I’m joined by The Popcorn Prince, who’s been watching movies for almost as long as I have. He’s a big Batman fan, so I’m pleased to have him by my side for the debut of this series. For today’s Armrest Review, we’ll be watching Christopher Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins, the first installment in The Dark Knight Trilogy.
Cinema King: As the opening titles come on – no credits here, no time to waste before the movie begins – a big welcome to The Popcorn Prince. Prince, glad to have you.
Popcorn Prince: Thanks, King. Truly an honor to help debut a new series. I’ve only seen this movie a few times, so it’s good to go back right before the new movie comes out.
PoP: I remember thinking, “Finally, no more Schumacher camp. This Batman is going to be scary as all get out.” He’s not that scary, but we get a Scarecrow who still creeps me out.
CK: We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. The movie opens with young Bruce and Rachel running through the Wayne Manor grounds.
PoP: I never noticed the soundtrack here, but James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer are really doing effective work to let you know that something freaky is going to happen.
CK: And happen it does – Bruce falls into a hole in the ground, gets attacked by bats, and wakes up in a Bhutanese prison.
PoP: Isn’t this Iron Man? He’s sharing a cell with a wise-looking Asian man.
CK: But Bruce has one thing Robert Downey, Jr. didn’t – Liam Neeson. And prison fights.
PoP: Bruce says this whole thing is just practice. I haven’t read a lot of Batman comics, but I always got the sense that he’s this totally driven detective who is continually building himself up.
CK: Absolutely. Grant Morrison recently called him “The Optimum Man” – actually, it was Ra’s al Ghul who said it – and that’s something the movie really masterss.
PoP: You mentioned in your post yesterday – and I’m not sure how many people caught it, because it was kind of tucked in there – but you said that all of Christopher Nolan’s films are about obsession. I totally get it with Inception and Memento and all the rest, but I don’t quite see how this film is about obsession.
CK: You don’t think that Bruce Wayne is psychologically well-adjusted, do you?
PoP: Well, no, but he seems at least functional as a human being.
CK: Yeah, and I think that we’ll have to take the trilogy as a whole to determine the extent of his obsession, but it’s clear that this Bruce Wayne is a man whose every waking moment is dominated by how he can be the best vengeance machine.
PoP: Fair enough. I guess I could see that, because it’s not like Ra’s just found Bruce in a nightclub. He’s in this squalid hole in the ground when Liam Neeson gets him.
CK: And Liam really sells this scene. He’s clearly got an enormous amount of respect for Bruce’s mission and wants to help him, but his paternal disappointment comes through later on when Bruce refuses to kill.
PoP: I love how we’re referring to him by his real name and not his character’s name.
CK: Well, for one, I don’t want to spoil the twist, but as a fan – especially of Taken – I can’t help but look at him as this entity who exists in movies solely to kick massive quantities of butt.
PoP: Whoa, Bruce Wayne was trained by Qui-Gon Jinn and Brian Mills. Perfect.
CK: So here’s Ken Watanabe as Ra’s al Ghul, who’s presented as some kind of monastery mystic with an enormous army at his fingertips.
PoP: Despite the similar facial hair and the enormous amount of exposition he gives – seriously, he kind of gives away the whole arc of the film – Liam Neeson never once tips us off that he’s actually Ra’s.
CK: Thanks for spoiling it. Suddenly we jump right back to Bruce’s fall into the well, and his father asks, “Why do we fall, Bruce? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” And with the third film called The Dark Knight Rises, you just know that’s going to be important.
PoP: Nolan is really good at layering meaning over echoed words and images. Like this conversation about how Thomas Wayne wanted to cure the city of its economic hard times – it’s so obvious that Bane is going to be an OWS-inflected villain, and you almost wonder if the city would have thrived if Thomas and Martha hadn’t been killed.
CK: In the comics there’s always that inference; I think it’s been said several times that the murder of the Waynes affected the city on a really deep level. Speaking of which, Nolan tweaked the origin a little here, putting the Waynes at the opera and entering the infamous back alley at Bruce’s insistence.
PoP: It’s his fear that led the family to their death, making the film even more about Bruce conquering his own fears.
CK: Nolan’s immensely respectful of the source material, even while reworking it a bit for his own purposes – the pearls and Bruce’s posture are straight out of Year One.
PoP: Putting a young Gordon on that night is a great choice, especially because we get more Gary Oldman, who absolutely kills as the man who would be Commissioner. Is that from the comics, too?
