Anyone seen it yet? what's your verdict? spoiler free please...

I had to restrain myself from not going to see it straight after my 8am exam this morning and went to work instead. Don't think I'll be able to see it tonight due to soccer, either, but I'm looking forward to this more than any other movie for the last couple years.

yeah went to the premiere last night.. it was pretty cool I guess. (?!)

Haven't seen it yet but I'm hanging out for it.

the new batmobile eats wrinkly grandma ass.

I'm going to it straight after work tonight with the gf, soooo looking forward to it.

(going out with the gf is a bonus too :)

damn it i still haven't gotten around to seeing mr and mrs smith yet because all my friends have already seen it. now batman is out. argh.

When does war of the worlds come out? and house of wax?

Don't bother with House of Wax, it's absolute rubbish. I think War of the Worlds is out on the 29th June or at the end of the month anyway.

This movie is getting really really good reviews, i might have to go watch this tonight.

Rev: don't say that! you don't understand my dorky love of horrible horror movies :D it's going to be craptastic!

Seriously, it's the worst thing ever. Why on earth people decide to go off on their own in some spooky town in the middle of nowhere is beyond me. Unless you're carrying around shotguns there's no way I'd be walking thru some random house in the dark and on my own.

And the other thing that cracks me up is when they hear a noise, and then say, "is anybody there?"

8-)

the new batmobile eats wrinkly grandma ass.

Wtf is wrong with you people. It looks f***ing amazing, and reminds me of the Supercar from Powerslide :)

i think the new batmobile looks pretty good but no batmobile will ever be better than the one in the original 1989 movie.

The thing is, its not meant to look like a new bat mobile, it is meant to look older than old. Bloody hell.

house of wax has paris hilton in it? haha hope the sex tape is in the directors cut version.

Dark Horizons review, mild spoilers.

yer ive seen a few reviews that have given it awsome scores. might have to go see it

Yeah it has paris hilton and that hot blonde chick from 24 in it... How can it be bad? hmmmmm? house of wax 4tw. now i just have to convince someone to come see it with me hahaha. that may be hard.

Don't bother with House of Wax, it's absolute rubbish.

Well i'm shocked, i heard "its hot".

A f***ing plus, everything I had anticipated.
No cheese, just a serious action movie based on a well established character. I makes the previous attempts at batman movies look like stupid kiddie films (and I liked the first two).
I cant fault it. Go see it.

seeing it at 6:30 at balmoral yipee

This movie is just unbelievably good. They add depth to the characters that no other Batman movie has. Its not just a comic book movie about a guy who dresses up like a bat and fights crime, its a REAL movie and it does an awesome job of making Bruce Wayne's evolution into Batman very believable and grounded, not corny or camp at all.

Also, Christian Bale kicks so much f***en ass, there just isn't enough adjectives in the English language to fully describe it. Everyone put in awesome performances, Liam Neeson rocked, Gary Oldman rocked, Morgan Freeman rocked, Michael Caine was the perfect Alfred, the dude from 28 days later was cool as the Scarecrow, but Christian Bale was just something else. When he was Batman he was like an entirely different person, he was fully on the edge, speaking with this growl in his voice and just purely badass. He was the Batman that Batman is meant to be, dark, f***ed up and terrifying.

Of course Christian Bale was unquestionably superhumanly awesome, thankfully it sounds like the rest of the movie is good too! I'll be seeing this REAL soon!

House of Wax has Elisha Cuthbert in it! Its bound to be good. She better not die early in the movie or I'll be pretty cut.

bet she gets kidnapped once an hour though

Well i'm shocked, i heard "its hot".

touché :)

Damn this was an awesome movie. It worked for me, it worked on me so well. Just amazing!

I plan on seeing it.

awesome movie. just great

the new batmobile eats wrinkly grandma ass.

yeah I don't much like it but as someone said it's meant to be old and less advanced than the ones in the previous movies. I want to go see it this weekend who wants to come with me? no one? cool.

does anyone else think katie holmes sucked? she looked way to young for her role.

I heard tom cruise really liked her.

i heard tom cruise said she really sucked as well ;)

Also, sif rant on about the batmobile sucking when you haven't even seen the movie yet =\

The batmobile totally owned. "Suspect is driving a black....... tank"

I enjoyed the character development of bruce wayne alot, it was a really great thing to focus the film on early and they did a very good job of introducing each new part. I didnt know much about the movie, aside from it being the new batman movie and looking really good.

