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Batman Begins


Batman Begins



The movie deals with the origins of Batman in a way that is unique to the character and has much more depth than any other superhero movie.

I am a Nolan fanboy. But I do know that he is overrated. On a scale of 1 to 10 if his skill set is a 7, his fan following makes it out to be 11. But in all honesty this is my favorite superhero movie of all time. The first half of the movie is some of the best cinema of all time. It juggles lot of concepts and themes. Loss, pain,survivors guilt,rage,aimlessness and whole lot of themes. All while making it epic in scope. In my opinion, this is one of the earliest movies in 21st century which made an epic that appeals to repeat moviegoers and also its scope has more to do with exotic locations. Something like gladiator is epic. But the kind of people who are more inclined to like those type of movies are sword and scandal fans. Those movies clearly do not hit all the demographics of movie audience. Some people will watch because it is epic in scale, some will watch because of Oscars, some will watch because they liked the trailer. You can't get someone who liked Gladiator to watch every movie Russell Crowe is in. The overlap of fans of sword and scandals and fans of Russell Crowe is not much. But with something like Batman Begins, Nolan made it his own. There is also this period piece disconnect with movies like Gladiator. But something like Batman Begins deals with male emotions on this grand realistic settings. Snowy mountains or Dark city structures.Its much more from the mind of Christopher Nolan and his sensibilities than Gladiator is from the mind of Ridley Scott. Epic battle scenes can be seen in Lord of the rings as well. Its not something from the mind of Ridley Scott. But a man loosing his direction and ending up in prison as way to fight criminals and be closer to criminals is a stroke of genius. How crazy should a person be to go into jail for the purpose of beating up actual criminals. Its representation of the bad-ass phrase - "I am not locked in here with you..you are locked in here with me". Add to that the fact that Bruce Wayne is doing these things. You have a potent mix for masculine orgasm on screen. That is much more masculine than any army commander leading his men into battle. Because there is some anti-heroic sinister quality to becoming a criminal to fight crime. All these make for a potent drug of a movie that you want more of. I don't care if its a war movie , if its dipped in this drug I want it.

The first half of the movie outweighs the flaws in second half of the movie. Once he starts becoming batman, you fall into genre tropes of super villain and stuff. But even in that , there are moments of genius where in the villain was his mentor and inclusion of references to misplaced sense of anger and all those masculine concepts is masterfully done.

Nolan's movies are all thrillers. There is something anti-establishment waiting to happen. Even a space movie like interstellar has moments of cowardice and disobeying rules in situations of life and death. I think this is one sub-genre Nolan shares with Tarantino, thriller.
That aspect of their movies are highly commercial. Thrillers are commercial genres. You are waiting to see something that you don't see in everyday life.Because we are all wild animals that are controlled by social boundaries. Any chance we get to be wild without harming our existence, we go for it. They say that the chemical reactions in body doesn't know if it is real or you are watching a movie. I think that is his biggest flaw I can find. His foundations are genre based. However artistic the house is , its still rooted in genre. Thats a handicap.

So I would recommend this movie over any other superhero movie out there. Purely for the first half of it. The speech by Liam Neeson in prison is one of the best motivational speeches given by a stranger and the soundtrack Lasiurus from its score is awesome as it enhances the scenes.