Nearly Speechless

Posted on | June 16, 2005 at 12:01 am | 1 Comment

Just a quick note here… just got back from Batman Begins, and I need to get some sleep. But I just had to get in here and say… Wow. Awesome. The trailers/previews/commercials do not do this movie justice. As Roger Ebert said, they finally got it right. Even though it was a nighttime showing and I was really tired from not sleeping much last night, this gets a zero on the Nod-O-Meter. Heck, it should be more like a -2, as I was never even the least bit bored and it’s a very long movie. This is the first time in a comic book movie where I didn’t mind a long drawn out origin story before getting to the action. The characters and story were actually involving. There was a plot twist that I was really glad I didn’t know about going into it, and which showed a lot of respect for the readers of the comics. And it really paid off hiring A-list actors for the supporting cast. Good job all around. The set design and effects were well done but not in-your-face. It never felt like I was watching a CGI movie (something I couldn’t say about, like, Spider-Man 2 for example).

Yeah, the action scenes were kind of murky, but I thought it worked well to keep up the mystery and as a way to not make a guy fighting in a bat suit look ridiculous. The tone was extremely serious with very little humor, which was a pretty good feat, since no matter what, it’s hard to make a story about a guy running around in that suit seem too serious. Some parts (especially involving the Scarecrow) were even somewhat frightening and probably not appropriate for young children.

I went with my friend Bryce, who also went ga-ga over it. The audience (big theater, about 80% full) applauded heartily at the end, much more so than the Star Wars Geek-filled audience at the opening midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith that we went to. You really do want to see the next installment right away. But I’ll settle for seeing this one again soon. By far my favorite movie of the year so far.

And, as a bonus, one of the previews was the trailer for Serenity! Sky High looks like good fun too.

Wow. Latre.