cinematic genesis of a hero

...i'm fangirl, who are you?

06.13.05

Friday, I came home from work to find the following email in my box:

"Kristen,

"You've won a pair of passes to Q101's screening of Batman Begins this Monday, June 13th at 7:00pm at AMC River East theatres, located at 322 E. Illinois Street in Chicago.

"PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR GETTING INTO THE MOVIE. Please do not respond to this email.

"You will be on a GUEST-LIST at the theater, and you MUST bring a PHOTO I.D. to gain admittance to this screening. Bring your I.D. to the Q101 representative to receive a screening pass, which will be good for YOU PLUS ONE GUEST. You CAN NOT transfer your pass to anyone else, so please don't have someone else bring this email to the theater--they will not be admitted. Only you (and your guest) will be allowed into the theater.

"As always, please keep in mind that the theatre is overbooked to ensure capacity and we strongly recommend that you arrive early.

"At the theatre, seating is on a first come, first serve basis. Passes and R.S.V.P.'s DO NOT guarantee seating. No one will be admitted without a pass and no one will be admitted after the screening begins. Seating is not guaranteed. Theatre is not responsible for overbooking. No children under 6 years old will be admitted.

"Enjoy the film."

Well, I'll tell you, I planned to enjoy the bitch out of it.

I originally wasn't planning on taking anyone as my guest, because I would want to take both Willybean and Tifling, which obviously presented a problem -- the whole PLUS ONE GUEST thing. I decided that the best course of action was to take neither of them, but then I found out that she couldn't go and he could, so I took Willybean with me.

We ended up sitting fairly close to the front of the theater, even though I had gotten there more than an hour early to get decent seats, and to guarantee our admittance to the show. But that was okay, because the theater has cushy seats, and we weren't craning our necks all funny or anything*.

I turned around in my seat before the movie started, and I noticed that Mancow and his wife were sitting not that far from where we are, but up in the stadium seats. I pointed this out to Willybean, and he didn't know what Mancow looked like until I pointed him out.

I told Wil that it was the guy that looked kind of like Randy, except cooler and cuter, with the tiny pregnant lady next to him. Apparently, Pete the Movie Manatee was sitting on his other side, but I didn't recognize him because he doesn't actually look like a manatee, like on the radio.

A lot of other Q101 'notables' were present, including Woody, Tony, and Ravey** from the Q101 afternoon Woody Show.

Wil then pointed out that the stamp on the back of our hands was one of the vampire symbols from Blade. I then pointed out that for some reason, my stamp had almost completely worn off the back of my hand. We posited that perhaps I shouldn't attempt to leave the movie, since they had told everyone at the doors, "No stamp, no admittance." Fortunately, I peed before the stamp wore off, so we were all good.

I did wish that we had food or drink, but I didn't die of thirst or anything. I did have a rumbly tummy by the end of the show, though. Wil said that he had hoped that I would, in classic thrifty fashion, have smuggled in food and drink in my bag. I am somewhat notorious for doing things like popping two bags of micropopcorn beforehand, dumping it into a big ziploc, and smuggling it into the show in a large purse of some sort, complete with candy and a beverage of my choice -- generally water from a nearby vendor that doesn't charge $4 for one bottle. Unfortunately, I had a purse that was only large enough to conceal gum, so no dice. We thought about a food run to the lobby, but then the movie started.

Now, I loved the first two Batman movies, starring Michael Keaton, and directed by Tim Burton. Tim put a glorious spin upon the franchise, and he did it with penache. Both films are visually stunning, and Michael plays Bruce/Batman splendidly as he is defined by the film. The plotlines are equal parts serious and camp, and were perfect for their time. (They even generated great Happy Meal toys.) However, I've always enjoyed them more in the sense that they were "Tim Burton's Batman," and "Tim Burton's Batman Returns."

Which is why I've been awaiting this movie's release with baited breath. I am a Batman fangirl. I don't have posters or t-shirts, nor do I attend conventions. (I do have the Happy Meal toys from Batman Returns, but that's mostly because I worked at McDonald's during that film's reign.) I don't post on Batman bulletin boards, and I don't collect the comics. I have, however, read a great deal of them in graphic novel form, courtesy of the Iowa City Public Library, and am well-versed in the history of the Bat.

I think I like Batman as a character, because he is a man. A rich, driven man with a tortured soul and cool toys, but a man nonetheless. He has no super powers. He relies on wit, and skill, and technology. He has human strengths and weaknesses. He's the 'antihero superhero.' He's the code hero that embraces the dark. And he's a very mysterious, romantic figure.

But I digress...

Batman Begins tells the story of Batman's genesis, as you can tell from the title.

Most of the movie is exposition, and it really isn't until towards the end of the movie that Batman is a fairly completed, actualized figure. I say fairly completed, because I think that as long there is a Batman, there will be a man in a cape and cowl, answering the call of a searchlight, constantly becoming something more than he is already.

The story starts where it should, telling the well-known tale of a child's grief over witnessing his parent's shocking murder in front of him, by a man named Joe Chill, during a botched robbery attempt. You even get the obligatory breaking of the necklace and falling beads everywhere. (Joe Chill did actually kill the Waynes in the established DC Comics Universe) And it shows him growing into a discontended young man, played by Christian Bale***, who wants vengeance to quiet the nightmares in his head, but then decides that losing himself in the world is a better plan.

