While everyone is probably wasting their hard earn money on mediocre Superhero movies like the latest Superman film from James Gunn or the most recent Fantastic Four film that just came out today, I decided in my own right to sit down and watch one of the greatest reinventions to any Superhero movies ever created by human hands. I've may have said this many times that the Superhero movie genre is a bit on the dead side of things, but when I think of the fact that Batman Begins has just surpassed its Twentieth birthday. I think back in a time when I truly got into Batman comics and graphic novels and reminded myself that Batman was always my favorite Superhero from childhood.
A young Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) travels to the far East, where he's trained in the martial arts by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), a member of the League of Shadows. When Ducard reveals the League's true purpose -- the complete destruction of Gotham City -- Wayne returns to Gotham City with the intent of cleaning up the city without resorting to murder. With the help of Alfred (Michael Caine), his loyal butler, and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), a tech expert at Wayne Enterprises, Batman is born.
I've always been a Batman fan ever since I was a kid, and one of my fondest memories was watching a lot of the sixties Batman TV or the Batman movie released in 66. Furthermore ever since the release of Batman Begins during either my junior or senior year in high school whenever it came in a conversation on who was the greatest Superhero, and I would always pick Batman while all of the other Bros would choose Superman because he's all powerful, furthermore I would never let that bother me, though granted if I was a little smarter I would simply say that "well Batman is at least human!" And to me that's always what made me love about the character is that you have a man in pain and angry at the world after a traumatizing experience in the death of his parents and yet he chooses to clean his city now out of vengeance or wanting to kill the bad guys but more of wanting to inspire more heroes to clean the city of Gotham. I actually do remember after the release of Batman and Robin around 1997, the whole DC comics when downhill from there and Warner Brothers pretty much stopped making any Superman or Batman movies for a long time, and at that time I was more centering on Star Wars or Indiana Jones then I was with other movies sure I did spend more movie watching on other certain films in the 2000's but I was more excited about the Star Wars Prequels than I was about anything else. In fact when Batman: Begins when was released, being still a Star Wars fan moreover wanting to still see Revenge of the Sith more than any other films I was just sceptic, even though after the first viewing of the first film by Christopher Nolan I thought it was great from beginning to end furthermore it was a different kind of Superhero film that I never seen before. But when I re-watched them on DVD and Blu-Ray I slowly became obsessed with a lot of the imagery as well as what Nolan as a filmmaker was trying to accomplish, by grounding the character to a much more realistic tone than we've ever seen in film. It was around January 2003 when Warner Bros decided to hire Christopher Nolan to take a crack at making a Batman film after his success with Insomnia, although Nolan claimed that he wasn't a comic book expert he had to hire a writer who knew a lot about comic books as well as the superheroes and David S. Goyer. Goyer who was responsible in saving the Marvel Comics franchise as well as the films brought the movie Blade to the big screen, was a huge comic book fan growing up and loved a lot of the Batman comics and so, once Nolan stated his intentions into reinventing the character into a much grounded and darker tone the looked into a lot of comics as well as some graphic novels, for which would be the inspiration behind the Dark Knight Trilogy. In one of the things that makes a great superhero movie is that you must have a list of great actors and actresses to surround the movie, and one of the inspirations Nolan took when it came to casting the movie he took a lot from Richard Donner's Superman. And the fact that you have a list of accomplished actors in Sir Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman as well as Liam Neeson helping up and coming actor Christian Bale in bringing a new kind of Batman is just a great understanding, into making a perfecto origin story of Batman. Christian Bale at the time I wasn't familiar with in terms of age appropriate films to watch back in 2005, so, this was the first time seeing him portray Batman as well as Bruce Wayne and really, when you look back at the other Batman films from Adam West to Michael Keaton as well as the late great Val Kilmer they all were just playing Batman and sure Bruce Wayne was there but it was mostly Batman in a pure basis and we've never seen the real origin as to why would Bruce Wayne become Batman or why he chose to fight crime. And really Bale was that first person to give you both Bruce Wayne as an angry man wanting justice for his own parents as well as a much more terrifying Batman that I never seen, and in fact the first time my dad sat down and watched Batman Begins he was literally taken a back. Furthermore re-watching Batman Begins you really begin to feel Bruce Wayne from his anger as well as his pain and finding that piece of that shadow side that he needs to fix his city and Christian Bale to me will always be my Batman as well as Bruce Wayne till the day I die and I will always thank Bale for that in terms of getting me back into loving Batman. As much as Bale being a great Batman, you have to have great antagonists to challenge Batman and both Liam Neeson as well as Cillian Murphy and long before Cillian gave us a great performance in Oppenheimer, he was a great psychotic antagonist as Scarecrow aka Dr. Crane and I always love his chilling quote when he say's to Tom Wilkinson "would you like to see my mask?" and going back to his performance in the film he does a fantastic job at playing a corrupt doctor but a sinister modern day Norman Bates type character. Liam Neeson at the time of 2005 was always playing that character who sometimes gets killed off but always plays the mentor or father figure, but this was the time when you see him play a great antagonist to Bale's character. And one of the things that makes Batman Begins great, is you don't start off with traditional villains like Joker or Penguin you have some of these great bad guys that you've never heard of like Ra's Al Ghul who really reminds you as a kind of terrorist like Bin Laden. but his motivations are more we need to do something in order for humanity to survive and destroying Gotham City is that best option in order to restore the balance and that's always to me the beauty to Batman's world is that Batman has a list of baddies that resemble him in a sense but as well all know is that Batman choose to save people instead of destroying his enemies. Now, granted I can go on and on about how great reliving Batman Begins and consider it the perfecto of great origin stories to any Superhero films, but the beauty of Batman Begins as well as The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, is that there all perfect in my eyes they both have the perfect beginning of a character as well as outbalancing the risks and more importantly finding the conclusion and Batman Begins to me is the perfect beginning to any Superhero film and for the last two hours of watching the movie not once, did I turned to my cell phone and I was hooked on watching it from beginning to the very end furthermore I can never in a million years choose which is better out of the Dark Knight Trilogy, a side from The Dark Knight being Chris Nolan's greatest accomplishment to his filmmaking career, but I still can't pick which is better out of the Dark Knight Trilogy because I love them all and consider each film perfect in my own right. After Avengers: Endgame, the superhero genre to me is getting too tiring in terms of predictability and finding something new and compelling to see. Moreover is just getting literally boring because I've seen almost every superhero films to the point where I've seen them all and re-watching Batman Begins, it filled that need for emotional and compelling storytelling and hell, in about an hour into the movie we don't even see Batman, for which I was shocked and once I see Bale as Batman it just put a smile on my face, for which I was happy to see as well as seeing something that brought back a time when Superhero films could be fun again. Now I'm sure the latest Superman movie is a great movie I don't doubt it and the same goes to the new Fantastic Four film, but to me I just feel like I'm seeing the same thing and Hollywood now is not taking any risks like they did with Batman Begins or beginning the MCU films from Iron Man to Avengers Endgame and I really wish they would stop making superhero movies if they're not going to try but that's just me in my old age. So, if you’re having thoughts of wanting to see the latest Superhero movies but having doubts, well then you can always take the time and re-watch the third greatest movie trilogy in the Dark Knight trilogy as well as the greatest and perfect origin story of any Superhero or hero, and Batman Begins to me is the most perfecto of the beginning of a hero's journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment