*Batman Begins

Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by David Goyer (story and screenplay), Christopher Nolan (screenplay), Bob Kane (characters)

Sometime late last year someone on one of the Firefly boards posted a link to what was supposedly the David Goyer/Christopher Nolan script for the new Batman movie. I, of course, printed it out, took it home, gave it a read, and had a good laugh at myself - what a dope I was, wasting an hour of my life reading this fake, hackneyed, slapped-together pastiche of Internet rumors, comic references, and descriptions of that same lame-assed Batmobile footage I had seen a week or two previous on AICN - written, no-doubt, by some bored fanboy who didn't even attempt to make it sound like anything that could possibly, plausibly have been written by a professional screenwriter. In the words of Hedonism-bot, "How wonderfully decadent! Jambi, the chocolate icing!"

And then something weird happened.

The trailer was released.

And somehow, some scenes from this fake script I read had actually somehow made their way in.

Entire lines of dialogue, even.

In the words of Bender, I thought, We're boned.

I waited five weeks to see this movie, and caught it last Friday only because the only movie out that I really felt like seeing (Zhangke Jia's The World) wouldn't let me get home in time for Galactica (which, if you're not watching, then you, like, should be, or something), so it was off to brave the mean streets of Battery Park City (that's a joke, by the way) to the gorgeous (that, too) Regal Stadium 16 to catch what I was sure was, despite the praise of quite a few people who I really thought ought to know better, a fair disaster of a movie.

Well, curse my unfevered imagination for not being able to translate a couple corny lines of dialogue on the page into the film now before me. I guess this is why I will never direct. This is why I will never write. This is why I will never be one of those readers, you know, those people who read ten scripts a day and decide which ones should pass go, and which ones should just pass.

I loved Batman Begins.

It's been widely said that Batman Begins is a retelling of the Batman origin story - I beg to differ. The death of his parents, the origin of the bats, nothing you haven't already seen in Burton's Batman, or even Schumacher's Batman, or pretty much every Batman. The business with the ninjas is new, but I am not at all enough familiar with the comics to say how new.

No, it's not an origin story. Instead, it's like Batman: The First 100 Days. Not quite how/why he became the Batman, but the first awkward outings, the first cuts, bruises, trials, errors. He's figuring out what to do, and how to do it, and we're right there with him.

The most interesting thing about this Batman, and possibly something that we've not really seen before, is the ways in which, more than gadgetry, more than darkness, more than fighting skills (though there is plenty of all three), Batman uses psychology and intimidation to get his "power". Especially interesting, considering the ways in which intimidation and fear figure into the plot itself (you may or may not have known that an early working title for the film actually was Batman: Intimidation).

The acting goes a long way in selling the story to us, and I cannot think of enough words to say how great this cast is (and Nolan, who reels them all in to properly tell this story as seriously as, say, Ang Lee should have done, or Sam Raimi seems to think he is). Christian Bale - phenomenal. Michael Caine - phenomenal. Liam Neeson - phenomenal. Morgan Freeman, for whom I usually don't much care - phenomenal. Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson - all phenomenal.

Katie Holmes, though. Yeesh.

Not all is well in the city of Gotham.

It's not that she's doing a bad job, really, she's just (horribly) miscast. Lest you think I'm just jumping on the let's-all-hate-Katie-Holmes-now bandwagon, I actually think she's pretty cool, loved her in Pieces of April and Go, but I can hardly buy her behind the wheel of a car, let alone as some high-powered D.A. who's all, you know, down with the people, or whatever.

Also did not care for Linus Roache's Thomas Wayne - I think he was going for strong, noble, brave, and true, but he comes off as some sort of weird robot.

Ken Watanabe, also, probably did the best he could with what he was given, but doesn't really bring anything to the table (other than yet another prestigious name to the cast), and honestly, lifts right out. He supposedly never blinks once. I'll have to watch it again just to make sure since, you know, I care.

What else bothers me? The Batmobile is ridiculous, though I guess no more or less so than any of the previous versions, really. The thing with the train having to reach Wayne Tower, or whatever, made little sense to me, even after the third (seriously!) time one of the characters in the movie had to explain it to me.

What bothered me most after I read the script continues to bother me after watching the finished film: the annoying (and hackey) repetition of the Big Heroic Tropes: "Why do we fall down?", "It's my actions that define me," blah blah blah - who wrote this shit, Akiva Goldsman?

Okay, forgetting for a moment that Nolan co-wrote said script, it very much speaks to his vision and skills as a director that he has not made a film ABOUT said Big Heroic Tropes, nor has he made a simple response to the last few Batman movies, nor has he made some obvious, snarky movie about itself; Nolan has a story to tell, and it's a good one.

Goyer's upcoming projects include film versions of The Flash and Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage. 'Nuff said!