The review you've "all" been "waiting" for...

I'm way behind on this one, but considering my whole "remake" rantings, I wanted to weigh in, the way that guy who shares your office with you insists on spreading his opinion on things that do not concern him, like wildfire. Yes, faster than your sister spreads what she's got. Sorry, I don't know where that came from. I'm barely awake right now. Anyway, here's my take on Batman Begins.

Certianly the film was awesome. The literal darkness to it. The smokey blue (camera) pans in the mountains, the obscured, labrinthine night of Gotham City. And the (re)introduction to our hero was believable (as believable as any superhero's story has ever been), as the honest-to-God arc from zero to hero played out. The clunky, imperfect, early Batman was honest, and connected to the audience in an almost tactile way. The bulky Batmobile was a great symbol for this prototypical, "broad strokes" Batman. And it was truly good filmmaking when we witnessed young Bruce Wayne's fear of bats and darkness coming back to freak him out.

But it was so immediate, and so... not touched-up, that it was't a comic book movie. The semi-presence of Gordon and the lack of any real climax (other than the return of Liam Neeson--purely a character moment) left wondering which draft the director was going with at any given time. If you're going to spend half a movie in Tibet and half in Gotham City, you better have people care that you're in Gotham City. Now, there was that neat section where everyone is hallucinating, but it never went anywhere! Scarecrow became death, and Batman had red eyes. When I hallucinate, it's a whole sahitload more intense than that. What Nolan needed was Hayao Miyazaki to take chage of the storyboards for the crazy scenes! We would have watched bridges turn into huge spiders, and crawl around the city while people with smiley-faces for hands tried to beat up the opera singing lion. Think about that.

All in all, I miss the brilliance of Micheal Keaton's confused millionare, and the art-directed look of Tim Burton's 40's-or-maybe-80's Gotham City.