Batman continues

Batman Begins 1-Sheet

In preparing for the movie everyone has been waiting for, this summer’s blockbuster extravaganza, The Dark Knight, I decided to pop Batman Begins into the old DVD player and get myself ready.

I should preface this whole thing by going back a bit. I’m bats for the Batman. Before I moved into my tiny apartment and no longer had room to store thousands of comics, I had about 1000 Batman comics. Probably a bit more. There has never been a paucity of Batman comics to buy. There’s the original series, Detective Comics, there’s Batman, Legends of the Dark Knight, Shadow of the Bat, Gotham Knights, Batman Chronicles, Superman/Batman, which all starred Batman. Then there were all the comics you could expect him to pop up in regularly–JLA, Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, Birds of Prey, Catwoman, plus a bazillion mini series like Batman:Black and White, The Dark Knight Returns, The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. Then there are the one shots like The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum. This list is NOWHERE near comprehensive–it is a mere sampling of the voluminous and ever-expanding opus that is the Bat Universe. Alas, I had to sell that comic book collection so that I only have one surviving long box of comics. About half of them have Batman in them. So that’s me and Bats. We go way back.

But this is a movie blog, not a comic book blog, so let’s go back to 1989, when Tim Burton’s film Batman came out. I was pretty excited for this movie. Batman was going to get the serious treatment he deserved. Okay. I’m sorry. Back to comics for a minute. This movie came out soon after Alan Moore’s Batman masterpiece The Killing Joke. This is the comic wherein Joker and Batman are taken beyond the level of hero and villain. They are men broken by their lives, who in their own ways, succumb to insanity. They are not so different from one another. I’ll never forget reading that book for the first time. There are quite a few moments in there that made me feel, quite palpably, like I’d been kicked in the chest. I don’t want to give any of it away, because if you don’t read comics, you should still read this one. It’s pretty short and there’s a nice hardcover version available on Amazon for twelve bucks or so. So, having been blown away by that book, I had a certain mindset going into Tim Burton’s crack at Bats and Joker.

I left the theater on opening night with a resounding “Meh.” I didn’t love it. Now, I do have to give the film props for a couple of reasons. That film did a lot for Batman’s live action image. He was undoubtedly a bad ass. All traces of campiness left over from the TV show had been erased. Gotham was gritty and dirty and dangerous. I have to give Burton his due because on a lot of levels, that film mainstreamed the comic book Batman of that era. But by the same token, Jack Nicholson’s Joker was pretty lame. I felt he was Cesar Romero with a dash of psychopath.

Cesar Romero as the 1960's Joker

Jack Nicholson's Joker

Maybe that was intentional. Maybe it was just a matter of not knowing how far to take Joker. But he seemed, frankly, soft. And he died! What?? You don’t kill Joker. I get that Bats has his rogues gallery, but Joker’s the big one. Joker’s his nemesis, his mirror image. So I wasn’t gaga over that film. The second Tim Burton installment to that franchise had a few kernels of awesomeness. Batman Returns featured Michelle Pfeiffer as a suitably sultry and devilish Catwoman, and the theme song was the stunning “Face to Face” by Siouxsie and the Bansheees.

Siouxsie

Meow

And I love Siouxsie way more than I love Batman, so that was a happy synergy of love, ruined only by the ridiculous Penguin storyline. Every frame of that film featuring the Penguin was a disgrace. And I know I’m slipping into obnoxious fangirl mode here, but it just didn’t work for me. Penguin to me was always just a slick mob boss with a stunning collection of deadly umbrellas. Tim Burton’s deformed, psychotic Penguin robbed the character of all his charm. He was more or less just Joker dressed up like a Penguin. Not all of Batman’s rivals can be creepy looking psychopaths. And I guess that gets to the heart of why I hated that Penguin so much. He strayed into Joker territory.

Check out those teeth. Yuck!

