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I just saw Batman Begins. It was shit.

Really? I thought this was a great re-introduction, nicely understated and as believable as it's possible for those things to be. Nicely dark and grungy, urban-decay-type setting, characters all very subtly done, no godawful pantomime colours and wanky costumes...

What exactly didn't you like about it?

What didn't I like about it? Oh God. Everything.

I liked it a lot. I found it exciting and a lot of fun, as well as well-made.

- Trout

I found Batman Begins boring and no fun at all. I thought it looked miserable, the colour of fresh horse manure. It was slow. All that background at the beginning was tedious, from Bruce wayne's fear of bats to his personal quest for toughening up and martial arts training, which is a load of macho bullshit we can probably take as read anyway.

I don't know who all that was for. For hardened bat-fans, it's full of niggles where it departs from established comic book continuity, and for your average punter who knows nothing about Batman's origins, it must have been as bewildering as it was yawn-inducing. A ten-minute montage of Batman 'training with the best' would have sufficed.

I won't list everything I disliked about the film because I don't want to drop too many spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet but is nevertheless foolish enough to read a thread about it.

I hated it. I love comics, movies and superheroes, but I honestly felt like leaving less than a quarter of the way through. I only sat through it because I'm a comic book nerd and I needed to know where it would all lead.

My patience wasn't rewarded.

The hours approaching, just give it your best
You've got to reach your prime.
That's when you need to put yourself to the test,
And show us a passage of time,
We're gonna need a montage (montage)
Oh it takes a montage (montage)

Show a lot of things happing at once,
Remind everyone of what's going on (what's going on?)
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take to long
That's called a montage (montage)
Oh we want montage (montage)

And anything that we want to go from just a beginner to a pro,
You need a montage (montage)
Even Rocky had a montage (montage)

(Montage montage)

Anything that we want to go from just a beginner to a pro,
You need a montage (montage)
Oh it takes a montage (montage)

Always fade out in a montage,
If you fade out, it seem like more time
Has passed in a montage,
Montage...

I almost agree with you HoU - except that it wasn't shit & I liked it.

But I couldn't help wondering what the point of it all was.
Tim Burton's 'Batman' and 'Batman Returns' were good, the rot only set in for 'Batman Forever' and 'Batman & Robin' was truely awful.

'Batman Begins' seemed to be retreading a lot of the same ground covered in 'Batman' (minus the Joker character). It would've been great if 'Batman' wasn't already a film. But, hey! it is. So 'Batman Begins' for me can only be at best 'meh'.

Yeah, but Burton's Batman was almost 20 years ago. The audience for this movie weren't even born when that was made.

Personally, I loved Batman Begins, I thought it was even better than the Burton ones.

Pete, where'd you get that montage song from? Sounds a bit Trey Parker & Matt Stone.

Yup, from "Team America".

Ah, Team America..... sweet film!
And so was Batman Begins. Had the right atmosphere, although I prefer Burton's,and some quality acting(Gary Oldman playing a sane good guy?!)
I found the film very enjoyable, although it clashed with many elements of Batman (the Bat-signal, who killed Waynes parents...etc)

-Shrugs-

I liked it, with the slight reservations about the fight choreography.

None of the Batman films stand up to the test of time for me.  Jack Napier?  Dancing with the devil by the pale moonlight?  *Utter* crap.

I could've forgiven an old, flabby joker if we hadn't been subjected to his 'secret identity' on top of that.  Shit soundtrack, a proper mid-eighties feel to it(just as we were heading into the nineties) and with everybody (with the possible exception of Nicholson, despite his age) being hopelessly miscast.  Horrible.

All that aside, there were a few good scenes that managed to save it- some truly inspired 'Batman moments', but it still doesn't work as a whole for me.

I ended up seeing it twice at the cinema and fell asleep the second time.

Forgot to add that I thought Batman Begins was great.  Even Mrs Jeb liked it.

:)

I still have high hopes for the Fantastic Four film after my expectations were raised considerably by the trailer. Before I saw that, my expectations had been rock bottom, and I didn't even have any plans to go and see the film.

f 4 film is crap, my son asked to leave half way through but i asked him to stick with it (the last 10 mins were fun thankfully).. but i liked Batman Begins.

