Batman Begins (possible spoilers)

[Ghoulish Delight]

[Disclaimer: Forgive me, and please correct me, if I get anything wrong regarding the history of the Batman story and what is and isn't in the comic books. My knowledge is limited, mostly to the animted series. It was always my understanding that the animated series followed the comics relatively faithfully, but I could be wrong]

We saw Batman Begins this weekend, and I loved it. Batman is back! This really needn't be a long review. Just a quick rundown of the pluses and the small handfull of minuses.

The pluses were many. I thought all of the actors and all of the characters were great. I thought the look and feel were awesome. And, most importantly, the writing we excellent. This movie involved two of my favorite villains, Ra's Al Ghul and the Scarecrow, and they did justice to them. Scarecrow's role was minor, but it seemed to be left open for a future return, which is fine with me. And, from what I know of the comic books, they took some liberties with the story by combining the Scarecrow plot with the Ra's Al Ghul plot...and it was done masterfully. There was purpose to both characters and didn't feel cobbled together in the least.

Of course, it wasn't perfect. I have a short list of things I didn't like. Fight scenes, models/cgi, and one really bad round of plot convenience playhouse.

Fight scenes: One of a growing list of movies where the fight scenes are shot too dark, with too many short edits, and too close. And everyone's wearing black. You have no idea what's going on, who threw the last punch, or who is winning the fight. In this case, there was a creative purpose to this as much of the movie had to do with fear and confusion. Good idea, bad execution. The should have been able to get the "fear and confusion" across without confusing the audience.

Models/cgi: Not so much from a technical standpoint, they looked decent enough (though one or two bits stood out as "hey look, it's the cgi bits"). But mostly, the overall setting was uninteresting. Gotham didn't wow me.

Plot convenience playhouse: One really bad awful moment where no amount of suspension of disbelief should have allowed what happened to occur

Spoiler:

As the police are shutting down an entire section of the city due to the most violent criminals in the city escaping a mental institution, the DA chick walks up to the police and literally says nothing more than, "I'm from the DA's office, let me through," and they just let her through. Retarded, and completely unecessary. All they had to do was have a crowd of people trying to get through, distracting the police, and have her slip through in the confusion. That line was ridiculous.

That's it. Everything else was a-ok with me. I'm looking forward to the next installment.