So as the name implies, we're covering Batman's origin in this movie. Now I'm sure if you're reading this, you probably know the origin story, so I'm going to skip that part. When taking out that aspect of the film, what you're left with is this. The League of Shadows, run by a man known as Ra's al ghul, hires Scarecrow to weaponize a fear toxin to destroy a corrupt Gotham, and it is up to Batman to stop them. Yes, that is the rest of the plot to this movie, everything else, is explaining how to be Batman.
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| Since when do you fly? |
And I do mean explaining, the biggest problem with all three of these movies is the amount of explaining, the exposition. It doesn't leave a lot to actually analyze, to form your own opinion on. This is a problem in all three of the films, but here, its still tolerable. I bring it up now, to save on repetition. One other shared problem though, is the volume. I hate this in movies, why do they talk in whispers. If the situation called for it, then yes, understandable, but there were times when it made no sense to whisper, yet they still were. What makes this worse is that the majority of the movie is explanations, and that explanation is lost when I can barely hear these people at times. Granted, it makes the music stand out, or rather, the same chunk of a song stand out, but that makes it less memorable. It also makes Christian Bale's Batman voice stick out like another sore thumb, which doesn't help the performance. Granted, doing Bruce Wayne is hard, because you have to do both Wayne and Batman, but that is not a voice for Batman. His actions are more intimidating, because that voice has killed situations for me because it sounds borderline comical how he's trying to sound intimidating. Again though, flaws for the three movies
Where this one shines above the upcoming ones is the locations, the movie looks great, with well chosen locations. Even Gotham looks believably Gotham, which trust me, will make sense in a few weeks. The costume design is also just as good, and what changes they have made, such as the Batmobile being The Tumbler, I think work rather well, help separate it from what's come in the past (That and I think The Tumbler looks awesome, and that's all that matters sometimes). But... that's all I can really give it credit for. It looks nice on the surface, but when you start to look a little deeper, it falls apart due to bad to mediocre casting, awful direction and sound design when it comes to talking moments, editing decisions that make moments feel very stilted and break immersion (mainly in shots that make batman look like he's flying) and the shear amount of explaining, which is only going to get worse. Care to journey with me on this dive into the rabbit hole next week with The Dark Knight?
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