I saw it last night at midnight. It pretty much kicked ass.
I loved the various plot elements that forced Wayne into becoming Batman- particularly good, I thought, was why he doesn’t use a gun, and why he doesn’t kill.
Personally, I never much cared for Burton’s Batman… well, this one’s a lot more realistic, and not so over-the-top.
The fight scenes can be a little hard to follow- but given the nature of Batman, having him very hard to track in a fight makes a lot of sense.
There was one element that I didn’t much care for- the weapon that the bad guys use against Gotham- but it wasn’t so bad as to ruin the rest of the movie for me.
I saw it last night and LOVED it. I can’t wait to see it again. It’s everything I could have wanted. I don’t want to say too much for those who haven’t seen it yet, but I thought the performances were wonderful and they really worked to make this a character-driven piece instead of a summer movie juggernaut that lumbers from one CGI action setpiece to another. In fact, I believe many of the effects were practical rather than CG.
I hope this film is really successful and spawns equally excellent sequels. Finally we have a series that could actually tell the darker stories like *The Killing Joke * or A Death in the Family without it turning into something where you’re cheering because Jack Nicholson finally brained that lameass Chris O’Donnell.
I went into this w/o any Batman baggage (I’m not invested in any previous incarnations), so there wasn’t anything that could be left out that would bug me. But I thought pretty much everything about it was real good-- the acting, the plot, the music, the pacing, the dialogue… I especially liked the relative realism in the film, and the dark evocation of Gotham was very effective.
This movie totally fucking rocks. Dark, creepy, smart, competently shot, beautifully acted, just amazing.
Wonderful restrained performances from the whole cast. Michael Caine as Alfred was the most hammy, but I thought that a less stuffy Alfred worked extremely well, showing how Alfred filled the void in Bruce’s life, and serving as a foil to Bruce’s vice-tight grip on his emotions. Mad props to Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, and, man, oh, man, Cillian Murphy! Where the hell did that guy come from? What an amazingly creepy performance!
Whatshername, the female love interest, sucked. There was no chemistry in the tacked-on love story, plus she was a completely unconvincing as the token “strong woman.” But you can ignore that pretty easily. This is a manly man film, about manly men and their manly doings and the manly bonds between one manly man and another.
The toys were all on the restrained side, rarely edging into over-the-top cartoony super-tech. The whole film had an extremely well-grounded feel, even when wacky crap was going on. The fight scenes went for hectic realism rather than balletic choreography, and succeeded brilliantly.
I was very, very impressed. The hubby and I are already making plans to catch it again in a matinée.
The only element I was worried about was Katie Holmes. We are not talking Oscar worthy performance but she was not so distracting that it took away from the film. (Except for the final scene. She had this obvious case of nippilitis. My mom and I totally noticed it but my brother and a male friend did not. Take that as you will.)
Yeah, this was one of the things I really liked about the film. Sure, the fight seens were over the top in what we’ve all begun to expexct ever since Raiders of the Lost Arc, but they had a realism to them that’s hard to pin down, yet seemed to work really well. I especially liked the film work that (and I’ll spoiler this just in case):
Made Bataman seem more like a shadow than a person.
I’ll be going to see this in about an hour. My original plans had been to go out for a nice dinner this weekend to celebrate Father’s Day, then go see Batman Begins next weekend after the initial crowds had come and gone. Having read reviews and discussions of the movie, however, I proposed to my wife that we swap that around, so I could go see the movie this week rather than next.
She not only agreed, but proposed that we do both this week. I love this woman.
I’m going tomorrow night…dinner and a movie with the wife.
I just read the review posted by RitzyRae (thanks btw…good review) and it seems the reviewers main problems with the movie were the fight scenes and the music, both of which he thought were pretty bad. Any non-spoiler type comments from those of you who have seen the movie? How badly does it impact the film…if at all? Other than that, sounds like the movie is going to be really good, and perhaps the start of a GOOD batman franchise. Well, one can hope anyway…
I liked the music just fine. I thought the hard-to-follow fight scenes made sense in this case because you’re not *supposed * to be able to track the Batman. He spends time in the beginning getting badass ninja training, then he uses it. The fights are more or less from the criminal’s point of view. This is what it might be like to be attacked by the Batman in a dark alley. “Hey! <rustle, thump, blackness> WTF? How did I end up in jail?”
The fight scenes were done well. It would have been nice to see more, but it makes a lot more sense that you can’t see what is going on.
The music I didn’t even notice at all, so it certainly did not stand out as bad to me. And while music isn’t often the most memorable thing to me in movies, there have been many movies where bad music bothered me and ruined my enjoyment of the film, so it’s not like I was just being completely oblivious.
In some case yes, in some cases no. Even if the bad guys are getting thumped around, I found the fights distracting. Even if the badguys are getting tossed around, the audience needs to really see Batman in action now and then.
I disagree. Batman is supposed to strike from the shadows, and I loved how the fight scenes were shot as if you were watching a horror movie, from the perspective of the criminals. One of the major themes of Batman Begins is that Batman evokes the same terror in the criminal mind as bats themselves do in the mind of Bruce Wayne, and shooting the Dark Knight as a monster in the night gets this across in a way no Batman film has ever managed in the past.
Yes, exactly! One of the things I loved about the movie that was evident from the first trailer was its ability to suggest that horror-like tone when it needed to. Superman is neato, gamely punching out bad guys in his primary colored spandex; Batman is scary as all hell.
