Batman Begins: afterthoughts

http://www2.warnerbros.com/batmanbegins/index.html

In the wake of his parents’ murder, disillusioned industrial heir Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) travels the world seeking the means to fight injustice and turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.

“Disillusioned industrial heir…” I guess there could be many better ways to describe Bruce Wayne, but actually disillusionment is a good word (maybe mild) to describe the feeling of watching so much underutilised talent, not only among the cast, but the composers too: I was very surprised to know that Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard were both behind the soundtrack, because I found it very correct, but (with all my respects) just that; I would dare to say that it was even uninspired at times. The sound was more interesting, though the single one sound I liked the most, that of the car´s engines in one particular scene, resembles maybe too much those of the engines of the ships in Star Wars. There was also an interesting “dark voices in the background” scary effect, but it wasn’t as effective after the second time it was used.
In fact, besides disillusionment, deja vu is the second best way to describe the feelings conveyed by the film. If it was just a particular sound or a scene (remember the railway in spiderman2?), or maybe two scenes (seven years in tibet?), or three (show me the gadgets, Q), or maybe echoes (when did Liam Neeson turn to the Dark Side?) of other movies (Hadn’t seen Rutger Hauer for a long time, and there were two scenes where I was wondering when Deckard would appear), of other genres (wait… zombies???)… even if every single element wasn’t original, still the film could be interesting. In my opinion, the big problem is the way in which all these things are blended, which results in awfully linked chunks of unrelated stories. Anyway, there are many other terrible things in the movie, from the “magical” landing of Alfred just in time to take Bruce back to town after he´s been lost for seven years (seven years?…) to the dialogs (“head to the east, grab a blue flower, get it to the top of the mountain”: no one could get lost in the Himalayans with such precise directions!), so many that the fact that the villain is so badly portrayed doesn´t even matter.
Despite all this, I enjoyed the car (oh no, I just realized that its best trick was better performed by Kit), which I believe was inspired by the one in “The Dark Knight Returns”. I should also remark that despite its length I never felt bored throughout the film -and I had some good laughs with it! Now seriously, I guess that the “clue” by the end means that we´ll see a “Batman continues to begin” somewhere soon, but I really hope that it was a link to the much, much better Batman by Tim Burton.

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