I saw this film on the big screen for the first time last night at the trilogy IMAX screening, and I was blown away. Just reinforces my belief that films were meant to be seen on the big screen in a theater.

What fascinates me about Batman – and what is shown so well in this film – is that he’s a human like you and me, albeit a wealthy one. Like us, he’s driven by his emotions, which stem from the loss of his parents and his desire to destroy injustice. Drawing heavily from Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One (the definitive origin story of the character; my review), Batman Begins introduces us to a man who doesn’t become Batman to get revenge for his parents’ deaths but rather a man who becomes Batman to create a world where a young Bruce Wayne wouldn’t have been a victim.

The idea of taking your fear, mastering it, and using that fear to manipulate your enemies is an incredible notion (also taken from Batman: Year One), and it’s an interesting way to present the character of Batman. It’s a simple but extraordinary explanation for Bruce’s reasoning for using a bat as his symbol of justice and incorruptibility.

Christian Bale makes a great Batman. We never see an emotional side to him in this film, but we do see a defining change of character: we start off with a Bruce Wayne who brings a gun to the trial of the man who killed his parents, set for revenge, to the Bruce Wayne who learns to fight and survive in the criminal underworld, to the Bruce Wayne who trains with Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Shadows, and finally to the Bruce Wayne who doubles as masked crusader and millionaire playboy.

I don’t really have too much to say about this film; there’s nothing in particular that I dislike about it, and any flaws it does have don’t matter because the film is a setup for The Dark Knight…and we all know how that turned out. Christopher Nolan is one of those rare directors who is able to so clearly create a world so separate from yet so connected with our own, with fantastic, believable characters who we are able to identify with on some personal level, even a character like Batman. This film redefined what a “superhero movie” was capable of being, setting the foundation for several more realistic reboots of classic comic characters and for two more films starring our Dark Knight.

-Chad

Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

MPAA: PG-13 – for intense action violence, disturbing images and some thematic elements

P.S. – Read my review of this film’s score, composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, here!