"If you dedicate yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely."

"And that is?"

"A legend, Mr. Wayne." - early passage of dialogue in Batman Begins.

As far as I'm concerned, the deck is stacked against Batman Begins. Tim Burton has already made the definitive Batman film with the 1989 original. Of course, he screwed up the sequel by being himself, but that does little to dilute the ideological righteousness of the first. You see, in making his Batman film an "origin" film, director Christopher Nolan humanizes Batman. He shows him making the decision to become a "legend," or as he mentions later on, a "symbol" rather than a man. In Burton's film, Batman is already a legend and a symbol and has long since ceased being a man.

The dramatic possibilities of Burton's approach may even be richer that Nolan's; I don't think I saw anything in Batman Begins that resonated as deeply for me as that scene in the original of Vicki Vale waking up and seeing her lover Bruce Wayne hanging upside down on his chin-up bars... like a bat. There is something impenetrable about Wayne, something alien that Vale can't even begin to understand. Burton's Batman is the ultimate outsider, and his film emphasizes and internalizes the romantic tragedy of the character. The arc of Batman Begins is comparatively much more conventional. Nolan's Batman is accessible to the audience and, what's worse, is healthy and capable of growth.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That chin-up scene, it's characteristic of Burton's entire aesthetic approach with the film. He's not at all realistic, but he's not at all campy either. That chin-up scene is patently absurd, but Burton uses that absurdity as his foundation and his film develops its own sense of logic. Burton's Batman is hyper-stylized and deathly serious. J. Hoberman accurately described its positioning as "our equivalent to Wagner's Ring cycle." Batman legitimized the graphic novel format for me. It helped me see it as a genuine art form. Rather than a reflection of reality, the graphic novel is blatantly abstract and expressionistic and, when taken without irony, ascends to the mythical and archetypical much easier than any realistic approach can. Consider that Dr. Jonathan Crane of Batman Begins explicitly identifies his alter ego the Scarecrow as a "Jungian archetype." Batman did not see this as necessary; the idea that Batman and the Joker were Jungian archetypes was never directly mentioned in the text and didn't need to be. The film itself is pure illustration.

Consider also that Christian Bale is campaigning for an R-rated cut of Batman Begins to be released concurrently with the theatrical version on DVD. He wants to be able to explore "Batman's sexuality." Sheer curiosity will ensure that I'll check that one out should it ever come to fruition, but it too is unnecessary in light of the Burton film. There is a scene in Batman where Batman takes Vale to his Batcave, gives her the antidote to the Joker's mass poisonings, and then closes the deal by whispering, "You have something that I want" and draping his cloak over her. The screen turns black and then we cut to Vale waking up in bed. The film chickens out and defines "something that I want" as the photos Vale took of him. But the visuals up to that point suggest that he raped her. The Joker has rape on his mind also, but it's different with Batman. With the Joker it's a straightforward damsel-in-distress scenario, but with Batman, Vale seems to have a subconscious wish to be taken by him. There is this romantic Phantom of the Opera/Candyman quality to this image of Vale being enveloped into pure darkness.

Ah, that's it. The Joker idealizes rape in masculine terms; Vicki Vale is beautiful and he wants to defile her. Batman idealizes rape in feminine terms; he is enveloping her into his world. The Joker represents the masculine sex drive, which is domination, whereas Batman represents the feminine sex drive, which is assimilation. If it seems that Batman doesn't dominate the film like the Joker does, it may be because The Joker is an individual and Batman is essentially an idealized feminist construct.

I guess what I'm getting at is that Tim Burton, again, got it right the first time in regards to defining Batman's sexuality. He came up with something that was provocative and that worked marvelously, and he did so with great economy.

Moving on, I have always seen Batman as being about the convergence of Apollan and Dionysian forces. Like Dionysus, the Joker wears purple and was resurrected from the dead. The parallels between Batman and Apollo aren't quite as overt, but are still quite present. Batman's Batwing stands in for Apollo's chariot through the sky and his Batsignal stands in for Apollo's sun. Apollo and Dionysus were not actual enemies, which simply means that Batman and Joker are not directly representative of Greek gods but of the two contrasting elements of Gotham City: order and restraint (the Apollan Batman) against chaos and unbridled appetite (the Dionysian Joker). A stickier if perhaps simpler and more vivid way of seeing it is as "Darth Vader vs. Jabba the Hutt," where one must choose between law and order (which serves to inspire and does little to prevent the rise of a fascist state) or unchecked anarchy.

Despite an offering of his hand to the Joker before he falls to his death, Batman is not really a moral film and doesn't really deal with moral issues. The film is Nazi-esque in its subverting Nietzsche through adopting him (the film by definition shows the idealized overman triumphing over Dionysian elements), and Gotham resembles Leni Reifenstahl's Berlin in its blend of domineering architecture and folksy Old World charm. In its simplicity, Burton allows a fascist ideology to germinate, and as a result created a genuinely dark and morally ambiguous superhero. This is not the case with Batman Begins.