CK: I don’t quite know, honestly. In Year One, Gordon’s just getting to Gotham as Bruce is returning, but I remember thinking this connection made perfect sense. This is why Batman can trust Gordon – even in this quick exchange, we can tell that Gordon’s one of the good guys. He’s so gentle, so caring.
PoP: How has Oldman not won an Oscar yet? I’m sure I’ll have more to gush over later, but this training montage is another example of how wonderful the soundtrack is.
CK: Since Team America, I’ve had a suspicion of montages, but having Liam Neeson talk over it allays my doubts, and Bale’s reactions give more of a sense of continuity than seeing his skills develop.
PoP: I’m glad we finally got an origin story on film. I remember being upset that Tim Burton’s Batman did that fake-out with the rich couple being saved by Batman.
CK: I didn’t mind that, actually. Burton’s emphasis was more on what a freak this guy was, while Nolan is trying to show how one person can change so much based on the choices he makes.
PoP: Which Rachel will tell us later on.
CK: One more point for the script, and another for seeing Bruce want to destroy Wayne Manor in a flashback, and by the end he wants to rebuild it “brick by brick.?”
PoP: So here’s Katie Holmes, who is probably the one weak link in this whole movie.
CK: But I think—
PoP: I can’t stand her.
CK: But I think Nolan does what he did with Scarlett Johansson in The Prestige – he really gets as good a performance out of her as possible.
PoP: I still think Maggie Gyllenhaal was a much better choice.
CK: Well, yeah. I also buy her as a lawyer much more than I do Katie Holmes.
PoP: Do you think the killer is sincere when he’s apologizing for murdering the Waynes?
CK: It’s hard to say. I never figured he was, but Joe Chill is never a tragic figure in the comics
PoP: I hope he was, because I like the idea that Bruce has to fix the city rather than stop the crazies on a case-by-case basis.
CK: I like that; I could come around to that. I really like how we see Bruce consider guns, because I always felt that it’s a little too pat in the comics where we have a teenager coming to this weighty “no guns” decision on his own. Seeing him try and then reject firearms makes more sense.
PoP: We see Bruce conquer that fear, and then he faces Carmine Falcone to show that he’s not afraid. But really, who isn’t afraid of Tom Wilkinson?
CK: He might be lovable in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, but he really sells the whole angry mobster character, especially as Batman’s first real foe. He’s a representation of every “first step” Batman has to take on – he’s disrespectful of Bruce’s past, he’s drunk on his own corrupt power, and he’s a criminal.
PoP: Even without the villains later in the film, I would have been happy if the whole movie had just been Bruce taking on Falcone.
CK: And Nolan could have pulled it off, too. But if Bruce is mastering his own fear, you kind of need The Scarecrow, and having a clear mentor like Liam Neeson helps make the transition to “Optimum Man” more credible.
PoP: Although I’m not big on this whole hallucination scene where Bruce is tripping on blue flowers and fighting ninjas, it kind of works because the film never acts as though this couldn’t actually happen. There’s no wink at the audience; the film plays itself totally straight, which is probably its greatest strength.
CK: I remember being really upset seeing this the first time, because I knew Ra’s al Ghul as this ultimate immortal badass who’d lived for millennia building his empire, and then Nolan shaves his head and buries him under an avalanche.
PoP: Yeah, the film never hints that this isn’t over, and I even wonder if the rumor is true that Bane is leading the League of Shadows to finish Ra’s al Ghul’s mission to destroy Gotham and stop it from breeding criminals.
CK: It’d be a great way to round off the trilogy by bringing it all back to center, but I like it better when Nolan keeps moving forward and building upward the way he did with The Dark Knight.
PoP: Save it for tomorrow, King. You’re talking over the big battle scene of the first act, which means I’m missing some awesome score.
CK: You’re really a fan of this music, aren’t you? More so than I am?
PoP: Seems that way. It’s not Danny Elfman, but Zimmer and Howard nail it. So now Bruce is ready to be Batman?
CK: Absolutely not. In Batman: Earth One, which just came out, his grappling gun tangles the first time he uses it, and he can’t leap rooftops like he wants to, and in this movie Bruce makes a bunch of rookie mistakes that make him better. But he wants to be a symbol, which it seems like he’s become by The Dark Knight Rises, albeit not in the way he wants.
PoP: I get the feeling I’m here to keep you on task. That’s tomorrow.
Stay tuned for Part Two of our Armrest Review, in just a few short hours!
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