Batman Begins: The Power of Fear

After doing a bunch of low-budget independent films, all of which received critical praise, Christopher Nolan said that it had always been a dream of his to direct a summer blockbuster. He didn't want to forsake his roots, and the result is one of the smartest and best-casted "blockbuster" ever produced. Batman Begins is a reboot of the Batman film series, since Warner Brothers wanted a clean slate after Batman and Robin (insert any joke you want here). I don't know how much of the planning of the movie can be credited to WB and how much to Nolan (I'm guessing the style was more Nolan and David Goyer's idea), but unlike the previous four Batman films, which were certainly "comic book movies", Batman Begins would be based in reality.

The first 45 minutes or so are presented out of chronological order; it begins with Bruce Wayne in a Bhutanese prison, where he willingly fights the other inmates with a kind of sick enjoyment. He is released by a man named Henri Ducard, who promises to teach him how to be a one-man force of justice. As Wayne trains under Ducard and Ra's al Ghul, we see how he came to be in an Asian prison. Childhood tragedy, disillusion with the legal system (the mob in Gotham City either owns the law, or they kill the idealists) and scared into leaving his home city brought him to Asia, where he fell in with criminals in order to develop the skills to take on Gotham's criminals. When his training with Ducard and Ra's al Ghul is complete, he learns that their definition of justice is slightly different from his own; al Ghul's League of Shadows believes that it is their job to eliminate (read: kill) not only criminals, but societies that "pose a threat" to the rest of humanity. Gotham City is next on their hit list, and they ask Wayne to lead a strike force to take down the crime-ridden city. Wayne vows that he will never kill in the name of justice, and destroys Ra's al Ghul's home during his escape.

He returns to Gotham City, masquerades as a clueless billionaire playboy by day, and develops the Batsuit and Batweapons with his butler Alfred and employee Lucius Fox. After a shaky start, he becomes a feared vigilante, a kind of spook story for criminals ("Be good, or the Batman will get you"). In a single night, he does something the cops and the District Attorney's office had been trying to do for years: take down the Falcone crime family.

But he soon learns that Falcone was up to something a little bigger than normal, involving a creepy psychiatrist named Jonathan Crane. Crane, also known as the Scarecrow, has developed a toxin that forces people who inhale it to experience their fears come to life. And that is as good a segway as any to discussing the film's major theme: fear.

The power of fear is prevalent throughout the film. A lot of Bruce Wayne's training involved conquering his fear of bats that he developed when he fell into the Batcave as a child. This fear is what caused him to ask his parents to leave the opera with him, leading to them getting shot, something he blamed himself for throughout the rest of his childhood. When Wayne returned to Gotham City, he chose the mantle of a bat, since he wanted to turn his fear onto those who use fear against the innocent. He uses detective skills, martial arts, and parlor tricks to confuse and frighten criminals with sudden appearances and quick takedowns. And he must prevent the Scarecrow's toxin from bringing the entire city to its knees with fear.

The Scarecrow and his boss are terrorists; they employ fear to achieve their goals. But then, so is Batman. To quote the first X-Files Movie, "The rational object of terrorism is to promote terror", and that is just what Batman does. On that note, I would like to share an interesting article I found on The Onion's AV Club; they reported on an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that claimed that the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, is a parable for the presidency of George W. Bush (gag reflex!). Check it out. Now, assuming none of the things the AV writer said were true (which they all are; there is a difference between a vigilante and an elected official), the fact would remain that the WSJ writer called the president a terrorist. Very interesting.

But Batman Begins is held together by more than just a compelling and well-applied theme (something usually lacking in summer blockbusters). The story and cast are wonderful. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Rutger Hauer and Katie Holmes make up one of the best casts ever assembled for a big-budget blockbuster (pretty much only trumped by the cast of the sequel), and they are all at the top of their games. And the real-world style of the film, which redesigns many aspects of the Dark Knight's world and arsenal, makes disbelief easier to suspend than ever.

Batman Begins was a triumph. Not just for comic book films, but for films in general. It showed that superheroes can be serious, that blockbusters can be well made, and that intellectual themes can be backed up with great action scenes. But it was nothing compared with what was to come.

Up next: Darkest before the dawn...