In this film, Bruce Wayne is trained by the League of Shadows, an underground Mongolian cult of vigilantes. Asked to execute a criminal, Wayne refuses and burns down the secret hideout. He then goes back to Gotham and becomes Batman. There are flashbacks to the prison release of Joe Chill, the murderer of Wayne's parents. Wayne plans on killing him himself as he leaves his hearing, but Carmine Falcone, a mob boss with a vendetta against Chill, gets there first. When he confronts his childhood friend Rachel Dawes with his original plan, she slaps him and tells him his father would be ashamed of him. Dawes acts as the clear moral conscience in the film, arguing that there is a difference between justice and revenge. After this confrontation and his subsequent refutation of the League of Shadows, Wayne decides to become an instrument of justice. Real justice.

Batman Begins ought to be commended for clearly defining what it means by good and evil. Few films, in particular few American action films, seem to have evolved to this level of thought. (I was amused to see the white supremacist organization Stormfront.org embrace the Lord of the Rings films as "good white people movies." While Lord of the Rings is essentially as Aryan as House of Flying Daggers is Chinese, it has close to no real political content -- the World War II parallels seem to be entirely superficial -- and cannot protect itself from being appropriated by the white supremacist.)

But of course once the film sets itself out on the line, it all but signs its own death warrant. I don't think that its philosophical backbone really passes muster. I started feeling doubts when Bruce Wayne refused to execute a prisoner saying to Ducard and Al Ghul, the leaders of the League of Shadows, that compassion "is what separates us from them." Those of us who remember the ending to Lars Von Trier's Dogville collectively wince. Basically Wayne is saying that it's compassion that separates you and me (financially comfortable moral philosophers) from them (the criminal class).

The battle for the soul of Gotham is fought among Gotham's socioeconomic elite: between wealthy Bruce Wayne, the exotically Asian League of Shadows, and the pompous Dr. Jonathan Crane. Along the way, Wayne gets some advice from his British butler and Dawes, who is Gotham's assistant D.A. The butler and the prosecuting D.A. are not genuinely populist characters; rather they exist as liaisons between the masses and the elite. The working people of Gotham don't really have a say one way or the other. Poverty has apparently numbed their moral compass and they serve as either the pawns of the bad guys or children (moral retards) to be protected by the good guys.

Probably the only character who gets to represent "the people" is Lieutenant Gordon, an utter pussy with no vision and cajones the size of white grapes that ends up becoming Commissioner Gordon by doing exactly what Batman tells him to do. After successfully thwarting the villains by blowing up their monorail track, Gordon even exclaims an excited "YES!" cementing the childishness contingent on his socioeconomic class.

You see that line about compassion separating us from them, it's what Dogville's The Big Man called arrogance. In Nolan's view, Joe Chill never had a choice to not kill Wayne's parents. The locus of control was always with some obtuse criminal mastermind, who has the resources to create an environment in which the morally retarded Chill may follow his criminal nature, and who has the resources to make the evolved moral decisions that separate us from them.

There are other, arguably much more serious, problems. The formative factor behind the vigilantism of the League of Shadows is the inherent impotence of our idealized justice system. Any ideal that allows criminals back onto the streets is seen as a slave morality. Now, I'm quite the leftist and believe in these higher ideals that Batman is fighting for, but there is a legitimacy to the League of Shadows that Batman Begins is uncomfortably dismissive about. It's easy for the film to pronounce that the accused are innocent until proven guilty and the American justice system works et cetera when it doesn't have to examine these inherent deficiencies. The way that they present it, fighting for the forces of True Justice seems like a no-brainer.

Batman Begins is not a very complex or challenging film; rather, it's placating and comfortable. Like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, this superhero has some heavy problems but conquers them, successfully neutralizing any hint of moral ambiguity or shades of darkness in the character. Not at all like the Burton film, where both Batman and Joker inhabited the void caused by the failure of the justice system. The Joker exploits the criminal's new-found freedom whereas Batman seeks to re-establish order onto Gotham. That's certainly no more complex than what Batman Begins gives us, but it is far more difficult.

Then there is the ending, where Batman tells the archvillain that he will not kill him, but has no problem letting him die. Smooth. When Batman reached out to save the Joker and bring him to "justice" before he slipped and fell to his death in Batman, that was cowardly. They pulled back from making Batman too dark because they did not want to alienate their audience. What Batman Begins does, however, is far worse. It's downright hypocritical. The filmmakers understand that their audience won't stand to see the bad guy being captured alive and taken to prison. They have to have Batman kill him somehow. And so they have this ending, which violates the film's ideological continuity while failing to deepen or complicate it. Batman still comes off smelling like roses by the end of the picture.

