Bateman...uh, I mean Batman Begins

[Argent Towers]

I just saw Batman Begins. I loved Christian Bale in American Psycho, which is basically the only thing I've seen him in, so I also loved him in this movie. (He also made me wish I had long[er] hair again.) I thought it was funny to see him walking around in suits speaking in his good but weird-sounding American accent...I just saw him as Patrick Bateman instead of Bruce Wayne. I'll never be able to see him as anything else if he's wearing a suit.

I thought this movie was (duh) a huge improvement over the past Batman movies (not Keaton's, but the bad Schumacher ones.) I thought it could have been darker and grittier still, though. Everyone I talked to about this movie gushed to me about how "dark" and "gritty" it was, and Nolan did do a good job of portraying Gotham as it ought to be, but there were some forced bits that detracted: The cliche little-boy-lost towards the end stands out (Can we for once have a movie without extraneous cute little kids?)

Katie Holmes' character was lousy and poorly-acted and I didn't like the cheezy forced romance between her and Batman/Wayne.

Cilian Murphy is too pretty to be playing a villain. He looks like what Michael Jackson probably aspired to resemble when he started up with the surgery. Seeing his pretty face also kept bringing me back to the bone-chilling preview for the new Willy Wonka movie starring Johnny Depp as an effeminate, pouty, bitchy Wonka, that I saw before the feature presentation started (why must you keep raping our childhoods, Hollywood?!?!)

I don't think I have ever seen Liam Neeson behaving so violently in a movie before, and I must say, I loved it. His fight at the beginning was so cool.

All in all, I thought the movie was alright. I'm disappointed it decided to go the Spiderman route with clear-cut good vs. bad and cheezy villains and forced romance - although I guess it's neccessary, to avoid an R rating. It would have been cool to see a fight-dirty, film-noir Batman in a stronger dose than that of Batman Begins. But there were things I loved about it: Liam Neeson's character, for one, and Michael Caine who was perfectly cast as Alfred. I have high hopes for the sequel to this movie.

[Futile Gesture]

The film was pretty good, but I've a few grouches, natch :)

1/ The whole pick a flower and climb the mountain for enlightenment part was silly. How is a couple of weeks in this camp suddenly going to make him a ninja warrior? Basically it was some cheesy kung-fu kid teen flick plot with a twist.

2/ The director had some fascination about extreme close-ups during the action, so all you could see in every scuffle was flailing arms, legs and bodies without the slightest clue who was who and what was happening.

3/I still don't understand; why they needed to bring the microwave thing out in such an inconvenient place, and then shuttle it across town in the train. Why not drive it there to begin with? (And that's ignoring the whole silliness about microwaves powerful enough to evapourate all water yet leave humans untouched.)

[Arch Trout]

I've read a few comments from people saying they don't understand how he completed his training so quickly.

I saw it as the final training we saw was the icing on the cake, so to speak.
He was already trained in many disciplines, that's why Liam Neeson's character recited a few off when he first attacked him, Bruce already knew them.

Makes more sense if you look at it that way, and fits in better with the comics since Bruce trained under many different masters from around the world in many different styles.

[zweisamkeit]

Cilian Murphy is too pretty to be playing a villain. He looks like what Michael Jackson probably aspired to resemble when he started up with the surgery. Seeing his pretty face also kept bringing me back to the bone-chilling preview for the new Willy Wonka movie starring Johnny Depp as an effeminate, pouty, bitchy Wonka, that I saw before the feature presentation started (why must you keep raping our childhoods, Hollywood?!?!)



If you're referring to the 1970s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl himself hated it. I grew up with the movie and the book. While I love both of them, the movie definitely was a big step away from the tone of the book. Wonka is supposed to be creepy and weeeeeeird. I love Gene Wilder too much to think of him as anything more than having a touch of creepiness in him as Wonka.

The new movie is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the same as the book's title) and is not a remake of the first movie, but is based off of just the book (hence the squirrel room. I'm so happy about that! I love the squirrels in the book!).

[Larry Mudd]

There's an ongoing thread on Batman Begins over here (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=321295&page=1&pp=50).

[Cat Jones]

I don't think I have ever seen Liam Neeson behaving so violently in a movie before, and I must say, I loved it.
You should see this film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114287/combined) then - IIRC his last fight with Tim Roth is ... cutting.