I saw this last Monday - really really worked on a number of levels. Most shocking was how scary it is, many scenes are played more as a horror film than an action film, yet it never loses the Batman tone. Some very well done work from Chris Nolan (Memento).

I can't wait to see this! Gonna watch it on an IMAX screen....

I'm considering seeing Batman at the IMAX theater also, but I'm concerned whether it will give me a headache or have me "lost"--especially if there is fast cuts/rapid editing.

I saw the Matrix Reloaded in IMAX---and I think now, I would have enjoyed it better in a regular theatre.

In my opinion, films not originally "designed"/shot for IMAX sometimes have me feeling like I'm sitting too close to the screen.

As for Batman...

Should be interesting, I never really liked the other Batman films.[As matter of fact--the Animated Series were way better!]

Batman relied too much on gadgets and not enough on his brain.[Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney]

I hope this film finally does this character justice.

I really liked Memento and Insomnia, so I should expect a lot.

I don't know about IMAX. Whenever the fighting starts the camera gets in really, really close and it's hard to make out what's going on. It was hard enough to follow on a regular screen - on IMAX - I don't know.

saw this last night at midnight. a great job by all involved!

nolan focuses on wayne/batman. the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the movie is all about the character's history and how he becomes batman.

Josh is right, there are some great scary parts. Scarecrow is just freakin crazy!

I love this movie! Franchise restarted!

This would be a bad one for the IMAX. The fight scenes are all in CU/MCU with choppy editing. I think it would have made me sick on that giant screen. But it's a pretty good one for a traditional theater. I could have tuned out the first 45 minutes and not cared, but once Wayne becomes Batman, it's a good adaptation from the comics, and Batman is intimidating this time - the way he should be.

Just arrived from watching the movie. I went with my wife and kids to see it, and EVERYONE in the theater including my family, were so impressed about the quality and depth of the topics covered. By far, the best "superhero" movie done (including Superman, Spiderman, etc.). I just don't know how the Fantastic 4 will meassure up to this one... It may look now cheappy after such great movie.

are you guys annoyed (like me) by the inability of directors to show fight scenes/action scenes WITHOUT cutting? i mean, what's the big deal? christian bale can't fight as batman? i don't get it.

remember watching bruce lee's fights in all his films without lots of editing? now THAT was awesome. how about seeing things blow up without cutting in a bruckheimer/bay films like the rock or armaggeddon? i mean, what happened to this zip zip cutting like bourne supremacy, ya can't see ANYTHING! what's the point of the actions? you may as well now show it, imho.

Well I understand why they cut, it gives a sense of dynamics to the scene. A fast tension, as they maybe want to evoke that feeling by the editing.
But you are also right in the point that sometimes it's great to see an action scene without cutting.
Anyone saw the fighting scene in the movie Old Boy, where the main character fights tens of men in a little hall, and the camera just makes a very slow travel if he fights them, without cutting once?
That is one breathtaking scene.

i understand the need to liven things up but i don't think it's useful to do it through fast-cutting. i think when you start editing fight scenes you have some things to hide such as Lord of the Rings they had to keep a PG13 rating so you can't really just show all the violence (even if it's against orcs) uncut. with LOTR it is reasonable because peter jackson is sneaking in a few beheadings in a PG-13 MOVIE!

but with batman it's inexcusable because the violence is comic-book based (bang, POW, etc.). could it because MPAA wants to tone the violence down that it's cut? i dunno, conspiracy theories abound.

good action movies sustain their uncut nature because of the action that's inherent in the scene. when you start cutting the audience thinks you are hiding substance.

I tend to agree that some films use too many insert shots which makes it difficult to see who's doing what to who. I like Spielberg's philosophy of letting the audience be the editor by using more wide shots and letting the viewer decide what's important in the frame.

After all we're in the communication business. And if the audience can't tell what's going on you aren't doing your job correctly.

It's a difficult balance to maintain. Rapid cuts have been a part of action sequences for a long, long time. At the same time, there's always been a tradition of long shots with lots of choreography in them in martial arts films as well. I don't know about you, but I think it's just as bad to have a wide shot of two guys trading high kicks as anything else - which is what a lot of martial arts films end up with.

