Batman Beguiles

For Father's Day, I went to see Batman Begins with my wife. I was blown away. The movie does what no comic book film has done before: grounds the story in a fantasy world that still feels remarkably plausible, while staying completely true to the source material (even enhancing it at times). Spider-Man, which I adored, had a "gee-whiz" aspect to it, something that felt right for the world of Peter Parker but would have been totally out of place here. Batman Begins is a dark film (quite literally) and a lot more "real". That is, Bruce Wayne's motivations are established in such a way that I related to him more than I ever had in the Tim Burton Batman movies. The psychology of the character, while pretty straightforward, is not built in broad-stroke comic book fashion, but rather in a very cinematic way. I guess I would attribute this to the director, Chris Nolan, who obviously had to fight the urge to get goofy with it. Although I love the 60s Adam West Batman TV show, it has unfortunately sparked the assumption that the Dark Knight must always be relegated to the world of the absurd. Even the stupid New Yorker critic wondered where all the "humor" went. Sorry, pal, but Batman was never about humor. He's a dark and humorless character, in the best sense of the word, and this is the first piece of cinema to really do him justice. I can't wait to see it again!