Batman: the man, the myth, the movie

You know why this new Batman feels so potent and important and necessary? Because he is. Because the world, the real world, feels like it’s falling apart, rotting away at its core from all manner of injustice and greed and indifference. Because we share this Bruce Wayne’s incoherent grief and shattering rage at the misdeeds of the powerful and the cowardly timidity of those supposedly in the right. Because the world is desperate for a champion like this, who channels fury through compassion and gets things done.

Click on over to FlickFilosopher.com to read the rest of my review of Batman Begins.

I’m filled with geeky delight to be able to say that this is, without question, the greatest comic-book movie ever made. I’ve felt similarly about some other recent comic-book movies, and the thing is, it’s always true. X-Men was the best comic-book movie ever... and then came Hulk, which one-upped it... and then Spider-Man 2, which supplanted that one... And now we have Batman Begins. We must be in a golden age of the comic-book movie if each new one is even better than all the amazing ones that came before, right?

I had so much to say about BB that I never even got around to mentioning the extraordinary cast, every one of which is the kind of actor who elevates everyone else around him... and when everyone’s like that, the raw creative power onscreen just about blows you away. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Linus Roache... Man, what a cast! (Yes, Katie Holmes is cute and all, but she’s not quite in the Morgan Freeman stratosphere, I think even her biggest fans would concede.)

What a film. It’s everything we geeks go to the movies for.