why this batman movie scared me

curse chris nolan. now i can't retreat into my childish imaginings of patrolling the city in a bat suit. unless i want to spiral down insane lane, straight towards arkham asylum.

a review of star wars episode iii in empireonline said something like "after watching this last star wars film, millions of twenty- to thirty-something boys around the world just grew up." laughed out loud on that one, because it's so true. there's just not enough reason--and fun--to imagine being in a galaxy far, far away with a fucking cool lightsaber and cutting the hands of those damn, why-won't-you-just-die sith lords. the cycle has been completed, let's move on to the realities of life in a city that is so near, near your freaking nose.

but because it's that time of year for the (American) summer blockbuster, and because movie adaptations of comic book characters have become the fad in the post-LOTR hollywood, there seems to be hope for an extension of this suspended adolescence.

enter batman begins. with nolan directing, this batman movie is simply not gonna be the same as the previous ones. a filmography that includes memento and insomnia suggests that batman begins' trajectory is not burton-esque, and most definitely not schumacher-esque (oh thank god). as it turns out, burton's is german expressionistic, nolan's is french impressionistic (schumacher's is simply american childish).

in the previous batman movies (including schumacher’s), we see how the cold, calculating caped crusader dealt with the insane lot of the joker, the penguin, catwoman, two face, the riddler, doctor frost, and poison ivy. all of them driven by madness into a life of crime.

in batman begins, we see how bruce wayne was driven by anger, guilt, and revenge into developing and realizing an insane idea that he can save gotham city from the criminal and the corrupt. can’t help but compare nolan’s bruce wayne to robert rodriguez and frank miller’s dwight in sin city. i have to do something, i have to be the hero.

kalurong an iya inang…

bruce wayne’s spiral down insane lane began when—here’s issue no. 1—he fell down a well, where bats scared the shit out of his billionare ass. the kid got so scared that any image that makes him recall the guano brigade spooks him. like the theater actors in that opera, which forced him to beg to be taken home. so good daddy thomas obliged. then came that dude who popped bullets into his parents’ bodies, and wayne has his issue no. 2. my fault, my fault.

issue no. 3 came when he got beaten to the punch by falcone in killing the dude who killed his folks. oh he so wanted to return the favor to that schuck that he was willing to risk his princeton ass and wayne billions. but falcone’s men ruined his plans. still in an angry and vengeful state of mind, bruce went gee, now what? a face-to-face confrontation with falcone only muddled his brains, and then he decides to disappear.

issue no. 4: bruce becomes fascinated with the criminal mind. so what does a billionare do with such fascination? he goes to china, learns to be a petty thief, and got the internship of a lifetime when he got himself in jail.

that was when his messianic complex began. and who else to help him find what he was looking for but ducard, a wacko who belongs to this group, the league of shadows, which has this insane idea that they can restore balance to the force when things go awry.

and while he got considerable skills and training on how to be a shadow, he locked horns with the league regarding the way they understand and implement justice.

issue no. 5: i wanna do this the right way. not as bruce wayne, but as a giant bat. by donning a bat costume and having cool gadgets. yeah, right. who in his right, friggin’ mind will come up with an idea as insane as that?! oh i’ll scare the living daylights out of the criminal and the corrupt by becoming what i feared the most: a guano-pooping rodent. be afraid. be very afraid.

and so batman begins.

apart from bruce, the movie also gave us plenty of crazies to feast on. ducat, for one. crane/scarecrow is another. r'as al-ghul too, with his warped worldview. falcone. arkham asylum. and that hallucinogen, and the way it plays with your fears. and towards the end, batman and gotham city faces more of the same. inspired by batman himself, the still-at-large, former arkham asylum patients decide to follow his crazy idea of wearing costumes and becoming something else entirely. the difference is that they chose to be the criminals, not the crime-fighters. so the bat flies off to see what he can do with the villain known as the joker.

with nolan brazenly taking on the neurosis of batman/bruce wayne in particular, and gotham city and its hoods in general, batman begins simply stands out as a very mature interpretation of the bob kane creation. burton stepped into that a bit with his german expressionist batman, joker, penguin, catwoman, and gotham city. nolan went inwards, went deeper, and clawed his way into what the hell batman/bruce wayne was thinking when he decided to go bats. i think it was the guano. remember, when he slowly stood up and closed his eyes, and took a long deep breath while millions of bats swarmed him.

batman begins plays with the lead character’s psychosis. sure, there was enough action, but the movie really plays with the dementia of bruce wayne. good thing for gotham he chose to be good. but he’s still a little loose up there.

which makes one’s fantasy of becoming batman a tad harder. with the action/adventure genre, it is always fun to imagine becoming the lead character/s and play out the adventure. the video game industry’s sales suggests that. the juvenile undertaking is but normal for the forever adolescent, twenty- to thirty-something, city-bred male (guilty). boys will be boys.

but the batman begins experience is different. to imagine being batman in a nolan-inspired gotham city is a scary fantasy into the dark recesses of the human mind. of the fear lurking in those depths. of the dementia one has to undergo every fucking day. that's no fun.

i guess one has to grow up sometime. patrolling the nights of quezon city in a bat suit is not a good idea anyway. the buildings are too damn short. sniffing guano siguro, pwede pa…


over-all rating: 4 out of 5 potatoes (five if i can still imagine being batman)

direction: 4.5 potatoes (nolan rules! ‘nuff said!)

script: 4 potatoes (higher if that vaporizing thingamajig was introduced better; oh, and bruce wayne suddenly having a conscience when ducat and rhas al-gul ordered him to carry out justice, league-of-shadows style; palibhasa may saltik)

acting: 4.5 potatoes (yes, even katie holmes was good, neither over- nor under-acting her supporting role; get over the fact that she’s damn pretty, and that she did dawson’s creek, and you’ll see she is quite good; but personally, i think mary louise parker would have been perfect for the role)

art direction: 4.25 potatoes (the neon lights and nipples are gone!)

cinematography: 4.5 potatoes

sound: 4.5 potatoes (that somewhat piercing sound that gets louder and louder is just eerie)