We follow his trials and tribulations, his training, and his return to Gotham, to focus and turn his need for vengeance into a need to seek justice in a corrupt city. And yes, there is a fair amount of ass-kicking involved -- providing action segments for the violence-seeking moviegoer. We see him take on crime in disguise, but realizing that he needs something that will inspire fear in the criminals of the city, and play upon their superstitions -- an impressive costume. And we see the fumbling and foils along the way, of taking a concept into action. Of course, Alfred and Lucius Fox figure largely into the picture during this formative state, played by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, respectively.

A batcave, a batmobile of sorts, lots of cool toys and gadgets, and some amusing disalog ensue. Oh, and more ass-kicking occurs.

Bruce Wayne himself is forced, at some point, to wear another disguise, and become what society expects him to be: a rich, stupid, playboy dilettante -- or at least give the appearance thereof. He can be the gritty, somber Dark Knight on his own time, but when he's in the limelight, he's got to play the part of the foolish, juvenile social butterfly.

In typical superhero movie (and comicbook) plotlines, bad guys and bad deeds are presented, as well as interesting mysteries to unravel. Ken Watanabe plays a fairly small but memorable role, Liam Neeson is excellent in the Ra's al Ghul part of the story, and Cillian Murphy shows up deliciously as Jonathan Frame, director of Arkham Asylum, and future Batman nemesis, Scarecrow****.

We also have Katie Holmes taking a turn as Bruce's closest childhood friend, and present-day hard-nosed damsel-in-a-little-distress. Yes, she gets captured, and yes, she gets rescued by Batman. Big surprise there. Oh, and Katie's character totally loves the new-style Bruce Wayne, btw. Much to-do has been made about Katie's presence in this role, and to be honest, she wasn't that impressive. Honestly, any attractive, innocent-looking actress around her age could have played the part.

And a surprisingly normal Gary Oldman turns up as a police sergeant named James Gordon, who becomes an unwitting ally of Batman's in his fight to clean up the city.

So Bruce, as Batman, gets his game and his gear all put together, and does what he can to solve the problem at hand -- the actions set into motion by the bad guys. It isn't a perfect fix, and there are clearly still a lot of horrible problems left to deal with after the immediate crisis is abated. Lots of people got dosed with the fear, and that isn't fixed. Most of the police force is, erm, missing from action. Huge chunks of the city have been completely decimated as collateral damage.

The Dark Knight has returned, and he's done it with style.
..........

*Willybean and I went to see Hellboy on it's opening night, and ended up sitting in the very front left, a couple of seats from the edge of the left side of the screen. Let's just say that it was awkward following the action, and gave me a headache from all the contorting in the chair and whatnot.

**Ravey was complaining the next day on the air that the movie was only so-so, because it wasn't action-packed enough, and had too much exposition.

Um hi, the title Batman Begins implies exposition. Lots and lots and lots of exposition, thus the whole use of the word BEGINS, dumb ass. Begin = not actively being something, but instead starting to become something.

I emailed their show and asked if she had eyeballs in her head, because if the exposition had been boring to her, she should have enjoyed the eyecandy, Christian Bale. Mmm. Even mud and scruffy can't make him any less tasty.

***I am pleased to announce that Christian Bale has body fat again. Not a lot, but just enough to make him look softly human. In the movies Equilibrium and American Psycho, Christian was so lean that he looked hard-edged and almost inhuman. (I think Madonna looks a lot like this now, too.) His skin was tight and drawn, and his beautiful high cheekbones looked like more like sharpened weapons than genetically-blessed assets. And he looked old. Not Rutger Hauer old, not George Hamilton old, but definitely no longer filled with the softness of youth.

For the role of The Machinist, Christian lost so much weight that he was literally skin and bones, and for this movie, through an amazing regimen of diet and exercise, he's back in good form. Excellent form. Delicious and tantalizing form. Ahem. He's got enough body fat now that while he is cut and in excellent shape, he's also fully capable of playing a spoiled rich boy, kept softened by the lush life. Also, the cape and the cowl are all hard edges, and a less-rigid jawline adds that bit of humanity that a Batman needs.

****Of course, as Hollywood must, when it converts something with an established backstory into film, the villians are presented as glamorized versions of themselves, and are introduced to the Batman storyline a long time before they really would have been involved in the history of Batman's life. Factually speaking, ie: according to Batman Canon, Ra's al Ghul doesn't even really meet Batman until he was added to the mix in 1971. Batman meets Talia, Ra's's daughter, and meets Ra's through her. Ra's perceived Batman to be a good candidate for marriage to Talia, thus becoming the heir to his legacy, and they even worked together for a while until Batman realized that Ra's's goals were vastly divergent from his own, and has since spent much of his career thwarting Ra's's nefarious plans. The Scarecrow, aka Dr. Jonathan Crane, introduced in 1941, started out as a university professor studying phobias, and ended up a criminal mastermind with a propensity for psychological manipulations and a keen interested in the pharmaceutical properties of hallucinogens. He created a fear-inducing hallucinogenic compound that has figured largely in his reign of crime, and is probably what his is most known for in the Batverse. And he's never run Arkham, but he has definitely been a resident in the Asylum.