It's a difficult balance to maintain - the Matrix films did it pretty well. Doug Liman did it very well on the first Bourne film, which had a lot of 4 frame cuts but was still easy to follow. The real problem I had with most of the fight scenes was that the camera was too close, so you couldn't see what was going on. This is a problem I've seen in a lot of director's who are directing big fight scenes for the first time. Daredevil suffered from it as well.

I think these films primarily fail to establish who's doing what in the closeups. There's a reason we call the wider shots "establishing shots." If you're doing nothing but cutting from CU to CU you're going to make it very difficult for the audience to follow the action.

Rapid cuts are fine, I've certainly used them enough. But rapid cutting for the sake of rapid cutting often creates an unintelligible sequence. This is where the editor really needs to put him or herself in the audiences' place and ask themselves "Is cutting to this CU going to tell the story better or is it just cool that I can do a match cut from a wide shot to a tight one."

I've been thinking a lot about the fight scenes in this, and I've come to the conclusion that they were done the right way for the following reasons:

- A well lit fight of a guy in a batsuit doing fancy martial arts is extraordinarily difficult to make look authentic
- Batman's "powers" are his will and intimidation, not what he actually does to people. Fear is an emotional response of his victems, and you can't see fear in big wide-angle stunt sequences.
- Because Batman has no superpowers, the only way to showcase what he must actually be doing from a wider angle is to make it much more explicit. This cannot be done without an R rating.

Would I like wider-angle intricate fight scenes? Probably. But I can get that from other superheroes. Spider-man is about agility, colour and humour. Batman is about darkness. I liked how dark and close they kept this. It helped my suspension of disbelief.

-Steve

Okay,

I stayed away from this thread until I saw the film. After I came out there were two things that really struck me.

How beautiful the images were.

How bad the fight scenes were.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the film. Best Batman ever. Gave me everything I hoped for EXCEPT:

(Fair disclosure, I AM a fight choreographer) The fast cutting of Extreme closeups worked once. Maybe twice. It gives your the perspective of how the villains percieve Batman, as a 'force out of no-where', no possible way to contain him or face him. Yeah, I can see using that cutting style as ONE way to portray him.

But not every fight.

A fight is a physical dialogue. If all the dialogues are delivered at the same level, the scenes have no flow, no depth, no arc. In short, they are flat and become boring after a while.

There are many tools for telling a story through a fight scene. Just like telling it through dialogue. Tone, pacing, delivery, and the LINES themselves (or in the case of fight choreography, the MOVES). Just as an actor can have his delivery changed in the cutting room by the director and editor, so too can a fight choreographers. I think they made some poor choices in that context.

Rent Ridley Scotts first feature film, "The Duellists" and watch how they take the same dialogue - a fight between the same two guys - and deliver a different message with each confrontation. Some slow and tentative, some fast and brutal ... it's still one of my favorite films, and I still think one of Ridley Scotts best. It's a theme he keeps revisiting in all his films.

So yeah, I'm not a big fan of slow-mo fights, but a moment or two to illustrate his prowess.. a couple of longer shots... I think it wouldn't have taken much to put it in an A+ category.

Still, LOVED the film, will buy it for sure. Can't wait for the next one. Everyone was superb, (except for Katie... a bit lightweight I thought. Lovely girl though, poor Tom Cruise)

I agree that the rapid cuts and closeups in the fighting scenes actually made them less exciting. It seemed kind of lazy. Still, I thought it was the best Batman movie yet in most ways, but then I never much liked the franchise to begin with. I did think the bad guy's nefarious plot was overly complicated. One other thing, in the sylized world of the Tim Burton version, Batman seemed to fit right in. But whenever they showed Christian Bale in his rubber gettup, all I could think was how silly he looked. And why he did he talk like Ed Sullivan whenever he did the scary batman voice?