The last two films in that franchise don’t bear mentioning really. I watched them opening night. And I enjoyed Jim Carey’s Riddler, but pretty much everything else was a train wreck. I could never figure out why there needed to be so many villains in each film. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane, all in one film. Really? Why? This is a film franchise, no? You’d think they’d be going for longevity. It’s also puzzling that Joel Schumacher managed to make two terrible Batman films. The guy’s made some good films in his day. At that point he’d done two big faves of mine–The Lost Boys and Flatliners. I also really enjoyed Falling Down. And he’s done some good work since–8 MM, Tigerland, Veronica Guerin. So really. What happened with his two Batman installments? Eek.

That finally brings us to today. Today is the day that I will have to suffer through watching The Dark Knight a day early to make sure the print is built properly and all the cues are working etc, so that we can have a smooth, catastrophe free midnight premier. Oh the hardships of managing a movie theater. And as I mentioned waaaaaaaaay back when this post began, I prepared myself for today by re-watching Batman Begins.

I don’t know if what I’m about to say is really possible. Because I loved Batman Begins when I saw it in theaters. But I think I under-appreciated it. I took it for granted. Because it was very nearly perfect. Exactly what a Batman film should be. On every level. Script. Design. Casting. Acting. I took it for granted because it looked so effortless. It’s just a great Batman movie. Period. It seems like a simple thing. But four other films stand out as reminders that making a good Batman film is NOT easy.

Also, I think it’s the most successful attempt at working a comic book character origin into a compelling action plot. (I always find the origin parts in comic book films a tad tedious. Which, as a side note, is one of the reasons I LOVED the new Hulk film. They showed the entire origin of the Hulk in the first 45 seconds of that movie and then moved on.) So one of the big successes of Batman Begins is that I know how Batman became Batman. Do I ever. I think most people know the broad strokes, even if they’ve never picked up a comic (although I could be totally wrong about that). But even so, I managed, for the first time in a Batman film, to become emotionally invested in Bruce Wayne as a character. I could sympathize with the simple accident that left the young Bruce with an intense fear of bats. I was immediately drawn into the relationship between Bruce and his father, who was so clearly devoted to his son, and a hero in a very different way than his son would eventually be. And you could see why Bruce would be so devastated by his father’s death, while also being driven to live up to his father’s example and make things better somehow. So in Batman Begins we get a real person who isn’t quite an average Joe–he’s heir to a billion dollar empire after all–but he’s a guy we can relate to nonetheless because he possesses the human frailties that plague us all: fear, guilt, grief.

By the same token, while we experience the process of Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, we are also given something equally important: the real Batman origin–the process by which Batman transfers Bruce Wayne’s fear of bats to the Gotham City underworld. We witness Batman becoming more than a vigilante. He becomes a symbol, a force. And that is the real origin story of Batman. By the end of that film, Batman has become iconic, mythic in his own world, not just in ours. And I hope the weight of Batman established in Batman Begins carries over to The Dark Knight.

And before I close, I’m just going to gush about Liam Neeson here for a minute while I have the chance. Yowza. I love that guy. Let’s face it. For the bulk of the film he was channeling Qui-Gon Jinn, but the guy has bad ass teacher down cold. And Ra’s al Ghul is not dead. I promise. KK. Moving right along.

Looking forward to The Dark Knight. I have great hope that Joker is done right in this film. Everything I have seen and read suggests that Heath Ledger succeeds on every level. I even heard, although I can’t remember where, so this might not be true, that Christopher Nolan based his Joker on The Killing Joke. So I’m really wound up and excited.

A few things I’m sad about. I wish Maggie Gyllenhaal had played Rachel Dawes in the first film for two reasons. Reason 1: Maggie Gyllenhaal is awesome! Reason 2: Continuity. It’s not going to kill the movie for me or anything. But in a perfect world.

Also, I wish Harvey Dent hadn’t been in the trailer, and even more than that, I wish we hadn’t seen him about to get burned in the trailer. Imagine how awesome it would have been to be a bit surprised.

And finally, I’m really sad that Heath Ledger is no longer with us.

I’ll be back tomorrow with thoughts on The Dark Knight.