Batman Begins

My first word was 'Batman.' So you can imagine the connection I have... thanks to my older brother.

Comic books. Funny thing - comic books. They are fantastical stories about fantastical people living in the 'real world.' The imagination and art can place these people, semi-believably, in this world. The odd thing is that when they started to translate to the big screen in the late 80's, film makers wanted to incorporate the over-exaggeration that works in the art because technology was letting them. They were focusing on the characters and their costumes. When the thing that is most compelling about the superheros - the thing that keeps people reading, is the stories. The 'people' part.

Then along came the X-Men. Marvel brought this team to life and started to try to make these characters believable in this world. They started to tell the story of the people. And they were close, save for the ending battle being held on top of the Statue of Liberty. But this started the swing back. Spiderman came out and between it and Spiderman 2, these movies were about the person. What makes the character who he is and the real struggles he faces.

"Batman Begins" is at least on par with the Spiderman movies, and possibly better than the first Spiderman movie. It tells a great story. It gets to the heart of a character, what feeds it, what motivates... It's like my wife said, "This movie answered all my Batman questions." And why shouldn't it? These movies should appeal to the everyday movie goer as much, if not more than the 'comic book fan.' My wife loved this movie. The story of Batman is interesting and compelling, and Tim Burton's Batman did okay (though the story was inaccurate - the Joker did not kill Bruce Wayne's parents) but there wasn't enough of the 'why's' and 'how's' that the movie "Batman Begins" does it better. One role that was inserted was Morgan Freeman's who plays - to some extent - what "Q" is to James Bond. He explains the gadgets, and how they work, and therefore you are not asked to believe it to make the story work.

There is simply much more going on here than a guy in a bat suit beating up bad guys.