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MrHoatzin

Batman Begins. Verdict:

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The review I read about it said that it was a pretty damn good movie, nothing like the previous movies.

This makes 2 movies I really want to see in theatre: sin city and batman begins.

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It's pretty good, your basic action movie. They tie up some stuff nicely but also leave some things unexplained which always annoys me. Also it has ninjas. It's better than batman and robin and that one with mr freeze, I'm not sure if I prefere it to the first two.

Much better than episode 3, not as good as Sin City.

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I thought it was the best comic-to-movie ever. I liked it more than Sin City, in fact the two cannot really be compared, even though both have Frank Miller in one form or another.

I wouldn't call it 'your basic action movie' because there is something more to it than that. I haven't enjoyed an action movie this much since I was twelve. The only thing that bothered me was that Gotham looked more like Houston than NYC, but that is really a cosmetic issue.

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I thought it was the best comic-to-movie ever.

Not only that, it's the first superhero movie I've ever liked. Like ever. I loved when people got that bad-acid-fear going, with all the hallucinations and what not.

At first though the movie was looking pretty crap, what with all of the training in the mountains bullshit, but it fixed itself in admirable fashion. And even though those beginning parts were lame it a tleast gave the movie decent plot continuity that's lacking in almost every other of these comic movies coming out.

Though the quick cut fighting and ten minute "splosion-thons" were pretty rough on my cultured eyes.

:tup:

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I have to say I wasn't a fan of the 'quick cut' fighting either. They could have done better there.

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The only thing that bothered me was that Gotham looked more like Houston than NYC, but that is really a cosmetic issue.

It was Chicago, actually. In fact, I've seen the infamous bridge in person, without the added scenery!

Here's the thing about Batman... it reinvented the comic book movie, again. All recent comic book movies, except for Sin City perhaps, are based on the original Tim Burton Batman formula, with an elaborate intro and Danny Elfman playing the theme song, a damsel in distress rescue sequence, a lot of stylization in the visuals, and also having some kind of band playing a song in the credits/tv that does not relate to the movie at all. This version of Batman didn't have to sink down to that level to be good.

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I have to say I wasn't a fan of the 'quick cut' fighting either. They could have done better there.

That's a fair criticism, but also one that contradicts your "basic action movie" comment. A basic action movie would spend far more time and far more emphasis on fights, and would have surely taken a more confident and impressive approach to the fight scenes.

I agree that those scenes could have been better, but it doesn't really bother me at all, as the film did not come off to me as an "action movie". My assumption is that Chris Nolan wanted to convey the shadowy and elusive nature of Batman in the fights. He may have succeeded and he may not have, but the point is that he was not simply taking a straight ahead action point of view. That is in fact what I feel to be the movie's strongest point: While Nolan's directing on a microcosmic scale, that is scene-to-scene direction, may have been competent but not hugely inspired, his macrocosmic direction, that is the overall direction of the film, was driven. I feel like he had a vision to enact, he was not simply trying to translate or adapt Batman to film.

Rather, he is deeply familiar with the Batman character and has his own view of him; surely everyone, even people who do not read comics, have their own image of what a superhero is by way of both their permeation in our culture and the fact that no matter what comic nerds may tell you there is no such thing as a "definitive" version of a superhero--they are shared creations. It is certainly true that he was very much influenced by Miller's Batman, but there are surely differences. What makes this movie good, to me, is that everything feels like it deserved to be there.

Nolan's Batman is a more realistic one than has previously been depicted; I have heard some take issue with that, not being comicky enough, but that's kind of the point. Batman Begins wasn't really an adaption of a comic book, it's a movie about a character who has become resonant and ubiquitous enough to no longer need be a comic book character. This is probably more true for Batman than for any comic book character with the obvious exception of Superman (who I find far less interesting anyway). I don't think this kind of actual vision has been seen in a Batman film since Burton's first one (his second sort of collapsed a tad too much into slightly generic comic book farce, though I still enjoyed it), and I think Batman Begins still tops that one.

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I think the quick cuts were to show basically the thugs' point of view of the fights, they can't see him, they're very confused, and thus they can't win.

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I loved it. Definately preferred it to every super-hero movie I've ever seen. Everything pretty much made sense to me, and didn't leave a whole lot to be questioned afterwards. There was no "Where the fuck did he get that?" or "How the hell does a venom injection make you buffed up and über-strong?"