Batman Begins was ace! The script admittedly has a few slight alterations to Batman's origins, but the main story was still there - the murder of Bruce's parents by Chill, the finding of the BatCave, etc.
The training scenes were IMO wonderfull, not only explaining Bruce's exceptional skills but also the first hint/nod to the Batman costume (the spikey arm protecters!)
Also loved the way the costume was slowly constructed from different pieces, each with an explanation for their use. Ideas like that are what made this film seem strangely down-to-earth to me, where it could so easily have been just pretentious posing.
The casting was superb, as were the performances (although Micheal Caine was nowhere near as good an Alfred as Micheal Gough). Christian Bale was born to be Batman!

In comparison, the Burton Batmans feel like pantomimes!

Actually it's not from team america,it's from south park!i saw it last night on dvd,used perfectly here though,i don't see the prob's with old battsy any thing's better than nothing right?

No, it's from Team America, when the puppety geezer has to train very quickly to rescue the comrades he abandoned and save the world from almost inevitabre destwucktion.

It also reappears in the end credits too.

Erm...your both right, bizarrely!

I finally caught up with the Fantastic Four film, and I wasn't disappointed. Much better than Batman Begins, and much for fun.

So nyah.

Hmmm...no accounting for taste.

I thought Batman Begins was okay. Yes, it took too long for him to get around to putting on the ears, yes the 'training with the best' bit was a bit pretentious. The 'pretending to be a decadent fop' scene was pretty silly.
  and so on, there are many other niggles I had of it. But overall it was fun.


ps That first Tim Burton Batman movie certainly doesn't stand the test of time. I saw it when it came out and thought 'genius' only to find it almost unwatchable last year

The song appeared first in an episode of South Park when they all go skiing and one of them has to race an obnoxious skiier, while the parents try to escape timeshare salesmen.

ADE

I just saw this for the first time and (despite my serious misgivings prior to seeing it) absolutely loved it.

The original Batman (which I loved at the time) has dated horribly, with some now irritating experimental music from Prince really grating.  Batman II (?), with the Penguin, is now the best of the first four movies, and the last two were obviously a complete fucking travesty.

So, it was about time someone reinvented the franchise, and this movie did it in style.

There were a couple of things which I had to willingly forgive:

- I've always preferred the anonymous killer version of his parents death, rather than the cheesily named "Joe Chill" version.  It was used to good effect here to tie into Bruce Wayne's desire for vengeance, so - forgiven.

- They should have been watching The Mask of Zorro!  Still, the theatre scene tied directly into Bruce Wayne's bat phobia, so - forgiven.

When I first heard about the movie, I thought the idea of him being trained by mystic martial artists on a snowy mountain was tired and lame - but I think it works really well in the movie, allowing it to break up the childhood flashbacks with some chop sockey action whilst also introducing a great new nemesis in Raz Al Ghoul (sp?).

Plus, we get the whole knife-edge morality debate which cements the idea that Batman will wound, maim and capture those he considers criminals, but he won't kill them.

The supporting cast are incredibly strong (Freeman, Caine, Oldman et al), and the action hardly lets up when we get to Gotham - we've got red herrings a-plenty as well, so that it's not initially clear who the real baddy is - and even when the Scarecrow does his reveal, he's still only the sideshow act.

I suspect that both Rutger Hauer (now embittered) and Raz Al (we don't see his corpse) are being set up for possible sequels, plus this film doesn't make the mistake of killing off the historic baddie (Scarecrow) like Burton's Batman did with the Joker.

And that batmobile is cool as fuck.

And he doesn't get the girl.

And it completely ignores the first franchise.

Excellent - I hope there's a sequel.

I watched a it a little, but maybe I was not in the mood for it.I assumed I was not in the mood for it anyway. I do not feel any urgency to see it since then. I still don't even now it is on Sky movies box office.,but that could be something to do with seeing KONG! on friday.

It was great the only other person in this mass shy cinema was a bloke who was hoping us two late arrivals were not going to appear. A small big screen it was like hiring out a living room with the best tv in the world in and the best film inb the world.

Anyway, Alone in the Dark  ( based on playstation game) is on or Batman begins, are clashing on box office.Which one should I choose?

:)

italics off?

Batman isn't as evil as those he fights - because he won't willingly kill.

He may be just as nuts as those he fights, but that's different.

