The Occasional Solipsist

There have been two truly great movie adaptations of comic books in my lifetime: Spiderman, and now Batman Begins.

Honourable mention should probably go out to Brian Singer's first X-Men outing, but that movie was geared way too much for the kiddies and non-fans, so fell pretty short. And what does it say about a movie when its sequel is inifinitely better than the original?

We could get bogged down in discussing the long list of shitty adaptations (The Hulk, Daredevil, etc, etc), but I just don't have the time.

So. To the Reviewmobile!

Batman Begins does for The Dark Knight what Keaton, Kilmer, and (shudder) Clooney never could: Put the anti-hero in his rightful place in iconic history.

The movie opens with the necessary origin story, a job that is very well done here. We see the genesis of Wayne's phobia of bats before we get an inkling of what happens to his parents behind the theatre. (No spoiler there - everyone knows about that already).

From there we see Wayne travel the world, learning from criminals, being trained as a ninja, and finally making the decision that Gotham can be saved if he is strong enough to choose justice over revenge.

When Wayne finally does return reinvested in assuming his father's quest to clean up Gotham, we are treated with the dark, tough, terrifying figure that those of us who read the comic book know.

This movie makes the Keaton era Batman movies look like third rate fanfic: Gotham looks like a real city, Batman's costume, armour, and cape all make sense, as do all his gadgets. The special effects are awesome, the villains believable, and the acting was top notch, even that coming from Mrs. Tom Cruise.

In fact, the best part of this movie was the acting : Finally, finally Gary Oldman gets to play a good guy! Probably the single most gifted actor I've ever seen, (If you don't agree, stop reading this and go rent True Romance) Oldman has the unique ability to make you forget that he's acting and allows you to look past the actor and see him only for the character he's portraying. And the rest of the cast is well-suited as well: Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, and finally Christian Bale. The big guns were definitely brough to bear to make this movie.

Bottom line, go right past rent and go directly to buy for this DVD. Must have for any fan.

Labels: comics, movies, scifi