The fight scenes never really bothered me, except in the prison at the beginning where he's fighting six prisoners at one time and the camera just goes in circles. I was dreadfully close to the screen at the theatre, so I just felt sick during that scene.

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I thought it was really awesome but I have one question...

in that part where batman needs to save katie holmes and the swat teams are going into the building, there's all these bats that come from no where and swarm the building. Does it explain where they came from or anything?

But aside from that, I thought it was really good. Christopher Nolan definately didn't pull boner of the year with this one sorry, but no one made any boner jokes yet

Mark Hamill or Crispin Glover should play the joker in the next movie.

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I thought it was really awesome but I have one question...

in that part where batman needs to save katie holmes and the swat teams are going into the building, there's all these bats that come from no where and swarm the building. Does it explain where they came from or anything?

But aside from that, I thought it was really good. Christopher Nolan definately didn't pull boner of the year with this one sorry, but no one made any boner jokes yet

Mark Hamill or Crispin Glover should play the joker in the next movie.

I think Crispin Glover should play him, but have Mark Hamill do the laugh.

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Have any of you looked at the toys made "after" this movie? I did at my local HEB just a few hours ago and was freaked out how little any of them have to do with the movie itself. They all look hellishly bootleg.

Case in point:

BBFigure1.sized.jpg

Deep sea exploration suit?

BBFigure2.sized.jpg

No self-respecting comic book artist would draw this. Also, heh, this shit doesn't appear in the movie.

BBFigure3.sized.jpg

What the hell does that golden thing with purple cellophane do anyway?

BBFigure6.sized.jpg

Far more over-the-top than anything in the movie.

BBPowerTechAsst.sized.jpg

Holy batshit, batman!

URL

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Have to admit, I'm curiously unimpressed with the movie. It's definitely good, but it's not blowing me away like it is with everyone else, it seems.

Coming from Christopher Nolan, I was expecting this to be a seriously dark Batman film, but despite delving into more psycho-craziness than Burton's Batmans, it doesn't come off as much darker. You still get tons of summer-action-movie audience-conscious humor, and chintzy "I will repeat this line you said to me earlier in the film for dramatic/badass effect".

I'm sure everyone else (I know I am) is disregarding the bitter pill that is Hollywood chintz when they say they liked the film. Considering this is a comic book to film conversion that has family appeal -half the people in the theater were with their kids when I was there- they got away with as much they could. You just have to ignore those pesky lines that were surgically inserted by suits.

On another note I was very happy that the series finally broke away from the "swirling colors evaryware!" :dopefish: direction, that had gone on for way too long.

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The corny lines (of which the worst by far I felt was the one where Batman reveals himself to that DA) did not to me detract from the film. They were incidental occurrences that, in a movie whose central vision did not particularly hinge upon letter-perfect dialogue, were not overly distracting.

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Have you been catching up on season 2 of Deadwood or something? :confused:

What's Deadwood?

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It's a western show where people swear a lot.

And by a lot, I mean that all the dialog is just swear words.

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God damn. I can not get over how incredible that movie was. Easily the best comic book movie of all time.

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I only ask because your posts in this thread have a sort of intellectual-type syntax/grammar/diction/etc., which season 2 of Deadwood adopted full-bore (albeit with lots more swearing). I always wrote like that for my philosophy classes.

Ah, well... It wasn't intentional, I guess. I don't have HBO (or a TV) and I'd never heard of it before.

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Just saw it. I also think it was possibly the best comic based movie I've seen. I haven't really read comics for years though and haven't liked many movies based on them, except Tim Burton's Batman and maybe the sequel.

Also, I agree with the critisism about overly dramatic boomerangs in the latter half of the movie.

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I loved every minute of it and in a movie this good those cheesy oneliners all of a sudden aint so cheesy no more! because with a character that actually has real depth to it (though I won't go as far as calling it a REAL character, since it still seems too far removed from real characterisation) those lines are a lot cooler and I thought they not only got away with it, but actually made me smile because bruce made a funny... ;)

So best comic-adaptation? Yes but not by much. They are really starting to get them right and in a lot of ways it's the curse of getting what you wished for. But they are also getting really good at these and a lot of the stuff is finally finding its way into the right hands. The cast is simply amazing. And Bale (who I always REALLY liked, ever since American Psycho, which just made me laugh so hard) is showing how enigmatic a figure he can be. I am really happy for him and hope to see more from him in this vein.

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