I know that I have probably written way too much about Burton's Batman for what should have been a review of Batman Begins. I fear that I may have spoiled any official review of the original. But given the great tide of critical reaction praising this film for being the "true" version of Batman, the version that gets it right, or the version that replaces the Burton film as the ultimate Batman film, et cetera, I feel that it is my duty to strongly and in great detail plead the contrary. Tim Burton's Batman is a pop art masterpiece. As there is no way in hell that we will ever ever EVER see a real adaptation of Frank Miller's The Dark Night Returns, it is Batman and not Batman Begins that serves as the closest we will probably come to a spiritual kinship with the beloved graphic novel. Burton gets it; his movie is black as night, insanely garish and angry, and a work of near-purity. Its compromises few, Batman is as brave a Batman movie as we are likely to see. Whatever else that we say about it, Batman Begins is in contrast, a carefully calculated crowdpleaser. Send the hate mail my way, Batman Begins fans, or better yet, visit my message board, because I mean it.

When seen with reduced standards, for those not expecting a particularly brilliant film (like Batman or Dogville for example) but rather just two hours of solid summer entertainment, Batman Begins is pure cream. I can certainly see why so many critics prematurely got all wet and bothered for it. Going to the movies on a weekly basis, I can vouch for how rejuvenating it feels to see a movie that is both visually exciting and emotionally involving. It should be faint praise to say that Batman Begins gets the bare basics right, but sadly enough it's not. Watching it, I felt like a bit of a schmuck having just lauded Revenge of the Sith. True, with its genuinely dark subject matter, conflicted protagonist and sticky romanticization of the Dark Side Revenge of the Sith was actually considerably more provocative than Batman Begins. But at the same time, this film is so well-made and so effective on its own terms that I'm beginning to feel like I had been praising George Lucas for being able to tie his shoes and wipe his ass.

Looking at the names in the cast of Batman Begins, my initial impression was that the filmmakers had a bottomless checking account and irresistibly attractive material. The casting is dreadfully uninspired. Every part, no matter how small, seems to have been filled with more talent than is actually needed. But you know what? I don't know why I'm complaining about this. To the degree that it's distracting, it's distracting in a pleasurable way. And even more importantly, none of these actors are phoning it in or just grabbing a paycheck. They are all consummate professionals and work hard at finding an angle into their character.

I know that Morgan Freeman has said that he took this role for the money, making me wonder why exactly he signed on for Deep Impact and Bruce Almighty. But all the same he feels a lot more warm-blooded here than he has been in most anything else I've seen him in. He plays Lucius Fox, a sort of Q figure that Wayne Enterprises has stored away in their military research and development department for asking too many questions. He's a brilliant scientist, overseeing the creation of all the "bat toys" and coming up with an antidote to the Scarecrow's hallucinogenic poison within 48 hours of getting a sample, but now he is basically working as a warehouse clerk.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any actor better suited for this role, and I can't think of any role better suited for this actor. The Morgan Freeman persona is that of a withered cynic. He understands old age better than the vast majority of his contemporaries: his body is going far sooner than his mind, and so he has plenty of time to pontificate on the surrounding world and his wasted life. His take on Q is accordingly genuinely tragic and very funny; we imagine him creeping out of bed every morning to work this shit job that he is vastly overqualified for, having learned to laugh at all of this a good long ago, lest he blow his brains out and let these bastards win.

Michael Caine makes a great Alfred; his Cockney accent strangely enough seems to accentuate the distinctly dry British humor in his dialogue. He actually works much better than Michael Gough, who played the part in the first four. Rutger Hauer brings a nice replicant/vampiric charge to the minor part of a Wayne Enterprise's CEO; it's like something that you didn't know you wanted until you got it. Liam Neeson seems to have found his niche in playing villains; his tiresome piety and lack of any natural charisma easily lend themselves to the icy cruelty of a Batman anti-Christ. The film has a bit of the charge of seeing Henry Fonda gun down a pre-pubescent boy in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.