Incoming mild spoiler:



It was the beginning of batman, in that it ends with a direct link into the first modern batman film... with the joker. That said, it also ended with a reiteration of Cranes character which, although it wont afford a remaking of the whole batman series, it could allow room for another film to slot in before the jack nichalson/other guy (name missing) batmans.

Bale nailed the role and Id love to see him in another.

Katie holmes was inconsequential. Her character was merely a love interest to complicate the feelings of batman - so who gives a s*** about how good or bad the role was filled because it was for all intents and purposes the performance can be totally ignored.

edit: and just to be a nerd f***** (the kind I usually hate) im going to whinge about part of the devious bad guy plot. A weapon, using microwaves, to flash boil water in the pipes below the road would surely destroy all humans standing around the machine. It made no sense... aside from that, it was a pretty cool seeing the 'scary' batman. :)

last edited by Qmass at 01:10:58 17/Jun/05

Awesome movie. All those crying about the batmobile will realise why its stupid to cry about it not being batmobile-like once they've seen the movie. I really liked the way they actually dealt with how he got all his equipment and s*** and actually went into some detail about it. Thumbs up!
Also, saw a trailer for the new harry potter movie, hermione is even more of a fox :)

A weapon, using microwaves, to flash boil water in the pipes below the road would surely destroy all humans standing around the machine.

Heh, I thought the same thing, for a second I wondered why the machine wasn't making everyone explode or disintegrate cos it would affect the water in their bodies, but it was an easy plot hole to get over because everything else was carried off so smoothly. Who knows, maybe the scientists who made the device were smart enough to come up with some way to make sure it didn't affect humans :P

I was also getting ready to cry about continuity issues when Bruce's parents weren't killed by Jack Napier/The Joker, but then I remembered that they actually made that up for the first movie, and I think in the comic books his parents were actually killed by a bum called Joe Chill, so that was cool.

I liked how everything had a rationale behind it, and you could see the evolution of things. Batman wasn't just presented to us as a guy in a batsuit, we saw how he got there, how his equipment came together, even how he can fly using his cape. And Gordon's speech at the end about how the criminals will match the threat brought against them (going part way to rationalising the crazy costumed villians that end up becoming the Batman norm) was a nice touch. It made the whole thing much more believeable and made Gotham feel like a real place and Batman/Bruce Wayne feel like a real character, instead of just a flat comic book rendition.

Hmm I loved Batman and I thought Batman Returns was pretty good also.

This must be a good movie to own those two so badly :)

Imo (spoilers blotted):

- Too much quick camera movement in action scenes - this was the same thing imo that wrecked Spiderman 2.
- He seemed... a little too mortal. I kinda expected more. The difference between the 1989 version and the 2005 version I thought was that in this one, the crims weren't scared s***less of him like they were in previous makes.
- His parents death scene just sucked. The scene with Jack Napier taunting young Bruce was so much better in the original imo.
- The batmobile grew on me rather quickly. I still preferred the one from Returns or Forever, but it was much better after seeing the movie.
- I particularly liked the change in Gotham over the 20 years - gone from a shining, gleaming city to a grimy, trashed, disrespected, uncared for city.
- Casting Neeson as a charactor called "Ra's Al Ghul" after him recently being known as Qui-gon Jinn just egged me a big :)

But what about all the people who were affected by the gas and went crazy? They never made an antidote etc so wouldn't half the city still be f***ed up?

1. The first Batman was kinda cool. It was in my opinion B gradey but its a Tim Burton film and you have to look at it differently. In any case Jack totally owned as the Joker.

2. Batman Returns was utter utter s***... a premise for the following turds.


3. Ive heard good things about Batman Begins. On the Movie Show they said the only thing bad about it was that you have to wait nearly an hour before he pulls on the black undies?

4. Katie Holmes ... blah who cares! Id still eat her ass though ;p

last edited by sLaps_Forehead at 21:32:22 17/Jun/05

I actually didn't mind Forever, thought it was much better than Returns. Both had bits and peices that sucked though.
Batman & Robin on the other hand, oh dear god. Clooney, O'Donell, Silverstone and Schwarzenegger as the cast? Sigh. (O'Donell wasn't bad. The other three, plus Val Kilmer in Forever... gah)

Christian Bale was simply brilliant.

You'd eat her out like a tossed salad, hey?

8-)

I thought they couldnt made his bat helmet/mask/ears look a bit cooler. It kind of made his face look fat etc. No big deal though.

WORST movie i have ever seen, very boring. Story was just plain stupid. Wish i went and saw mr and mrs smith.

