Batman REALLY Returns...

My wife and our friend Carole and I went to see M. Night Shyamalan's The Village yesterday. Great movie...I highly recommend it. But as good as the movie was, the number one thing I took away from my afternoon at the AMC Lennox was the Batman Begins teaser trailer!

I'm a Batman fan, just so you know. Actually, I'm a comic book movie fan in general, but Bats is one of my favorite comics as well as comic book movie. And I was (along with many others) extraordinarily disturbed to see the goofy quagmire that the Batman movies deteriorated into after the first one came out. The original Batman was a classic, IMHO. Tim Burton did everything right with that movie. Not too over the top, not too forced, just right. Michael Keaton was a surprisingly good Batman/Bruce Wayne, and Jack Nicholson was a great Joker.

After the first movie, though, it went downhill. Batman Returns was just a bit too... odd. Danny Devito was a great choice for the Penguin, but Burton's direction and character design with him was just over the top. And Michelle Pfeiffer was a great Catwoman, but she played it TOO campy. Again, I blame Burton for that one - he's the director. Plus the scene with the thousands of remote control penguins? No thanks.

Batman Forever had the makings of a good flick. Val Kilmer was good as Batman and Bruce Wayne, different than Keaton but still effective. The story was a little more back to Batman's roots. But Tommy Lee Jones was a waste as Two-Face - he could have been absolutely great if they'd given the character the consideration he deserves, but he was basically just a colorful face in the movie. The real star of the movie was Jim Carrey - and though he was good as the Riddler, the movie isn't supposed to be about just the villain.

Plus, it had some REALLY bad editing in it. You could sort of see that Bruce was fighting with some guilt over his parents' deaths, but they edited all that out for some reason. It got a bit confusing.

Add to that the neon/fluorescent scenery and it wasn't the best of Batman movies. Joel Schumacher apparently said he was using the comic books as the basis for his movie, but it sure didn't feel like it.

Batman and Robin isn't even worth mentioning, except to say that it was all Joel Schumacher's fault.

Anyway, the trailer for Batman Begins seems like they're on the right foot again. We hopefully have a much darker superhero once again, and it'll be interesting to see them put together the creation of Batman as a hero (which is what I believe the theme of this movie is). Christian Bale is very promising as the Dark Knight, and I eagerly await more.