Batman Begins, Part 1

Fear: The universal human emotion that serves as a catalyst for the most courageous deeds and also the most destructive behaviors. With the wake of terrorism, the war in Iraq, and a culturally and politically polarized society, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins penetrates the inner psyche and arouses our most suppressed thoughts and desires. The film succeeds where the latter half of the previous run of Batman films failed in appealing to a wide, diverse audience by eschewing contemporary pop culture for more timeless themes.

As a summer blockbuster, Batman Begins must endure months at the box office, advertise through consumer product lines, and accommodate repeat customers to earn revenues that exceed production costs. What ensures its success are young males who come out in droves and expend almost all of their disposable income to indulge in hi-fi sound, innovative action scenes, and seamless visuals. However, as David Denby writes in The New Yorker, "a good part of this audience has never known the satisfactions of story and characterization and emotional involvement." Batman Begins surpasses its promise of special effects and of an all-star cast as a crossover film that will cultivate and rekindle new legions of Batman fans from intended and unexpected demographics.

The film's tone and narrative content respond to the darker Batman stories that have appeared in recent decades. Perhaps the most influential are Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, both of which capitalize on the psychological and emotional complexities surrounding Batman's mental state and origins. The contributions of Miller, Alan Moore, and Jeff Loeb rescued the caped crusader from the campy images of the 60s television show to permenantly engrave the darker character into the comic book canon. But this is not say that Batman had always resided in the comfortably secluded realms of fantasy and the surreal. Even in the 1940s the Byronic hero was a difficult pill for the average reader to swallow, always operating on a precarious bridge between the disturbingly real and the distant netherworld.

Nolan's film frightens us and yet intrigues us, for the Batman he presents could be anyone of us, and anyone of us could turn out like this Batman. In a journey from childhood trauma to exercising social justice, we are given not a virile, chiseled god of untainted morale and resolve. Instead, we find a feeble, disturbed victim of what all of us experience and cautiously await. This pulp adaptation is not a laughing matter, but a sober reminder.