amorpheus

I finally saw "Batman Begins." Interesting movie, that. It starts with Bruce Wayne's childhood. No surprise there. After all, this is an origin story, so what better place to start than at the beginning, with his discovery of the batcave. He was playing around with a girl named Rachel. At this point, I thought to myself, "Who the hell is Rachel?" When I heard that the villain for this movie was to be Ra's Al Ghul, I naturally assumed that Bruce's love interest was going to be Talia. No such luck. We were stuck with Rachel for the whole movie. I know that may be a spoiler for some people, but I think it's more of a spoiler to go through the movie as I did wondering when Talia was going to show up so that Batman could stop making Tom Cruise jealous.

After that introductory snippet, the actual story starts. After a pointless fight scene, we meet Ducard, very ably played by Liam Neeson. "Wait a minute..." I thought, "Isn't he Ra's Al Ghul?" No, he's Ducard. "Are you sure? I mean he looks JUST LIKE Ra's does in the comics..." No, he's Ducard. "... maybe he's Ra's Al Ghul concealing his identity, then... ?" No, he's a different character entirely, and one who introduces Bruce to Ra's al Ghul (you can tell it's really him by the stupid fucking beard (I really hate that beard)). Once Ra's is introduced, the first thought that popped into my head was, "Ra's al Ghul is pronounced with a long a." Granted, I am not that into Batman unless Paul Dini or Alan Moore is involved, but I distinctly remember Talia correcting Batman's pronunciation in the cartoon, because everyone gets his name wrong. I know that when it's written out, "Ra's" looks like "belonging to Ra [The Egyptian Sun God]," but the etymology is entirely unrelated - "Ra's Al Ghul" is actually from the Arabic meaning "The Demon's Head," which sounds sinister and forboding until you realize that it doesn't really mean anything. Of course, I didn't hold that against the movie. After all, even if I was right about the pronunciation, it's still much more surprising that I know that than that Christopher Nolan doesn't.

Then, the training begins. I have read a lot of old comics because they are unintentionally hilarious, so I know that Batman's training originally consisted of a montage of no more than three panels. They padded that out a bit for the movie. It was somewhere in the training sequence that I first thought, "This isn't Batman." Then, during a scene in which Bruce confronted the mob boss Falcone, it dawned on me - Of course this isn't Batman. This movie isn't about Batman. It's about how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. I couldn't expect everything leading up to that point to be in character for what Batman would become. So I relaxed a bit and enjoyed the show.

I was a bit apprehensive when I first heard about this movie because I thought it might continue the downward spiral of Batman movies, for one thing, and for another because I hate Ra's Al Ghul. Whenever I find out that Ra's Al Ghul is the villain in the story, I'm always a bit disappointed. Sure, he's powerful, but he's no fun at all. Fortunately, that's what we have Scarecrow for. Although he was tragically underused, Cillian Murphy stole the movie for me in the role of Dr. Crane (named for the main character in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", not for Kelsey Grammer's character on "Cheers"). I know that there wasn't much to the character. He was played as a detached academic type. But, really, that's who he's supposed to be - a skinny, frail, detached academic. Once the mask is on, though, he's a proper comic book villain. Oh, Scarecrow!

Although it was enjoyable, I wouldn't say that "Batman Begins" is a masterpiece. Then again, you can't really expect something called "Batman Begins" to stand on its own. I will say this for it - it's a start. It helps to cleanse the palate of the unforgivable "Batman and Robin." It's not the best that Batman can be done, but it is the best it has been done in a long time.