Oh yeah, I liked how they handled the backstory on "Where does he get those marvelous toys?". Ever since I was a kid, I kinda wondered how you could get this stuff made, and not have someone know who you were. I figured there must have been some sort of dummy purchasing corporations and things... but I think they did a fair job of showing the logisitics of managing that aspect. Nice touch.

I had stayed away from this thread until seeing it also...

I did like the film, but strongly agree with most that the CU fast-cut fight scenes were too confusing to be effective. I thought that it would have made a fine portrayal of what a fight would seem like to someone drunk and in the middle of it - confusing and scary. But they didn't put us in the middle in any other way - I think we should have been outside observers afforded a more clear view.

Outside of the fight scenes...

I thought the script and editing in the first quarter or third were also a bit tough to follow emotionally. It seemed actually like they had shot 20-30 minutes more that had been cut to turn it in to a summer movie (and 10-20 minutes of other stuff added later in the film). I felt that we were seeing the character go through hugely powerful things before we knew him enough to really care.

Later in the film you could see the studio add-ins to the script as if they were marked by a highlighter, e.g. "cop: Can you at least tell me what it looks like? <whoooosh> Nevermind." It really degraded the character of the movie to me, but not fatally. They had nothing to do with the story or the otherwise carefully-crafted tone. But they pay the bills, right?

Spoiler-alert

I also thought the plot was needlessly obtuse. Here's the plan: Instead of shipping our chemical that no one would recognize or suspect in to the city in a regular shipping crate and releasing it into the air, let's hide it in multiple drug shipments using teddy bears, get the local mob and police involved, slowly add it to the water supply and then steal a device that turns all water in to steam (except the water in our bodies) and put that on a train and drive it through the city evaporating the water. And just to make sure we get away with it, lets train everyone involved to be ninjas - because that will help us. Even by action movie standards that's bad. It is a testament to the strength of the portrayal of the emotional journey that the plot didn't kill the movie.

Anyway, that's my .02.

I got to see the movie Saturday night. I have to agree wth most here about the fights - way too confusing and Katie Holmes seemed way too lightweight to play a D.A. 'course I'm used to Laura Flynn Boyle in "The Practice" before her concentration camp look, of course. Overall a good movie, even my wife liked it.

I also thought the plot was needlessly obtuse. Here's the plan: Instead of shipping our chemical that no one would recognize or suspect in to the city in a regular shipping crate and releasing it into the air, let's hide it in multiple drug shipments using teddy bears, get the local mob and police involved, slowly add it to the water supply and then steal a device that turns all water in to steam (except the water in our bodies) and put that on a train and drive it through the city evaporating the water.


That's David Goyer for you. Everyone's been praising his script and writing abilities for making the movie good, but really it's good in spite of him. And the fact that Nolan was the co-writer and was able to come in and say "No, Bruce Wayne, what he's going through is important, not what the villains plan is and how everything works together." He has a real bad tendency to A) over expalin how everything works at the expense of why anyone does anything and B) create obtuse plots that the hero discovers through the course of the movie that look and sound really cool as seperate pieces, but when you but the pieces together are really stupid.

Anyone at all familiar with Goyer and Nolan's work can watch the movie and see who did what.

I just saw Cinderella Man and (though I know boxing is different) I think they did a great job of mixing wide shots with fast in-the-action cuts so that you got the emotional experience of the fight while still being able to follow the action like an audience member. Good movie all around, by the way.

For all those Katie Holmes detractors, IMDB reported that everyone got signed for the sequel except her.

I don't think she was bad in a performance sense, just that she wasn't the right person for the part. Bad casting in other words.

The plot WAS overly complicated and convulted, but it didn't bother me too much. The plot, in this movie, WAS Hitchcock's McGuffin. Most films(especially action films) are big on plot, with a very slight nod towards theme. This film was almost all THEME, with the plot serving as an excuse to examine it. The themes were about confronting fear, overcoming (or BECOMING) that which you fear, and the difference between JUSTICE and revenge. All very good themes to be examining in this day and time. I think that's what's resonating with audiences.

regarding Goyer,

has anyone seen Blade Trinity? wow, what a piece of ****. i mean, Blade was good in certain places, blade2 was all about the director but 3 was terrible. i think Goyer showed his true colors in Blade3.

