Movie: Batman Begins
Rating:
Reviewer: Lauren Robbins

The world needs superheroes again. In case you don’t believe me, feel free to rent Spider Man, Spider Man 2, X-Men, Daredevil or Elektra at your local movie store. It’s time once more for the world to be reminded of true virtue and justice in this seemingly unjust time. And who best to play out our deepest revenge fantasies but Gotham’s Grim Guardian himself, dressed up in a new Batsuit (nipples excluded) and up to his elbows in brand new gadgets to keep the streets clean?

Batman Begins, starring the dedicated Christian Bale (who lost 60 pounds for the 2004 independent movie The Machinist), is the tale of wealthy playboy Bruce Wayne, who spends his nights dressed as a bat and fighting cronies, goons, and thugs to keep Gotham City safe. His butler Alfred, who took care of him ever since Bruce witnessed his parents’ deaths as a child, is the only person who knows Batman’s true identity, or really, Bruce Wayne’s true identity as Batman.

In the fifth movie dedicated to the masked vigilante, Christopher Nolan (director of Memento) creates a truly different vision for not just the characters of Wayne and Batman, but for the villains and atmosphere of the movie itself. Begins is a darker movie, not centered on a dashing young billionaire who fights crime, but a man driven to the edge of his mind from the sorrow and pain of his childhood. It is the tale of one man taking his demons and throwing them in the faces of crooks in revenge of not just his father’s death, but the deaths of anyone who ever died in the streets to the hands of a crime lord’s lackey.

The atmosphere too is different, thanks to the detail given to the city of Gotham. In the beginning, we are introduced to the city encroaching on degradation, but still retaining hope for recuperation. Though Gotham eventually dwindles into near total infestation of crime, Bruce still holds on to those values. The choice of villains was also supurb, as both the Scarecrow and Ra’s al Gul are intelligent and use the one weapon Batman depends on, against him.

But one of the best parts of Begins is you get the darker version of Bruce, but also an almost incompetent Bruce. During the years before he really becomes Batman, he is a lost and troubled youth that slips into self-pity and obsesses on being a victim. He demands change but thinks everything is hopeless. It’s interesting to see this time of his life, between the moment he becomes an orphan and when he begins hiding in a bat cave. It is all the more exhilarating when he emerges as the Dark Knight, returning home for a full fledged battle. Because deep down, what makes the story of Batman so touching is not that he is fighting because it’s the right thing to do, but because he is fighting for his own personal vengeance, something everyone wishes that they could do. Rating: 4 out of 5 lesser-known Batman villains.