Batman Begins Review

There are tons of live action Batman films out there and i'm sure there will be dozens more to come in the future and while some of these films have indeed touched upon Bruce's backstory none have gone into as much detail as the film that i'm about to review today. This film brought the Batman film franchise back from the dead and so for good or worse we should show this film some respect and so here is my review of "Batman Begins" enjoy.

The plot of this film is Bruce Wayne deals with the lose of his parents by swearing revenge on every criminal in Gotham and so after years of training he becomes Batman and he arrives just in time because he has to stop the threat of both The Scarecrow and someone who he believed to be dead Ra's al Ghul. In all honesty for me at least the story of this film wasn't that good don't get me wrong it's a good story but it could have been a lot better and given who the director is i'm shocked that he went with a story that's pretty bad.

Starring in this film is Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman and Sir Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth. Also starring in the film are Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard / Ra's al Ghul , Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes , Gary Oldman as James Gordon , Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow , Tom Wilkinson as Carmine "The Roman" Falcone , Rutger Hauer as William Earle and a very young Joffrey Baratheon as a kid that admires Batman.

Every Christopher Nolan film is always well cast and the thing is true for this film and also true for this like every Christopher Nolan film is the fact that the film is well acted. Every actor in this film does a really good job even the guy who seems to always play corrupt detectives including the one in 2 Fast 2 Furious is really good in this film that's how good the acting when even the smallest of parts is performed well then you know that you're seeing a well acted film.

Now it wouldn't be a Batman movie if there wasn't a Batsuit and so i'd like to take a minuet to talk about the suit in this film. Which I don't really mind that much I feel that it really does suit the more realistic setting that this trilogy is going for really well and while its not the best suit out of the three I get the feeling that that's the point since Batman himself is just starting out and so it makes sense that his suit would look a little rough round the ages.

Like what most live action movies featuring Batman seem to do for some reason we get to see the death of Bruce's parents. However in alot of the other films it doesn't make sense to tell us that since it plays no part in the film here tho it does make sense the whole film is about setting up this version of the character and so that does mean that we need to see the death of his parents even tho it's something that we've seen hundreds of times before.

One thing that I while I understand why they included this sequence it's something that i feel could have been differently. Like I said I fully understand why they included the sequence of Bruce getting things like the suit , the car and the cape but to me it just felt like it was fanservice and nothing more and so I feel that a sequence this important could and should have been handled in a better way in my humble opinion.

One of the things that I thought worked really well is the twist reveal of the villain and by that I mean the big Ra's al Ghul twist near the end of the movie. To me this twist worked because they made both Ra's al Ghul and Scarecrow interesting characters and while Scarecrow could have easily carried the movie as a solo villain adding in Ra's al Ghul to me worked and as did the fact that he lied to Bruce about who he really was which only served to make the character more interesting because now your wondering if anything he ever said was true.

I'm so glad that they went with a more lesser known villain for this movie just because it would have been super easy for them to pick a character like say The Riddler for example and have him be the main villain just because he's more well known. However they didn't do that instead they went with Scarecrow a lesser known villain and because barely anyone knows about this character they made him very interesting i'm not going to lie and say that he's a god villain because honestly they make him pretty dumb when you think about it but for his first live action movie they made plenty of good choices with this character in my opinion.

One of those things being that they made him actually pretty creepy which is something that they didn't really have to do but i'm glad that they did. Another thing good thing that they did with the character is his look the look that they give him in this film is really unique and to me it helps sell the creep factor of the character which in turn helps make him a more memorable villain which for mid 2000's comic book movies was a rare thing to see.

Now then boys and girls since this is a superhero action film that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's in the film itself. Which I honestly didn't like that much to me Christopher Nolan really can't do action well and it really does show in this film since there's nothing new or inventive done in the action scenes it's just the same stuff that we've seen done better in other superhero action films and that makes the ones in this film seem dull and boring.

I also didn't like the fact that this film was nearly two hours and twenty minuets long mostly because it didn't need to be that long at all. If anything thing this story could have been told in two hours and nothing would have to be lost story wise , why they chose to make the film as long as they did is truly beyond me since the added run time adds nothing to the overall story and instead made me feel bored which is always a bad thing for a superhero action film.

Overall this film clearly isn't the best film in the Dark Knight Trilogy but everything that that film did well was because of the foundations layed out by this film. Yes there are alot of faults with this film and those faults are very hard to ignore but every trilogy has to start somewhere and the fact that this one started out with a film that is pretty means that there's room to grow and improve if this film was perfect then there would be only one place to go and that's down as such this film gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

All images used in this review were gathered from the Batman fandom wiki page. If you want some good high quality images I do recommend using them and if you don't Batman told me I can make you watch Batman & Robin all day every day until you do becuase we are both that cruel.