Updated 07/17/08: Second Opinion: Batman Begins (2004)

Finally, a theoretically perfect Batman movie: has an intelligent director; takes the idea of the “origin story” very seriously; is mostly bereft of stupid jokes and BIFF! POW! action; busts the production-design crew back down to its traditional status as tail rather than dog; is photographed in glorious anamorphic widescreen; eschews screwy CG in favor of good old-fashioned miniature photography; doesn’t expect us to believe (ridiculous!) The Joker killed Bruce Wayne’s parents. What’s not to like?

Well, plenty. I feel a little like a spoilsport saying it, but all the good intentions in the world don’t change the fact that the new Batman is a bit of a bore. It has the some of the right ideas, but bangs you over the head with them repeatedly. Bruce Wayne’s abiding fear of bats is visualized again and again and again, each time with a quick flash cut and a thundering six-channel sting on the soundtrack. The narrative contrives mightily to establish Wayne’s enormously wealthy father as A Good Man, to the extent of having him deliver a stilted monologue about “people less fortunate than us” as he rides between the towers of Gotham City on one of the subway cars that Wayne Industries has built, presumably to ferry the working poor to their shitty jobs in the caverns below. And, in case you somehow fail to be impressed by the subtext underlying nearly every superhero story, that of the identity crisis and loss of a normal human life, Bruce’s girlfriend spells it out for you in dialogue as the last reels of film unspool. (Compare the heartbreaking final scene of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, which crystallizes a similar notion of self-sacrifice but also epitomizes the dictum of show-don’t-tell.) The droning, seemingly omnipresent musical score is just another blunt object used to hammer nails in.

If the script is over-developed and under-refined, the storytelling isn’t advanced by the plain fact that, four films into his career, director Christopher Nolan hasn’t emerged as much of a visualist, which is a liability in a superhero movie. Even when Bruce Wayne stands, glowering, in a dark cave beneath Wayne Manor as bats scream in circles through the air around him, the image seems less impressive or archetypal than simply inevitable. Drab, even. The action scenes are uniformly incoherent, which may be an actual narrative strategy if Batman is wrapping himself like the howling wind around a small crowd of evildoers. But every fight scene in the movie is made up of the same few sputtering bursts of kinetic energy spliced together without editorial rhythm, visual strategy or basic sense of geography. And, flawed as Tim Burton’s approach was, nothing on this screen approaches the retinal permanence of the most potent imagery in his Batman and Batman Returns. On style points alone, Burton kicks Nolan’s ass up, down and sideways.

The lead performers find themselves swimming in the thickly dolorous material. Christian Bale has one of the coolest names in Hollywood — it’s the kind of monicker the heavy might be given in a Dean Koontz novel — with talent to match, but he makes a vaguely ridiculous screen Batman, his close-ups all curvy, pouty lips and gruff Muppet voice. Still, there’s a revealing counterpoint when his seemingly confident-bad-ass persona is juxtaposed against the different, more tentative versions of Bruce Wayne that his alter-ego makes stabs at becoming. And Katie Holmes? She’s got little more to do than poor Natalie Portman in Revenge of the Sith. It’s just as well, since her small-screen performance here is like a knife taken to a gunfight. All viewers are likely to notice (beyond, say, “Nice rack”) is a weird smirk that reminded me suddenly of Takeshi Kitano after the crash. Otherwise, she’s transparent. Similarly, Ken Watanabe as comic-book nemesis Ra’s Al Ghul is a nonentity. However, Cillian Murphy is a marvelous scarecrow and, while I honestly didn’t even recognize Gary Oldman as run-down policeman Jim Gordon, I did wonder who that guy thought he was, anyway, to be chewing up so much scenery in a peripheral part. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, meanwhile, do (yawn!) exactly the kind of terrific work you'd expect in supporting roles.

What is genuinely intriguing about Batman Begins is its serious attempt at exploring the psychology of fear. Traumatized by his childhood close encounter with a swarm of bats and terrified by the knowledge that the darkness of Gotham City can spit out fully formed cretins who will rob you of your closest companions in this world, Bruce Wayne resolves to take the shape of his own worst nightmares. He has designs on striking horror into the hearts of criminals and madmen, but this film makes it clear that even the Batman is terrified on the inside. Given the fact that the movie’s climax revolves around attempts to put the local citizenry into a permanent state of cowed terror (not completely unlike post-9/11 America), I was disappointed that this film’s Gotham remains an obvious Hollywood backdrop, populated not by an actual citizenry, but by a smattering of rich folks, a congregation of bums, some befuddled cops, a few barking attorneys, and the inmates of Arkham Asylum. I really liked the cutaways during the rooftop Batmobile chase sequence to the flummoxed police cruisers grinding the pavement below, French Connection-style, officers vocalizing pure bewilderment into their radios and back to the station. And there are some dynamite POV shots showing how the Caped Crusader might appear to the gaping populace below — as a floating demon, sparks issuing forth from eyes and mouth. The low-tech effect reminded me of something that might have been concocted by the disciples of Méliès or Benjamin Christensen for a particularly feisty silent horror film, and it marks a real triumph of imagination for the Batman Begins crew that they pulled it off. I just wish the movie leading up to that moment was as compelling as it deserves to be.