Today’s movie trailer review is of Batman Begins. This is the fifth installment in this series, and since we’re all thoroughly sick of it at this point it’s being pitched as a prequel in the hopes people will think it’s actually the first one they’ve seen. Check out the trailers below. I’ve listed them in order. If you don’t feel up to the task of watching all three, just watch trailer #2 as it’s the most interesting.
Hey, this movie looks pretty cool. It’s dark, brooding, and has Christian Bale—who played a crazy guy in American Psycho, so he should be pretty good in this one. There’s also a few explosions and…wait a second…I remember the last two Batman movies. Those two films scarcely deserved possession of the Batman name, let alone deserved to have carried on its tradition, or rather, drug its tradition through several layers of filth before depositing it before millions of patrons who sat and wondered the same two questions in unison:
- Why did I pay $7 to see Gotham lit up with more neon than the strip joint down on Sprague Ave?
- Why does the Batsuit have nipples?
Luckily, there isn’t a trace of neon to be seen in these trailers. In fact, I think the director may have gone to extra pains to ensure not a scrap of neon—even from a late night coffee house sign—appears on screen, lest the audience scramble out of the theater in a mass stampede of terror. So things are looking up. Gotham appears to be back to its grimy self and Robin is nowhere to be found.
Batman’s nemesis this time around is The Scarecrow. Quite honestly, I was never very impressed with The Scarecrow as a villain, just as I was never very impressed with the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. He’s certainly no substitute for The Joker. In fact, come to think of it, there should probably be a rule against starting a series off with Jack Nicholson playing the lead villain, because there’s really nowhere to go from there but down.
Although we’ve established this installment will be immeasurably better than the previous two, it looks like there will be entirely too much back-story and not nearly enough ass-kicking. Batman is not about back-story; it’s about some guy in a bat costume kicking the crap out of everybody.
Batman back-story:
- His parents were killed.
That’s it! That’s all the info we need to make the assumption that it is, in fact, a good idea for this loon to don a rubberized carnival costume and parade around the city going vigilante on a bunch of criminals who also wear crazy attire so we don’t think Batman is a little too far off the edge to be fighting crime.
Just when I was thinking these trailers were getting a little boring, I reached trailer #2—or #4 as it is mysteriously titled on Apple Trailers—and booyah! Katie Holmes! Hell if I care what the movie is about or if it’s any good. Big props to whoever decided she should be in this movie.
However, my elation quickly faded as I was presented with the new Batmobile. The last two movies featured a Batmobile which looked like something from The Fast and the Furious and had what I can only describe as a fin which was able to convert into bunny ears on the roof, but at least it bore some sort of resemblance to the Corvette the original was based off. The new Batmobile looks sort of like a tank. Actually, it looks a lot like a tank. It doesn’t look like a Batmobile at all; it looks like a big, bulky, black…tank. As cool as tanks are, the Batmobile has never been, nor should it ever be, a tank. Although the term mobile means to be capable of movement, I think we can all agree a tank is far less capable of movement than a Corvette.
If we substitute the vehicle name in place of mobile we end up with the following:
- BatTank
- BatCorvette
Ok, those both suck. Alternatives:
- BatLimo
- BatHummer
- BatEscalade
- BatEdsel
Not so much either. I think it’s time to wrap up this review before I get any more carried away.
- Batman as it was meant to be; dark, depressing, and with Katie Holmes: 3
- The Batmobile is not a tank: 2