The only cool part was the scarecrow guy, other than that the movie was very very boring

Does the scarecrow release gas that makes people see their worst fears, if so, is Batman's his father's disapproval?

Yeah, scarecrow has a gas that makes you see your fears, but I dont think there was anything about Batman fearing his father's disapproval. I dunno, there might have been some small reference to it slotted in there that I just didn't get.

Ive heard good things about Batman Returns. On the movie show they said the only thing bad about it was that you have to wait nearly an hour before he pulls on the black undies?

Yeah, its because the movie is about how he actually becomes Batman, so the start of it is about Bruce Wayne and what he goes through to actually become Batman. Explaining how he can fight like a ninja, where all his gadgets come from, setting up the batcave, etc, etc.

His parents death scene just sucked. The scene with Jack Napier taunting young Bruce was so much better in the original imo.

Yeah, but I guess they decided to stick more to the source material with this retelling, rather than try to fit in around what the original created. I was a bit put out at first as well with the lack of Jack Napier, but I ended up liking it, it worked out better for the story. It went furthur towards turning Bruce Wayne into Batman than the whole Jack Napier thing ever would have.

Morgan Freeman was making the antedote ready to be mass distributed, remember. Bruce asked him to do it just before he went off to battle at the end. Also, seef the crims wern't scared s***less of him. He was aiming to create a symbol, like something that people didn't even know existed, just saw the effects of what he'd done and hear stores and s*** about being attacked by batman. After bringing down the dude that ran the whole town, I suspect the crims would have been pretty scared of batman...

Yeah but morgan said it would take weeks to make a mass antidote.

That stupid machine was letting s*** rip everywhere through the city. Then 10mins later its all fine...i call plot hole!

just saw this movie tonight.

what can i say, i loved this movie.

christian bale - rocked
morgan freeman - rocked
liam neesaon - rocked
gary oldman - rocked
ken wantanabi - thought he would have had a bigger role, but it played out

loved how there wasn't an once of the "candy" effects that you saw in the other films. the little things like the train being nice and spiffy at the start of the film, then later it being absolutely trashed and s***house was a really nice touch.

best comic book to movie conversion i've ever seen. one of the better movies released this year.

And it even had Rutger Hauer! Not that he had much of a part, but he still rocked.

Awesome!!#!

And it even had Rutger Hauer! Not that he had much of a part, but he still rocked.

Awesome, he was in Sin City too. Used to be a big fan of his ages ago, until he started doing crappy movies.

^you dick go see it in a cinema it is about 10x better experience.

i reckon that was done 10/10. It fits in behind the original perfectly and I wouldnt be surprised if they don't make another.

best thing about this movie = limited CGI or s***ty superpowers

last edited by Tuco at 10:47:19 18/Jun/05

This was meant to fit in behind the other movies?

Thats gay. I thought they were just gonna re-do the whole story.

First of all, I have been eagerly awaiting this movie ever since I heard about it. The first few posters I saw for it were awesome (and one has been my desktop wallpaper on this laptop ever since I found it online).

I am a big Batman fan; while not a die-hard collector of the comics I have a few of them and I've always really dug the entire Batman universe - it is a lot darker and spookier than I think many people realise after having been bludgeoned with the colours and (lets face it) childishness of the last Batman movie series. I really enjoyed the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton, but it was a steady decline after that.

The trailers for Batman Begins hinted at two things that got me excited - the first that it was a retelling of how he actually BECAME Batman, showing some of the history behind it and exposing some of Bruce Wayne's psyche (and in a way more consistent with the comics - it always irked me that it was the Joker that killed is parents in the Keaton movie). The second was that it looked quite dark - no bright colours, no frickin' acrobats, no over-the-top bad guys like Mr Freeze. Just Batman.

I saw the movie last night and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I haven't enjoyed a movie that much for years; probably not since the first Matrix movie. There were so many cool things about it that I could spend ages just writing about them all, and probably will in various places. But I'll start here.

There were a lot of elements from the comics that were carried though really well. One of the ones that really impressed me was Bruce's father giving his mother the pearls - one of the most vivid images from the comics I've read is Bruce's memory of the pearl necklace getting torn from his mother's throat when they are killed, and it was great to see that included. There were zillions of other things that fans of the comics will dig - the inclusion of characters like Zsasz (the scarred guy from Arkham Asylum) was cool, even though he didn't really have a role - lots of little background stuff like that.