Gary Oldman gets off to a rocky start as Lieutenant Gordon by trying out a terrible Irish-American accent, but his wide-eyed wimpiness, when divorced from the sociological elements of the film, still has a good strong charge and gels with the actor's persona. I'm not sure if I like it, but it works. Mark Boone Junior is typecast as a slobbish corrupt cop, and for one reason or other doesn't resonate as deeply as the lesser seen William Hootkins in Batman, who played a similar role. Perhaps it's because Nolan shows him eating. But anyway, it was fun to yell out "Look, it's Mark Boone Junior" to the screen and as with Hauer, I like the baggage that he brings to the picture. Memories of Memento, Se7en, and even Trees Lounge can only help the picture as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, the filmmakers showed some imagination in filling the roles of Batman/Bruce Wayne, Rachel Dawes and Scarecrow/Dr. Crane, and I believe that it has more than paid off. I still like Michael Keaton's Batman more than Christian Bale's. Bale replaces the soft whisper with a growl and it just plain doesn't work; it's like a Batman put out in the broad daylight. But Bale's Bruce Wayne impressed me. I think that the only other film that I have seen Bale in was American Psycho, and so I'm not sure that other people had the same experience, but I strongly associated him with that specific character. In seeing the trailers I began thinking that his Bruce Wayne would be a Patrick Bateman redux. Well, I underestimated him. Bale's American Psycho baggage helps to mix a little bit of bile into the proceedings; Wayne still has a tad of Patrick Bateman swimming around in him. But Bale manages to ultimately transcend these origins. His Bruce Wayne is actually rather likable. The screenwriters have put a little meat on his bones; Wayne is of course a bit of a daddy's boy, and Bale jumps on this and uses it to soften the character up a bit. Indeed, if this had been any other Batman story, it's possible that the film would degenerate into the superficial and the character would never be able to divorce himself from the shadow of Patrick Bateman.

I cannot pretend to be neutral or at all objective about this, but Katie Holmes does it for me. The laugh, the saucer eyes, the baby fat face, the perpetual virginity; I am just plainly in love with her. Not everybody feels the same, which I why I suppose I considered her a bit of a risk in being cast as Batman's love interest. Once we see the character as Bruce Wayne's childhood girlfriend who is now an idealistic attorney, Holmes begins looking like an obvious choice. Neither Holmes nor the screenwriters see her cutie-pie deliciousness as a problem that needs to be subverting nor as something that she can just coast her performance on. Instead, they build on it. A scene where she pulls a stun gun out to fend off a mugging accentuates her distinctly feminine vulnerability while affording the character some degree of autonomy. She doesn't come off as a Powerpuff Girl. Similarly, even when she is playing the damsel in distress, her character is made to be the film's moral center and thus is afforded a substantial thematic and psychological weight. I'm not sure if Batman Begins is a feminist picture, but it's grasp on gender politics doesn't feel terribly unhealthy. (If anything, the film could be argued to emasculate Batman by putting him into particularly wussy daddy's boy terms; the reason that I haven't covered that ground is because I think that the chief culprit behind Batman's neutering is the humancentric approach itself.)

Cillian Murphy, an actor that I have been otherwise unfamiliar with, is brilliant as the Scarecrow. Hee hee, what a slime ball! His Dr. Jonathan Crane is a thoroughly rotten bastard who gets a cut for declaring the local mob boss's goons legally insane in a court of law. When things go sour, he poisons the mob boss with a fear-inducing hallucinogen and keeps him in a straitjacket in his asylum. Murphy oozes pampered arrogance through a boyish androgyny; he's gently amused by psychological torture and regards his greedy evilness as some sort of divine right. I love the moment, seen in the trailer, where he has kidnapped Katie Holmes and hushes his guards when he thinks that Batman has come to save her. Like Kakihara in Ichi the Killer or Buddy Pine in The Incredibles, he's a thrill junkie getting wet at the idea of getting his ass kicked by the superhero. If this isn't the first time that he smiles in the film, it at least feels like it is.

I suppose that I don't have much to say about the visual elements of the film, but I know that Nolan out and out nails the climactic battle scene. The Scarecrow's hallucinations are genuinely terrifying; make sure that you see this in a theater with a good system for the maximum effect. Nolan has restraint too. I like how he glosses over a scene where Bruce takes two European supermodels to dinner, both of which promptly begin bathing in the restaurant's decorative pool. It's funnier that neither Wayne nor the models make a big deal of it. And it's not just that; this breezy treatment of the scene somehow has a tempo that you usually only feel in actual comic books. I also like how Nolan underplays an early scene where Wayne has to bring a single blue flower up a mountain to prove himself to the League of Shadows. This could have been easily spun out into the absurd, but Nolan and his actors believe in the scene and it works.

The pleasures of Batman Begins are by no means minor ones. This is a great cast, this is a great director, and this is a great movie. And I wish that I didn't sound spoiled when I lament that that is all it is. Like last year's Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins is so broadly appealing that it lacks integrity and really much of a soul. Take away all those simple pleasures of moviegoing and you'll find that there really isn't anything left for subsequent viewings and dissertations. I would like to excuse the critical excitement as a simple case of relief from the ongoing barrage of crap in the summer months, and come the end of the year, when the establishment actually sees really great movies, Batman Begins will finally be placed in its proper context. But, alas, I was proven wrong with Spider-Man 2. Expect Batman Begins to make Roger Ebert's top five come January.