I think you guys are seriously missing the point about Nolan's direction of the fight scenes. Okay, maybe I only got the point because I heard him in an interview about it before I saw the movie.

He purposely wanted Batman to work in the shadows. He didn't want the viewer to see Batman sweep into a scene and deliver some big "kapow." There were several times in the movie that guys were swept off their feet screaming without even seeing Batman. This was Nolan's intention. If you didn't see the action, it's because he and the editor didn't want you to see it. It bothered me a bit, but to me, that was his intention. He made a great movie and to me, if you change anything in it, you're changing the movie. I liked it as is.

Now, what was up with Katie Holmes eyes at the end? Was I the only one thinking...hmm, why'd they make her cross-eyed on that CU? Strange...

Kevin

I just came back from viewing this movie, well a couple hours ago - was a bit hungry! :-)

In my opinion the movie was a good solid effort, but there were a number of weak elements that made it less than great. The story had some promise, but was definitely a bit obtuse and there were some plot lines dangling: anyone recover the DAs body yet and we saw a Batarang that was not used.

The look of the movie was a good one, the darkness worked and the cinematography was excellent: the mixture of light, shadow and color was spot on. The texture and composition of each shot was also very good and made the story work even when the story was not working.

The acting was solid, Christian Bale makes a good Bats and Bruce Wayne, though, yeah the rough/fake Bats voice, I wasn't too keen on - some digital enhancement may have worked better, like a vocalizer maybe. Katie Holmes, though I'm no fan, well I have to say she may have been more constrained by the script, since to be honest this movie lacked in good characterzation and character development.

For a relaunch, all the major players in the story should have been solid and especially for the "love" interest, we have no real connection to her. As for Ra's, we no nothing about him and he came across as a throw away character to me - where were his motivations? Serving some long held and mediocre purpose, and allegiance to some shadowy cookie cutter shadow group? Come on. The main audience are adults, not 10 year olds - and even they could see through that.

The fight scenes were in my opinion a step backwards and could have been much better. Christian Bale is a good physical actor, he can do action. Saying the choppy cutting and incomplete picture were the result of the director's vision is not saying much. We've all seen fighting galore and the Batman is a Physical Character: he is human and is supposed to be a dangerous human who can fight, a human killing machine who disables instead of killing. Where was that? Using gadetry to create fear and the subtle influence of the scarecrow's toxin to enhance his image are fine, but don't try to say the Batman is all smoke and mirrors, because he can throw down when he has to: supposedly a master of all forms of hand-to-hand combat, as mentioned in passing when Ducard/Ra's/Liam fought bruce. We saw no martial arts, no combat really aside from bits scattered here and there.

The dialogue was generally good, not cheesy and believable - well, aside from the dialogue between Bruce and Rachel - that could have been better.

The movie I think explained a quite a bit and covered a lot of ground, but in comparison the first Batman has it beat for raw excitement. The car chase was too long and we didn't have enough thrilling moments. Perhaps though this will serve as a launch pad for another: a sequel.

I think Christopher Nolan may have done the work to revitalize the franchise. He didn't get it all right, but maybe he did enough. Like Bryan Singer with the first X-men: he did enough.

I have to disagree with the person who said it was the best superhero movie however, the original Superman is still the best, and for modern day moviemaking and getting a character "right" I'd have to say Spider Man 1 nailed the character better than Batman Begins nails Batman. To support my claim, just look at ALL of the Batman movies and ask this movie does not encapsulate all that was good in those movies: the first Batman still creates that excitement of seeing Bats on screen for the first time and Keaton did a bang up job with Burton's admittedly dark interpretation.

