Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I totally disagree, though, that Batman Begins is anywhere near Superman Returns. Batman Begins is a great film; it holds true to Batman in every sense and it is extremely entertaining. At least to me. Superman is neither faithful to Superman, nor is it a good movie. These are my opinions, and I have a feeling that you disagree, and that's just fine. We can all coexist.
Oh, and Batman Begins borrowed story elements from established Batman lore. It took from some of the classic stuff that Bob Kane thought up, and mostly from the newest versions of his origins, namely Year One by Frank Miller and The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb. And it's actually pretty damn close to the current origin that Batman has in the comics, and it's way closer to Batman as a character than the new Superman is. Again, just me here.
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I I really disagree that BB holds true to Batman in "every sense." I wrote this in another part of these forums (that is, in a topic about Batman Begins, but I thought I'd reprint it here, just because.
Spoilers spoilers spoilers(ie you're reading this only because you've already seen the film)
"I went in knowing little other than that this was not going to be Batman: Year One. Right away however, I started to put some things together. I knew the League of Shadows was going to be the point of the film once they introduced it: Ra's al Ghul is too minor a Batman villain to be given more than one movie. So, ok, I thought, this is really not going to be Year One. Fine.
"So why the Dog In the Manger approach to the screenplay? Why borrow elements of Year One and then not use them? The only purpose seems to be to piggyback your story on something already popular, for street cred. However the actual effect of it is that nobody else can ever follow up and do that story (ok: fine, Year One was already so cinematic that it might have been trivial to adapt it to the big screen, you say? Tell that to Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. That's exactly what they did with SIN CITY).
"Specific criticisms coming: I liked the look and feel of Gotham, of the trains and Wayne Tower. Hated the fact that setting up these elements meant they would play a pivotal role in the final action sequence. Gotham is as much a character as any of the people in the film, and needn't be developed only for the sake of plot. I did NOT like how the one exit from the opera opened right onto Crime Alley. Frank Miller's idea that the crime took place near a movie theatre makes more sense; who places an opera house in the middle of a slum?
"I liked the focus on Batman being born out of guilt and fear as well as rage. This hasn't been touched on very much. This in its way made the Scarecrow a perfect villain for the first installment. In fact, the whole city being under a spell of fear could have made the Scarecrow an ideal villain to counterpoint the Roman, and that could have been enough meat to fill up the thin plot of Year One, which again, grr, they didn't do. I did NOT like that Batman's guilt and fear needed to be used to serve the plot directly. Like the train and Wayne Tower, we learned about these elements of Batman's personality only because they served the final action sequence. Add to that, there is supposed to be something elemental about Bruce Wayne, something he learned on his self-directed tour of Buddhism and Eastern martial arts. What makes him able to face Scarecrow in the comics is the fact that he has learned to live with his fear. In the film, Batman faces Scarecrow because he has a convenient chemical antidote. Yawn; how prosaic. How very STAR TREK, or worse, "Robin, hand me the Bat shark repellent!"
"So too Batman's development with the League of Shadows. I've already hinted at my problem with this stuff: Batman's drive to fight crime had always been self-directed. Now in the film, Bruce Wayne was a self-destructive rogue until Ra's came along and shaped him; Falcone knew he was gunning for him; his childhood sweetheart tried to build him up to be the good man she knew he could be. Wayne enterprises apparently wasted a lot of money annually developing the products Batman needs. Cool. But rather than this being a secret branch of the organization that Bruce sets up early on when he begins his development, this is something he discovers by accident. The Batsuit is already sitting in a locker somewhere; so too the Batmobile. Jeepers; these things have been field-tested and rejected by the US Army; don't you figure someone is going to be able to connect the dots? Especially recently-unemployed and embittered Rutger Hauer? ... All of these complaints add up to a general concern with the film: Batman is developed from the outside by people and forces other than himself. This downplays his obsession. He didn't spend all those years learning how to fight crime so he could come back and channel his rage; he did that because he was lost and alone until daddy Ra's came along and found him. Likewise he didn't waste loads of money developing secret miltary props so he could use them in his crusade; that stuff was already there. Lucky Batman.
"I found the screenplay to be fairly paint-by number in ways I've already gotten into and a few other ways as well. Nothing happened for character; everything was there to service the plot. Even the strange blue flower and the fight-your-fear training sequence had to play out in the final act. The effect is actually quiet hokey, and it's a hell of a thing to favour that over the nice slow development of the real heart and soul of Year One, Jim Gordon. I thought Gary Oldman was well cast, and he has the stuff to have done that part. But damn did they ever not do it. I also really didn't like the way Harvey Dent was removed in exchange for Katie Holmes, the most pointless superhero love interest since Nicole Kidman. And yes, did they do it? Did they have Batman reveal his secret identity to her? You bet, and what is worse is why: he did it just in case they didn't survive the night, in case they all died and Gotham was destroyed. When did Batman become so hopeless? A couple of minor villains like the Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul are terrorizing the city with some panic gas, and he despairs? So, add Rachel Dawes to the long list of folks in this film who know or who ought to know Batman's identity, a list that includes Lucius Fox, Falcone, and the entire League of Shadows. No wonder they were able to burn down Wayne Manor; the same Bruce who was too stupid to put in sprinklers and/or chemical fire retardent also didn't think it's pretty good insurance to keep people out of the "who is Batman?" loop.
"Lots of the film I did like. Christian Bale is great. No better actor could have played Alfred than Michael Caine. And the filmakers got the tone right, more or less. It's not a comic-book adaptation by any stretch, but it happens to be as close as anyone has yet come to doing Batman any kind of justice. Too bad they didn't have the balls to come just a little closer."
PS: I also didn't think the film was "extremely entertaining."
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).