kickaha | Date night!

ginkgo treated me to a movie tonight as a surprise, and it was none other than Batman Begins. :) I'm a huge Batman nut, so I figured I'd just go see this on a matinee some day, but my sweetie sprang for it. :)

I liked it. A lot. In fact, I liked just about everything except:

1) Katie Holmes. The character wasn't necessary to any of the plot, and damned little of the character development in Bruce. *One scene*, but still... meh. A number of other actresses could have done more with the part.

2) Ducard == al Ghul?? WTF?? That really wasn't necessary. Two separate characters in the comics, should have kept them that way.

3) al Ghul is Persian. Neeson... not so much.

4) It's pronounced *RAISH* you twits, not 'razz'. Grr.

5) Crane was really entirely too pretty. Not a bad job from the actor, but the look was... well, just not what I ever would have expected.

6) A microwave beam that vaporizes water would also cause every living being to explode in a big red steam cloud. *shrug* Oh well.

Really though, other than the apparent* mangling of al Ghul, bad science (duh, it's a comic book movie), and Rachel Dawson's Creek... er, I mean Dawes... I really quite liked it. (* I say 'apparent' because Neeson had one line at the party about mystic or supernatural reasons for him to have survived, which Bruce just totally blew off. Given the Lazarus Pit of the comics, this isn't totally off base, but given everything else they mangled on him... oy.)

Things I really liked:

1) Bruce's psyche. Nailed that. Bale did a great job. This is the core of the mythos, not the toys, not the villains, but a very broken man trying to make something positive out of the pieces.

2) Retcon of Joe Chill being stalked by Bruce. *NICE* touch, much more realistic IMO. The after effects to push him over the edge dovetailed perfectly. (Yeah, yeah, the one place Rachel was needed... but yet not really. Oy.)

3) The tech. Lucius Fox as Wayne's Q? Gotta love it. (Yeah, I said the tech wasn't good as a focal point - doesn't mean I can't like it. :) )

4) The one-liners weren't that bad, surprisingly. Some were downright great.

flinx, that quote you gave about 'what road is he on?' made me just wince when I read it on your journal... but in the movie it actually worked. Bottom line: nothing yanked me hard out of the experience. (A couple should have been edited out, but oh well.)

5) The pacing of the first half of the movie, flipping between his current training and the road that took him there was just wonderful. I think I enjoyed this more than anything in the Batman half of the movie with the possible exception of:

6) "Swear by ME!" The hair on my neck stood up, I swear to god. Er, Batman. Something. Beautiful.

All in all, I think they did a great job getting the franchise back on track to being something not laughable. Schumacher? Suck eggs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OK, when I heard that name, it sounded familiar - but who is Lucius Fox in the comics/cartoons?

And I totally missed the mystic reason for al Ghul surviving.

I am sad that you put Katie Holmes as your number 1 problem. She's so cute!

And yeah - the Swear by Me sequence was where he actually took fear to the *face* of the bad guys, instead of hanging in the shadows. Nice to see that in there.

And was it me, or did Bale seemed more hunched over in his suit than past Batmans?

Lucius Fox is the CEO of Wayne Enterprises in both cartoons and comics. He doesn't know about Bruce's double life however, as in the movie.

They never said how al Ghul survived, although *I* thought when Bruce dropped him off that he was still alive, and not a corpse. It was Ken Watanabe that was crushed, not Neeson... which makes much of the exposition about 'you left me to die' senseless IMO.

Katie Holmes may be kind of cute, sort of, in a lopsided way, but she's not much of an actress.

Yeah, it seemed like this suit was a lot more flexible than previous ones. :) When he was crouching, he looked like an animal.

I agree with the Katie Holmes gripes. I'm not familiar with the comics at all so the inconsistencies there didn't register with me. Also, I thought Crane's appearance was just fine, thank you :) Mmm, pretty eyes...

I don't suppose there's any chance of y'all coming out for goth night in Durham tomorrow, is there?

Yeah, I know that I'm a comics geek, and that most people wouldn't pick up on them, but that's why I'm a geek. :D FWIW, this was the closest to the comics that the movies have ever come, bar none.

Re: tomorrow night, probably not, between

ginkgo's derby practice and my general insane need to write.

>> 4) It's pronounced *RAISH* you twits, not 'razz'. Grr.

I was reading about this, and apparently, it's been pronounced both Razz and Raysss by creators who have worked on him. I can't establish a reference for which one Denny O'Neill used now.

I can't find any mention of "Raish", with a final H. Where'd you get that?

An archeology grad student who speaks Arabic indicated that the final 's' is slightly sibilant, and the closest English pronunciation would be with a subtle 'h' tacked on. If one were to err, 'sh' would be closer than a plain 's'. Somewhere between 'raze' and 'raish'. But not 'razz'.

Also, IIRC the animated series used the same slight 'sh' pronunciation, but that could have just been David Warner hamming it up with that wacky accent of his. :)

I liked it too. Was reluctant to go, given how bad the last 2 movies were, but I got dragged to it and was glad I did. I didn't care for Katie Holmes' character; no actress could have made that role work for me.
At the end, when she's all "*sniff* I could have loved you, but because you fight crime, I can't! (*cue angsty hand on forehead*)" I was like, "You bitch. Nothing he does will ever be good enough for you, clearly." I mean, I know Batman is destined to never settle down with a girl, but jeez.

I liked how he's clearly talking funny when in the suit to disguise his voice. The setup really made a lot of stuff he does make sense.

Yeah, her character had exactly one reason for existing, and that was to slap his face and give him a wake up call after Chill was shot... and *she* didn't really have to be the one to do that. Bleah.

The voice work was nice - now if he could have just dropped his slight lisp, it would have sounded even more menacing. :)

I enjoyed it enough I almost went to see it again last night (free now at MV for me). Might still.

I can't blame you. :)

I thoroughly enjoyed it - but then I am blissfully ignorant of the official story, so there was nothing for me to get upset about. It was just good! :-)

I wholly agree with your gripe points, esp. #6 (ooh, look at the pretty red clouds!). As to #4, I heard an alternative take on it, not 'raish' as a name, but 'rahz' as in 'the demon of Ra'. Of course, that's totally mucking the mythos (an egyptian god who's got a persian follower, wot?).

And I don't think I was the one who made the ascribed comment. Not that I dont' agree, but don't think it war me.

Date night!

Fox and other things

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Pronounciation

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Yeah, it rocked.