the Dark Knight returns!

Saw BATMAN on Friday - it is brilliant! Only two critical comments - fight sequences shot REMARKABLY poorly, especially considering who you've got to work with (Christian Bale of EQUILIBRIUM! =) and the nature of the character (BATMAN!) - and well, the weak link of the casting... Katie Holmes, in, as far as I know, her last pre-scientological role. A sad last non-cult-indoctrinated career gasp, altho I suppose the role itself didn't have all that much to it to begin with. I honestly don't remember a Rachel Dawes from any of my BATMAN reading, but I hafta admit I've got a lot of gaps in my knowledge of Batman mythology.

I SUSPECT most of this origin story is taken from a graphic novel called SON OF THE DEMON, but I'm not certain. I don't know that I love the idea that he was exclusively one guy's apprentice. I've always like the idea that he travelled the world to learn from the greatest minds and masters of the modern age - thieves, assassins, fighters, detectives, policemen, lawmen. A lot of kickass heroic types, dark and not-so-dark, including Samurai Jack, actually borrow from that idea of training, or rather, follow the same path. The Batman mythology ultimately probably lifts, knowingly or not, from some ancient text about some legendary figure.

I can't remember now the name of the opera that they're attending when his parents get killed, but I wish I knew better its significance, for a connection to his life. I THOUGHT it was "derfledermaus" (or however that's spelt - which I think translates into "The Bat"), but I'm pretty sure that's not what was credited at the end, though. I think it was something about a descent into hell (Faust? - a deal w the devil?), which also works, but y'know, not being an opera-goer, doesn't ring any particular opera bells for me. But then, maybe that would be TOO "comic booky," to connect the opera/story to his life in a literal or parallel way, and this movie wants to stay away from that feeling?

In most of the tellings of his origin, it's a movie - ZORRO. How perfect is that? =)

The cave of bats, and the swarming bats themselves, were done really well.

I was SO pleased when Gary Oldman's cop was called Gordon in the flashback.

I'm a little sad that the movie got such an AMAZING cast together but also such an aged one. I'm concerned about how many movies we'll get to see this Lucius Fox, Alfred Pennyworth, and even Ras Al Gul in, y'know? I WANT this BATMAN "franchise" to go on for a good long run.

Would LOVE to see a real and true and well done crossover with a Superman movie.

This was the most non-superhero superhero movie I've ever seen. It makes sense that it would be Batman that would accomplish that, tho, as he's "just a man," without any true superhuman powers. But, y'know, this movie could've been made with no mention or reference to Batman, substitute a few things here and there, and just created a new...I dunno...a sort of dark Indiana Jones as a crime fighter character...or something...

And it plays like different genres in different parts, but never really breaks the overall feel of the BATMAN "world" created in the movie, y'know? Part old school hard boiled detective gangster, part modern psycho killer, part horror movie, parts action, but all holding together. Hrmm...maybe it feels more like SEVEN than any other "superhero" movie I've seen?

I DO just wish the hand-to-hand action had been shot better. Seems like a TERRIBLE place to fall short in a Batman story. Hell, even if they'd done some wacked out transition to an animated sequence... would've taken some very clever doing, but I would've preferred it to what I saw on screen.

And oh...Katie...Maybe the scientologists already stepped in at this point. Getting her a gig opposite Christian Bale (not a sci, is he?—I think I'd be quite disappointed to hear that), to get her more practice kissing pointy noses, at a comfortable height at first, y'know?

In the scenes with Bruce near the end, where she says that they can't have anything together until he's no longer needed, I kept dropping in "Dawson" and "Pacey" at the end of every other line. She just didn't seem to own a character called Rachel. She came off as a slightly older Joey Potter to me. Maybe if they showed her actually litigating, y'know, trying a case in court, addressing a judge and jury...?

Ah, but there is so much good and smarts in this movie. I will see it again. =)

Keep on keepin on~