The power to recreate an image.
I think people forgot just how weird Batman was when this movie came out. You had 2 Tim Burton movies which although darker than anything before it (at least of the movie World) we're still kind of campy and light-hearted and then Joel Schumacher's attempts put them right back in the 1960s.
It's kind of weird looking back at this movie now. And thinking of it as some sort of catalyst for where superhero films could go. Especially because so many of them (at least in the DC realm) are trying so hard to be dark and gritty that it's almost coming off as mundane. I'm looking at you new Teen Titans film*.
So there's a very rich boy who falls down a well. Much like Timmy, unfortunately he doesn't have the dog Lassie to come and save him so a bunch of bats harass him and his father decides to pick him up. Then a couple of weeks later he goes to a play with a bunch of bats in it. That's some really in parenting skills.
Then to show off the parenting skills even more the father takes his child and wife down a dingy alley on the way to their limousine. Why there's an opera house that opens up into such a disgusting Ally is beyond me. And why the richest family in Gotham doesn't have any security when they live in a city that's plagued with a depression is also beyond me. There's a scene later in the movie where
Liam Neeson tells Bruce Wayne that his parents death wasn't his fault it was the fault of his father's. And he's absolutely right. Funny thing the first time I watch this movie I Didn't Know Who Liam Neeson was. To me he was just a really solid actor wasn't aware that he was such a big star at the time. So when I saw his character died somewhere in the middle that film I didn't think anything of it. Looking at it now it's really easy to see that of course he's going to be the main villain. You don't hire on Leslie Nielsen and then drop him halfway through your film all while pretending some other random guy that you've never seen in your life is actually the main villain.
Ultimately the film focuses mainly on the League of Shadows and the Potential Threat that they bring to Gotham and the basic Mafia villains that played Gotham as well. They could have done an entire film just on the mafia and I think it would have turned out okay. Really that's what the second feeling kind of did it was a mafia floor that happen to have a crazy clown in It.
Biggest complaint I hear about these movies is Batman's voice. Everybody says it's over the top and it's really dumb and it takes you out of the film every time you hear it.With the exception of One Moment In This film I didn't find it all that bad. His voice is a little Gravely but not to such an extent that I thought it was self-destructive. Like I said there was only one scene where it didn't really work and that's when Batman was harassing the corrupt cop.
If anything my only complaint about his voice is that it makes him sound like he has a sore throat. I kept expecting the police commissioner or his kind of girlfriend to try and offer him a menthol.
There's something I can kind of complain about. The chemistry between Batman and his girlfriend is kind of non-existent. I feel like just two people that occupy the same space I occasionally interact with one another. You don't really get the feeling that the two have any romance between each other.
And as much as I wouldn't have minded a romance subplot in the film there was already like 10 other stories going on. In the 89 Batman movie had this problem too. Batman had some weird relationship with the photographer in that movie and they often brought the whole thing to a grinding halt. You'd have to wait for the romance to end just to get back to the basic plot of what Jack Nicholson is trying to do.
Anyways to get back to the story. Batman learns how to fight from a bunch of strange looking ninjas and for some reason never questions that there's this weird Irish ninja who lives perfectly in his environment somewhere in the middle of nowhere China. They tried to convince him to kill this random Chinese guy and it's only then that he realizes that maybe these people aren't so good. Really? The Black costumes swords and overall ideological views of these people didn't clue you in originally.
It as if you ended up working for the British government during the Opium Wars and only discovered in the last 2 days of the war that maybe an imperialistic army that's funding a bunch of drug dealers in foreign lands may not be the good guys in the conflict.
Now Batman's back in Gotham and he's causing trouble for the local Mobsters who aren't aware of his existence. They all get arrested and the big mobster Falcone is put in a mental institution we're he subjective to fear gas and turn into something of a vegetable. Then there's a bunch of stuff about putting chemicals in the water blah blah blah. Remember when Jack Nicholson as the Joker did this in the 89 movie only he mix cosmetic materials together and this would cause allergic reactions and people that would kill them.
That's the funny thing about watching this film. When I was originally watching it I was really enjoying it, and then the next day I also kind of still enjoyed it but then my brain started thinking about it and I realised this movie went from being really good to just kind of average once my brain absorb what was actually going on.
I do kind of miss the environment in this movie. The next to Batman's don't really have any unique Gotham architecture to them. They just feel like New York City Meats Chicago. Which I guess isn't the biggest deal as the environment in this movie isn't anything too spectacular. I remember this movie being much more stylistic than it actually is.
Really when you're comparing it to those 89 movies or just not going to win. Say what you will about Tim Burton or Joe Schumacher's Batman films, but they really did feel like they existed in the Batman World. Whereas these movies feel like Batman's plane to exist in the real world.
The fight choreography in this movie is all over the place. Most shots use that camera trick where they move it really quickly so you can't really see what's going on but I admit this movie almost feels conservative compared to what films to do it now. Where they move the camera so quickly that you literally can't see anything on screen. Take a little time and get your characters to throw a punch.
I'm kind of surprised this movie turned out as well as it did. Watching it now I'm very surprised they didn't make it more zany, or focus on one particular villain more than they needed to. If they made this movie now the entire thing would be focused on Scarecrow. And although he's an interesting villain in the film I think it's better that they kind of left him as a side character. Because he's only really interesting when you get to see small chunks of him. And at the end of the day he's just a little guy who has a hallucinogenic drug at his disposal.
Overall it's a decent film, The pacing is technically better than the 89 Batman movie so it's more enjoyable to watch at the time. But it doesn't stick with you like the 89 movie did. A lot of what goes in your head during the film will seep out later on and then you're left with a vague memory of what you think the film was.
*Okay so I make a quick joke at the Teen Titans movie that's coming out, but the reality is I haven't really looked into it. I don't plan to look into it and I'm not bothered about the film. It's kind of tiring watching a bunch of people complain about something that hasn't come out yet. And then knowing that they're going to complain about it regardless of how the film actually turns out.
That said I did talk about a movie called Geo Storm ones which was some sort of disaster based flick and where I did a review of it a month before it came out, mocking and pre predicting everything that was going to happen. From what I remember I think I was actually wrong on most of my ideas. Once again it's not that big a deal just acknowledging that I might be a bit of a hypocrite to belittle people for mocking something whan I've done exactly the same thing.
Is this movie overrated or over hated? In the last five years I've seen a bunch of different people try to rip this movie apart. And the first few years it came out it was quoted as being the greatest movie of the last 10 years. It was even said to be the greatest Batman film. And then the second one came out in this movie was kind of Forgotten. Up until the last five years.
Honestly I think it's fine. It's one of the very few times I'll actually enjoying origin story for Batman. As we've become so overburdened with them over the years that I've become numb to when they even come out. Liam Neeson was really fun in this movie. He had a good solid act to him he wasn't trying to be over the top and he wasn't boring either.
Comments
Post a Comment