A long post to be sure and I want to end by saying, it is always easy to sit back and criticize someone else's work and I have a lot of respect for what C. Nolan did in this movie. I love memento and insomnia. I am also currently studying film production and so I look at movies very critically. Hope no one disagrees with me too much :-)

Krystian.

good point Krystian,

i think fans wanted to see more Bale's fight like in equilibrium, which had much better fight sequences than Batman Begins. in fact, the fights in equilibrium could easily be batman fighting, but nolan chose not to go that route. perhaps it's that indie sensibility of, "oh, we don't wanna do the cliche, man, let's CHOP IT UP!" but that's totally wrong. it's ironic because that mentality IS a cliche in of itself. this is still a major hollywood action film and audiences expect a big ass whoopin' not shadow and light. 2much indie-flare for such a big budget flick. the fights should deliver and not be suppressed. there should be nothing subtle about batman's ability to open a can a whoopass.

Kevin,

I don't belive I did "Seriously miss the point". In my post I explained how that was the intention of the cutting (and I never saw the interview you mentioned). But you missed my point. One or two of those types of scenes are enough. After a while, it just gets flat and annoying.

About the "batman voice". Yeah... I suppose he was trying to 'disguise' his voice by pitching it differently. One might read that as another stealth like skill. At least it was an effort at maintaining some sort of veil of secrecy. Without wearing some kind of voice altering mask, I don't know how else he could fake it.

I saw an interview with Bale and he said the Batvoice was something he came up with, because his normal speaking voice just didn't sound right coming from someone in such a menacing costume.

Kevin,

On the fighting scenes... Batman as a menacing shadowy pressence is great... and times like when he was taking out the thugs on the dock I thought it worked great to not really know what was going on. But the technique we're talking about also included the fight scenes with the ninjas in the mountains, etc., when he wasn't being menacing or even "batman" at the moment.

I do agree that the vague shadowy look was used well a few times in the movie.

The voice thing is a long standing tradition of Batman Lore - when Bruce Wayne is in the Batsuit he traditionally uses a lower, gravelly tone of voice - partially to disguise his own voice, and partially to increase the sense of terror he projects. If you go back and watch the previous Batman films, each Batman actor has tried to do it - with varying degrees of success (Kilmer, the best of the bunch with accents, probably did the best in coming up with a voice that didn't actually sound like his speaking voice).

well i don't know this goyer dude's work, but i know nolan's. and someone who wrote some dialogue is a hack. and i don't think nolan's a hack. now, i don't know that much about the scripting of this flick. but i know that at this budget, all sorts of dudes get brought in to do "polishes" who might not necessarily even get any credit. whether the following crap dialogue is goyer's work or the work of some ghost-hack, it is certainly crap.

(all in reference to the batmobile:)
it's a black... tank
i gotta get me one of those...
do you drive stick?

soooo lame. i mean, we know it's cool. it's the batmobile. do we need the lame sub-arnold grade wisecracks? but the worst chunk of dialogue is near the end and the entire diabolical plan has been revealed in every detail. the train is heading towards its destination. they cut to the old dude who works at the train station or water factory or whatever, and he's like "they're gonna drive the train over the main water-line and turn on the microwave device to turn all of the water into steam!!!," (Or something along those lines.) holy exposition, batman!!! you just said exactly what we've been finding out for the last 10 minutes. if you're going ot have such clumsy, blatant exposition, it should at least be telling us something that we wouldn't know otherwise. i mean, smart people could see it coming once they tell you that the drug has to be inhaled, what with the missing water-vaporizing device, and all. but then m freeman tells batman flat out- if they wanted to deliver the poison to the whole city of gotham then they'd need to do it with a water-vaporizing machine, which was just stolen from wayne enterprises. i mean, at this point, even the sub-morons in the back row who laughed at the "i gotta get me one of those" lines understand what obi-wan is trying to do. but still, you put in the crusty old guy and have him spell it out once more? this can't be the work of the guy who made "momento."

however, one of the stupid little one-liners was actually really good: "what's the matter? don't they like falafel?" otherwise, the dialogue was on a par with every other crap superhero movie. don't even get me started on all that "become your fear" crap. poor liam neeson is gonna get himself pigeonholed as a dude who plays 3-word exotic name guys that always spout quasi-philosophical bullshit.

oh yeah, and how about lumping all of asia into one big country, where nepalese sherpas, shaw-bros style kung-fu masters, and ninjas all coexist?

