Day 4 - 01/04/2019
Batman Begins
7.7 /10
Year: 2005
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Bob Kane (characters), David S. Goyer (story, screenplay), Christopher Nolan (screenplay)
Stars: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe
Worldwide Box-Office Gross: $374,218,673
Budget: $150,000,000 (estimated)
Country: United States, United Kingdom
The first installment of Christopher Nolan's trilogy provides a new take on Batman, showing the darkness of Gotham and its antihero. Contrary to much of the Bat's mystique, Nolan emphasizes how the symbol is there to represent an idea, but is supported by many other civilians that help compose Batman and lay the ground for his origin story.
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Observing the evil of human nature, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) starts out at a prison, that is, until being recruited by Henry Ducard (Liam Neeson) to the League of Shadows. His training goes well until their principles clash, where Bruce refuses to kill someone. He manages to escape and goes back to Gotham City, wishing to fight crime of his hometown. Soon, he realizes that to become Batman he needs technology, feat supported by Wayne Enterprises' Research and Development man, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), honest connections and information, represented by Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), seemingly the only honest cop in Gotham, and finally his mentor, Alfred (Michael Caine), longtime Wayne's family butler. Together, they discover what Batman can and can't do.
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As cited before, Batman Begins does its job of laying the ground for the next movies, not being overly pretentious and showing his limitations as a hero. The tone of the movie is spot-on, the perfect ambient for the Dark Knight to fight crime, representing evil in its many forms such as corruption and "the ends justifies the means" mentality. After every encounter with the immoral doings of what Gotham City seems to praise, the source of such doings appear to continuously worsen.
Even with all its qualities this movie isn't perfect by any means. If the protagonists are full of personality and motivation, the antagonists are anything but that. The necessary dichotomy of good and evil is well composed by the "good" side but is lackluster at the "evil" side, where the motivations of every antagonist is shallow. At the times, specifically during the action scenes the pace is lost, leaving a feeling of incompleteness behind.
Overall, Batman Begins does its job but stops after reaching that, being a must-watch due to its sequel and not by its own merit. Having said that, an adequate rating is 7.7 stones out 10, with a complete story that has room for improvement.