Gotham itself was really well 'designed' - a massive sprawl of a city, with the 'Narrows' - the slums - done really well. There were a few scenes that were straight out of the pages of the comic - Batman perched on a spire overlooking the city - that I thought looked awesome.

The way they introduced Batman as well was really good. I'm sure a few people might complain that he took too long to be seen in the movie, but I thought it was great - it had much more of a first-part-of-a-good-trilogy feel, everything was unhurried and relaxed. The first time you see Batman in action, you don't even actually 'see' him - you just see a black blur knocking out a horde of bad guys, and then his feet as he walks away from a mountain of comatose criminals.

One thing I didn't dig, which has already been mentioned, was the shakycam camera work in a lot of the other action scenes. In the scene above I thought it was great, because it had a POINT - to show that Batman was basically invisible to these guys as he whaled on them. But in a lot of the other ones, they were traditional Hollywood fighting scenes - the director just says to the camera guy, "hey, just wave that thing around a lot - that's how you tell its a fight scene". I keep hoping directors have learned that the Matrix-style fight scene that shows the action and shows that the fights are actually choreographed will catch on, but I'm continually disappointed.

But, that was a minor complaint compared to the sheer excellence of the rest of the film.

Even things I didn't think I was going to like - for example, the Batmobile - almost had me leaping out of my seat with the sheer joy of how well it was integrated into the story. I thought the new Batmobile looked a bit clunky and ugly, none of the streamlined slickness that was present in the Keaton movie. But the way they added it in - it was a vehicle designed for the military used for bridging - it suddenly becomes a lot more 'real' in the context of the movie. What, Bruce Wayne is going to have some uber-slick car designed and noone is going to be the wiser? This way he's just picking up some ex-military thing designed by his own company and noone even knows. The design of the car makes sense - its all blocky and flat planes like a Humvee.

I've always liked movies that go into a lot of unnecessary detail about certain aspects - and as this was 'Batman Begins', it was really gratifying to see that it was truly a story about how Batman begun. It looks at his training, where he got the idea to use a bat as his symbol in the fight against crime - lots of stuff is covered. I particularly liked the bit about how he got the Bat cowl, ordering 10,000 of them from some company (only to find that they weren't the right sort and he had to order more).

Christian Bale was a great Batman. He's got a badass physique and looked hardcore and deadly in the suit (especially when he yoinked that cop up by his feet in the rain!) but managed to look suave and playboy-esque as Bruce Wayne. Gary Oldman was, as always, great, though perhaps not in it as much as I hoped as Gordon. Morgan Freeman was a cool Lucius Fox, with a bunch of great lines. Katie Holmes was aight, though she didn't get as much play as I feared and fortunately I was able to watch it without thinking of that stupid-ass Tom Cruise interview.

Special mention must be made of Liam Neeson, whose performance was pretty stellar. He still swings a sword leetly for a dude that is getting on. His role as Raz Al Ghul was really well integrated; I'd heard of that character before but knew nothing about him so it was really interesting to see how he fit into the story (I assume its relatively faithful to the comics given how everything else was).

The movie managed to stay dark and serious the whole way though - it was clearly quite adult with no focus on kids at all, but without any swearing or excessive blood and guts.

The ending was great as well; it opened itself up awesomely for a sequel and assuming this one does well at the box office (which I'm hoping it is) I think it could turn into a really great series (as long as they can keep the kid stuff out of it).

Anyway, go see this movie. It'll be the first movie I've seen at the cinemas more than once since The Matrix; I can't wait to see it again a second time to see if there was anything else I missed.

Batman 5: Just Piss Off Batman

seriously though, if there had to be another Batman, I'm glad it was Christian Bale. All the best American actors are British.

The ending was great as well; it opened itself up awesomely for a sequel and assuming this one does well at the box office (which I'm hoping it is) I think it could turn into a really great series

Was watching a small bit about it on Foxtel, and they said Christian Bale and Gary Oldman both agreed to sign on for the sequel on the eve of this movie's release, so thats some awesome news.

I've heard Bale is signed on for two more movies! woot
And despite Katie Holmes being a knob, I hope they don't just give Batman a random new love interest in the next one with no explanation what happened to Rachael.

Even the shakey cam wasn't too bad. Best comic translation ever.

Movie rocked. The dude from the full monty explained life rather well I thought :)

movie f***ing kicked ass - dark as hell throughout & wicked performances from the actors.

christopher nolan's a awesome director and i hope if they do more sequels he's doing them also.

last edited by bk at 21:54:05 18/Jun/05