I liked the falafel line too. I agree with you about the dialog. In some parts, it was downright Lucas-esque. Funny, despite all the bad things I have to say about this movie, why did I like it so much?

Schtick lines, convoluted dialogue, cheezy choreography... BUT. As a sample of a particular GENRE (comic/action films) I think it excelled. Most of those elements are part of the formula, so I'll give them a pass. I think it was the develpment of the backstory, and a GREAT supporting cast that sticks with me. Michael Caine and Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and even Liam Neeson in what is now his standard "Mentor" role. (I've got to go see him in Kensey)

I too have a bunch of bad things to say about this movie, but strangely when I came out of watching it, the first thing out of my mouth was "That kicked f--king ass!!!" so I'll have to stick with that. :)

Richard,

Certainly schtick lines are part of the genre, and when they appear in your average genre movie they are a fine part of the icing on the cake. My only problem with them in this movie was that at its heart this movie wanted to be something else, and it was evident that these lines were thrown in by some outside this-must-be-a-summer-movie-so-it-needs-these-lines force and therefore didn't flow for me.

Overall I was able to ignore them because the rest of the movie did kick...

The flick was undoubtedly the best of the Batman movies for this reason/ it's the only one that actually focused on . . . the hero, who happens to be . . . Batman. The origin was not exact from the comic book, but was similar enough to satisfy fans, the action sequences were "ghost out of nowhere-like", which is the way it's done in the comics. Batman was a real character with a character arc in this, not a pawn. Played down the love interest (good thing). Tried to make a real story this time (good). Great acting for the most part (good) . . .

. . . and then there was Commisioner Robin, driving the techno-complicated Batmobile and learning how to fire it's weapons and help save the day inside of a 5 minute period . . . bad.

. . . one-liners . . . bad . . .

. . . didn't make it clear about who Ra Sa Goul really was . . . was it Liam Niessen or was Ken Watanabe changing bodies into a younger version of himself, or . . . not clear . . . bad.

Scarecrow overall good. Batmobile wrecking every superhighway in existence was a bit overdone.

Alfred was good.

Lucous Fox good.

Stupid kiss at end was unneccessary.

How many times are the villians going to wreck Wayne manner or Batman's gadgets in some form . . . Batman in the comic is way too formitable for that to even come close to happening.

Almost suffered from the "too many villians for one movie" syndrome like the other batmans, but pulled out of it I think.

But overall, a far, far, FAR cry better than Edward Scissorbatman, which was nothing more than a multi-million Tim Burton studio fart, and I'd mention the Schumacher Batman's, but I really don't think they deserve to even make it into the conversation.

Pretty easy to see where the artists were allowed to excel, and then where the studios instisted on their usual dumb crap. Pretty much what I expected to see . . . some really good stuff, but could have been better.

Saw the movie tonight, and I'm pretty dissapointed.
Not very original or interesting, and it was good they made a good moral about the difference between justice and revenge. Nice angle, but hmm... I had very much the feeling of: I have seen this already a thousand times, the cliché summer blockbuster.
I didn't found the action scenes to be very exiting, and I thought the dramatic scenes often weren't deep enough. If you compare it with Memento, which I know isn't a smart thing to do, but still...

War of the Worlds is one too, Sin City too, but they have something very visual that makes them something distinct, and I didn't think Batman had it.

I still prefer the Burton movies. They were dark fairytales, and somehow that fitted the batman character.
Love Batman Returns still the most.
With those crazy images of the pinguins diving in the water with rockets on their backs, completely absurd, but very much more original and visceral.

That's only my opinion, though...

i think, despite of bad fighting cutscenes, and bad dialogue, and poor casting (Katie Holmes), everyone still liked the movie because it did so much justice to the Batman character... Especially when you compare it to the previous POS with a cheesy git like George Clooney smiling like a jackarse and going, "Hi , i'm Batman".. Its a relief for the fans to see something that stuck to the origin of the Batman character.

