Zibblog

Since Joe asked for it, here is my review of Batman Begins. There are probably going to be some spoilers in here somewhere and some background for people who haven’t read a bunch of random Batman comics. All in all, I was fairly impressed with the way that they tied together some unrelated characters and packaged up his origin in what was mostly a neat little box. The movie plays a lot like Batman: Year One in terms of general tone and characterization, which is good since I still believe it is one of the most believable takes on the whole batman persona. They even threw in the bat summoning device in the boot from year one. The bat gear was pretty impressive, and I loved the depiction of Gotham.

On the down side, I wasn’t all that impressed with the fight scenes. The camera work was really jumpy. I had hopes for something more in the vein of Equilibrium, but it there were still some good action scenes. The other main problem with a movie like this one is that you spend a lot of time doing setup for the rest of the movie. The section of story in tibet was pretty good, but I felt like it gave too much of an impression that Ra’s Al Ghul was totally responsible for his training. In the end, I enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first Spider Man movie, but it wasn’t too far behind.

For anyone interested in where the different parts of the story came from, there is a section on Danny O’Neil (the man responsible for Ra’s Al Ghul) in this week’s Lying in the Gutters. Christopher Priest is the one that came up with the whole “Bruce Wayne goes to Tibet to learn martial arts.”

For all of you eagerly anticipating the Fantastic Four movie, you can buy a “real” Dr. Doom mask.