Batman Begins: An Interesting Idea Buried in a Mediocre Movie

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on September 4, 2006.

In 2005, I heard a lot of buzz about Christopher Nolan's take on the Batman story. In the hands of the slightly dark and mysterious director of Memento and Insomnia, Batman Begins was to be a gritty and perhaps more sophisticated variation within the franchise. Unfortunately, upon my recent viewing of the DVD, I felt disappointed: Nolan's version was mediocre at best, full of contrived dialogue, cardboard characters, and only one interesting—though completely undeveloped—idea.

Nolan took on the challenge of portraying the transformation of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) from billionaire playboy to caped crusader for justice within the corrupt, crime-ridden city of Gotham. We learn that Wayne's parents were killed by a street thug when he was merely a lad; upon growing older, he takes a break from his wealthy life in order to travel to East Asia, develop an understanding of the "criminal mindset," and learn some martial arts. He trains under the auspices of a secret Ninja brotherhood that seeks to fight evil and injustice around the world. After his training (and subsequent break from the brotherhood's methods), Wayne returns to Gotham in order to exact revenge for his parents' murder and to take down the evil crime boss corrupting his beloved town.

The plot, of course, sounds silly (especially the bit about the Ninja brotherhood), and the silliness is exacerbated by Nolan's attempt to shove huge amounts of character development into a relatively short amount of time, thus producing canned dialogue that "tells," rather than "shows," people's histories and motivations. As such, Nolan fails to develop the characters in any meaningful way and gives us instead a lineup of stock Hollywood figures (and stars): good guy (Christian Bale), bad guy (Tom Wilkinson), really bad guy (Liam Neeson), corrupt official (Cillian Murphy), incorruptible official / love interest (Katie Holmes), honest cop (Gary Oldman), doting butler (Michael Caine), gadget guy (Morgan Freeman)...and the list goes on.

In terms of ideas, Batman Begins suffers from the same malady that afflicts many (though not all) comic-book movies: thematic development receives quick, choppy attention here-and-there but eventually succumbs to the main selling point of the movie — violence and cool gadgets. Batman Begins supposedly tackles the question of revenge—and the fine line between revenge and justice—but apart from some lame dialogue between Bruce Wayne (Bale) and Rachel Dawes (Holmes) and a completely undeveloped debate between Wayne and Henri Ducard (Neeson), the theme almost never shows up. (However, that might not be so bad: the Revenge vs. Justice theme is a tired one, and it would be hard to imagine this movie presenting it in a fresh or meaningful way.)

A more interesting theme that Batman Begins could have developed concerns moral and legal legitimacy. As an independent, crime-fighting crusader, Batman is part of a long line of superheroes who "take the law into their own hands," supplementing (or challenging) state authority. They fill some sort of need that stems from a deficiency in either the police force's capabilities or (in the case of Batman Begins) morality.

As such, regardless of their motives, superheroes who proactively fight crime do pose a challenge to the state's monopoly on "legitimate violence," setting up an alternate system of enforcement that aids—but is completely independent of—established authority. As such, to be morally legitimate, superheroes require a significant amount of epistemic confidence: they must know that the criminals they are fighting are truly bad, since the inadvertent killing of an innocent would degrade automatically their legitimacy — and would provide fodder to those who would claim that the superhero is nothing more than yet another criminal. (A state, on the other hand, can get away with a significant amount of wrongful imprisonments and executions before its very purpose is called into question.)

The other major issue that superheroes like Batman raise has to do with shifting alliances. At what point would a group of citizens feel that the state has lost all right to its allegiance? At what point could a third party, like Batman, claim to offer a better way—at least in terms of law enforcement—and build a loyal following? In the world of comic-book cinema, a clear line between the authority of the state and that of third-party alternatives does not appear to exist; those who would make such films would do well to explore this theme (especially if they want to keep the interest of audience members who fall outside the realm of comic-book fandom).

While these basic political questions may seem arcane, they nevertheless are finding their way to the top of our current political discourse, especially in terms of the Middle East. Western policy makers, in their continued inability to engage the region coherently, revert to simple political equations that support the state's monopoly of violence (the so-called "One Gun") while decrying those third parties who vie for power and authority (those "states-within-a-state"). Superheroes like Batman challenge such simple dichotomies and implicitly argue that the authority of the gun should be fluid, especially if a given state becomes corrupt and/or ineffective.

Such a timely question would have been highly appropriate for Batman Begins to address. It's too bad that Nolan instead reverted to a simple comic-book (and Hollywood) formula.