I finally saw it on IMAX. The screen wasn't that huge, but it did look more
impressive for some reason (the larger film size probably helped a lot in
clarity as well). The thing that was overwhelming was the audio in that
theater. We where completely BLOWN away. When the gun sounds that
kills his parents I could literally "feel" it. What a great sound. I'm spoiled now.

I really really enjoyed the movie as well. A much more mature Batman, better
than any of the other movies. Much more dark. Great cinematography as
well, I really liked how certain things looked.

I may go see it again at that theater :)

yeah i saw attack of the clones in IMAX. you can really appreciate 12,000 watts of surround sound =). IMAX=awesome... 2bad the aspect ratio is screwed up for the widescreen purists =). i still wouldn't have minded taking a cropped version.

yeah i saw attack of the clones in IMAX. you can really appreciate 12,000 watts of surround sound =). IMAX=awesome... 2bad the aspect ratio is screwed up for the widescreen purists =). i still wouldn't have minded taking a cropped version.

The IMAX screen I saw Batman on, it was projected at it's correct aspect ratio, which meant that it didn't entirely fill the whole screen - there were bars on top and bottom - but when the screens 4 stories tall I'm not complaining. Having seen it already on the regular screen, the IMAX process really does bring a new depth and clarity to the picture. Even the often jumbled fight scenes were easier to follow.

I wish they'd do Revenge of the Sith in IMAX. The Attack of the Clones IMAX was one of the best I've ever seen or felt (I could actually feel the lightsabers in my gut from the power of the bass in that theater) as a pure viewing experience.

Too bad only Warner Bros. is willing to go that route right now. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on IMAX next week, and the next Harry Potter movie will be in the fall. But what I wouldn't give to see King Kong on IMAX.

really?!?!?!!??! whoa, that's awesome... i gotta sheck it out then =). correct aspect=awesome.

okay, just saw batman yesterday. imho, it was unsurprising. i still like burton's batman better. burton was more "theatrical" =).

there is a lack of surprise because we know Bale is going to be batman and he has to go through the motions of becoming one. while we saw glimpses of his parents and his relationship with his father, we never really go deep. when his parents died, i didn't feel sad nor terror. it was just that it happened and everyone kept saying it's OK... when it's not. if they wanted to do it, why not make everyone in the cinema cry the way Return of the King did? i guess that's part of a comic book film genre's limitations. even spiderman had a hard time convincing people to cry in the cinema.

i suppose, also, that may have been on the part warner brothers saying WE GOTTA HAVE ACTION. it's almost like 2 films melded into one. one a character piece like insomnia/memento that never really got its comeuppance, the other an action that never spread its wings either. so we're left with story different movies trying to be one.

as others pointed out there was also 2many branching off into 2many storylines of 2many villains. it's almost like warner brothers gave nolan/goyer a list and they had to fulfill the hit list. i'm reminded of rick berman giving ron moore and branon braga a checklist of things that needed to be in star trek generations. it's ridiculous to base a film that is supposed to be organic in nature on a checklist of "must haves".

that's why this reboot doesn't work (imho). i still liked the animated series in the early 90s. i'm checking those DVDs out from netflix soon. all 85 episodes are currently out on DVD =). also, the mask of phantasm is still a great film! if they actually made THAT a live action, it still would have been better than batman begins. i think they have to get paul dino to write a batman film and directed by someone new to the film in general but loves comic books. that's a reboot i'd like to see.

the cast was pretty good but i disliked ken watanabe playing a villain furthering stereotypes of asians as villains with bad accents. why couldn't he have gotten a better part elsewhere? plus, he dies, which is another asian villain character stereotype. there's just so many things wrong about that. why does it keep happening?

BTW i didn't think katie holmes did THAT bad of a job. i thought she had that "wise beyond her years" vibe & duddly do right, which was perfect for the role. i guess everyone's backlashing her for marrying tom? anywho.

Joshua: an employee of the IMAX cinema here said to us that they where
probably (not certain yet) going to display King Kong on IMAX in 3D!