After all the hype that surrounded the Katie Holmes-Tom Cruise affair, her film, Batman Begins is ready to hit theatres. And guess what? It looks like a winner!
There have been umpteen Batman movies, but this one is different. It shows a modern version of the Caped Crusader, more serious and more deadly. The one thing that does hit you right at the start is the absence of the boy wonder, 'Robin'.
That's where writer David S. Goyer and director Christopher Nolan have strayed form the comic version. But full marks to them, the film works. It's not only about Batman, its a full version of the life of Bruce Wayne, who as a young boy sees his parents killed by a thief on the streets of Gotham.
Wayne (Christian Bale) is a transformed kid after this incident. With the help of his loyal butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), the head of his company, Wayne becomes Batman, the scourge of all evil in Gotham. The film's writer David S. Goyer, says, "Realism was our mantra. It had to be believable. All those things we take for granted - the gadgets, the car, the costume - had to be thought. We had to explain how Batman could command all this technology and do all those things that are so much a part of the character without drawing attention to himself. So we gave him a 'Q,'" a reference to James Bond's equipment expert. It's Fox who has access to all these prototype inventions that become Batman's arsenal - his body armor, his grappling hooks, his car."
He adds that the times when Batman was shown grappling with the evil forces all by himself is simply not believable in these times, "The point is, Bruce needs other people - he needs Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), he needs Rachel (Katie Holmes), he needs Alfred (Michael Caine). The old days when a guy could do it all by himself - that's not realistic anymore, and [director] Christopher Nolan and I were determined to ground the character in a believable world," he points out.
The distinctive feature of this Batman movie is that it compels you to look at Bruce Wayne, the person rather than what he eventually becomes, Batman. "It's Bruce Wayne, not Batman, who is the main character in our movie. In the other movies, when you were with Bruce Wayne, you were just twiddling your thumbs until he got in the cape again. But we really wanted people to care about him," Goyer says.
"He's this lonely character that's in a perpetual state of arrested development. And I can only imagine his sense of impotence, at being brought up in such a family, such a privileged household, and yet be unable to confront his guilt and his grief," actor Bale says. Director Nolan is full of praise for his lead-man, "I was really lucky to have Christian Bale take the part. You look into that guy's eyes and you believe him, and that's a tall order. He's got a lot of intensity and he has a great ability to project interior states, and to communicate that to the camera lens. It's a gift that a lot of actors don't have," he says.
On his part Bale is confident that audiences will identify with the new Batman, "I just have a genuine belief that this is what true Batman fans would be enjoying and wanting to see. And more important than that to me, this is what I had seen in the graphic novels. Ultimately, you gotta go with what you want to see and stop trying to please everybody," he says. They sure will, mate.
The rest of the cast includes, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson and Rutger Hauer. The movie is too scary for kids and has been rated PG-13 as it has got some disturbing scenes. For the rest of you though, Batman Begins is just what the doctor ordered this summer.
