruce Wayne and Batman's psychology that departs itself from the last two movies. In the first one, we had the unwilling hero and in the second one we had the lover-enemey relationship between Batman and Catwoman. In the third and the fourth one, the villains had taken over the limelight with technology leaving two empty shells for the audience to wondering what is actually happening.The childhood memories and haunting of Bruce Wayne had led him into complete emotional and psychological breakdown. He could not face himself nor anyone he knew. He chose an exiled life and prepared to complete the cycle by punishing bad guys in the jail, which he got himself into. He was "rescued" by a mysterious man who eventually unfolded a series of events that Bruce had never thought of. The respect and pain relationship between Liam Neeson and Christian Bale was well portrayed and written; nonetheless Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman got the best lines in the movie. Katie Holmes had been overshadowed not by Tom but by the lack of performance she could have in the movie. Despite that she is the only lead, she is hardly "leading" the story in any sense. There are quite a number of other baddies in the movie but most of them didn't really make their mark in the movie, except maybe for Cillian Murphy who played the villain doctor.The main difference of Batman Begins from other similar movie is the abandonment of extensive CGI for effects. As the actors themselves said, Batman is never a superpower hero so it doesn't make sense to have a lot of CGI to do the stunts while they are not difficult to do by the actors themselves. The product was series of fast paced fighting and melee scenes that could leave an impression in your mind. The gadgets are popular and well know gadgets but they were well used and well explained scientifically in the movie. Like the way they explained about the cape. The Batmobile was a bit stylishly clumsy but it served its purpose of originally designed as a battle tank. If you want to find flaws, it would be some illogical bits in the movie like why if the whole construction on top of a snow mountain exploded, there was no avalanche following? Also how come all of a sudden a mountain resident who never uttered a word of English could speak a line in fluent English? Nonetheless they are just minor stuff and actually if you don't care, they are quite amusing.The movie ended with a very good link to the first Batman movie that could play the music in your heart.In all Batman Begins is a successful reinstalment of the franchise and unless Warner Bros committed the wrong choice again to kill it off, it could well leave good credentials for the franchise to survive in the current generation of movie goers.