" - They should have been watching The Mask of Zorro! Still, the theatre scene tied directly into Bruce Wayne's bat phobia, so - forgiven."

That was a bit crap, in my opinion. Bruce Wayne, or Maurice Mitchener?* "boo hoo - can we go now? this opera's got bats in it, and I'm scared". So, this film now makes it somehow Bruce Wayne's fault that his parents were murdered. That's too cruel. If they'd left the theatre at the end of the performance there would have been hundreds of people in the street and lots of witnesses about, so the mugging/murder could only have come about as a result of Thomas Wayne getting his family lost trying to get a cab.



(*Maurice Mitchener, for anyone who was never a follower of Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, was a 3-year-old whose parents complained to theatre managers after he was frightened by a pantomime)

"Batman is the greatest of the superheroes because his only power is that he's fucked in the head."

Alas, I forget who said that.

I thought it added well to his unbalanced state of mind.  Now he's not going around dressed as a bat taking down criminals because his parents were murdered - he's doing it because his phobia of bats indirectly caused the death of his parents.  That's more of a head-fuck.

I didn't like this film for a few reasons. I dont see how anyone could HATE it though. It's just boring and occasionaly irritating with lines like: "Does it come in black?"

The Scarecrow could also have been snipped out of the film without making much difference to the final product. Why have two villains if one of them is completely useless?


Absolute worst bits were...


SPOILERS






1) The Scarecrow gets beaten by the assistant District Attorney. I mean, for f*cks sake...


2) "I wont kill you, but I wont save you either!" Right. So leaving him to crash in an out of control train isn't killing him? I suppose it's the trains fault, is it? Moronic.

my point exactly - by his actions or his inaction he allows people to be killed.

and that he can't function properly unless there are outlandish villians to face.

The thing I found best about the whole movie was during his training sequences when I suddenly thought "Batman's a ninja!  Of course he's a ninja, it so obvious."  It had honsetly never ocured to me before.

The complaint about outlandish villains seems odd, as that's pretty much the cornerstone of the series, whether it's in the comics or the movies.  You'd rather a completely cerebral Batman, or boring villains?

I thought the "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" was a brilliant "get it right up you" pay-off line.

And if you know your philosophy of morality, it's clear that Batman didn't actually kill Raz.  Arguably, he allowed him to die, but only arguably.  You might just as easily posit that Raz commited suicide by placing himself in that situation in the first place.

I fail to see how the Scarecrow was useless.  He defeated both Batman and the A-DA, before the tables were turned, and also served to take the audiences attention away from the League of Shadows whilst introducing Arkham Asylum.  Beyond the dramatic reasoning, I thought the fear sequences were amazing - especially the evil Batman drooling black mucus as he interogated the Scarecrow.

I will concede that the villainous plot about evaporating poisoned water was contrived - especially as it involved a high speed train for no reason other than a high-speed train would be fun at that point.  But it was fun.

I suppose I better just agree to diaagree - it's obvious a lot of people found it below par - and I was expecting to - but despite myself I really enjoyed it.

I'm with Funt.

The rest of you are all wrong.

It was brilliant.

Interestingly, I once met a bloke who wrote the Batman comic for god knows how many years and he thought it was "pish".

I said "Big man, what did you think of Batman Begins"  

And he said (adopt a Scottish accent for this bit) "It was pish. They got it totally wrong. Batman is a self-made man. The idea that Ras had anything to do with making him the man he is is utter pish".

But you know what, I think he was wrong as well.

(And I actually did disagree,ever so politely, with him.)

The Montage song first appeared in South Park, in a parody of teen movies, but leapt to wider acclaim in Team America

Self-made man? Pish! It's well known in recent Batman continuity that Bruce Wayne had very expensive and rare training to make him the combatant and detective he is now. There was an assassin gunning for them all in The Many Deaths of The Batman.

Wasn't that rendered non-continuity by one of the (several) post-Crisis On Infinite Earths clean-ups?
Or as we normal folks call them - money-grabbing multi-part crossovers where nothing really changes much, except Forbidden Planet forgets to keep parts of your order so you go somewhere else to buy your books.

At the end of the day; Is Batman not a permeable liberalist?


Maybe not. Maybe he is a hardcore vigilante who has had sex with tons of women?