Batman Begins

Thoughts before I saw this movie: “Wow, I should go see this movie, it looks really cool and way better than the old ones, even the one with Michael Keaton.”

Thoughts after I saw this movie: “This is the greatest movie ever made. All other movies should be forced to acknowledge it and bow before its awesomeness.”

Ok, that might be a bit much, but still. The Spider-Man movies are incredible because they accurately portray what the comics convey. Spider-Man is a young kid, down on his luck most times, and blessed with powers beyond a normal man. He was the first to teach comic book readers that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Batman on the other hand holds a dear place in the hearts of many readers. He is a normal man without any superpowers. The only abilities that he has come from extensive training, and a few dollars from the mighty Wayne vault. He is the embodiment of the idea that “one man can make a difference” which is stressed very strongly at the end of the film. The entirety of the movie is very true to the comics as they have been developed within the last twenty years. There is no campiness or multicolored villains in the flick. It is dark, subdued, and nearly creepy at moments.

I’ve been a reader of comics since I was a child. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Teen Titans, the Justice League, Daredevil, and so many more all led kids like me to strive for the best in humanity. Nearly every book ended with a theme that tomorrow is going to be a better day, and that there is always hope. One of the greatest storylines in the X-Men series basically ended with the idea that humanity is basically good, and sometimes you just have to work to find it and bring it to the forefront. Its likely from these sources that I get some of my naive thinking that people are just trying to do the best that they can, even when they don’t exactly know how. In the depths of the heart, we all know what doing right is, but along the way, we sometimes convince ourselves to move in another direction.

Sometimes it takes one person, standing up and saying, “This is the right direction” for the rest of us to see which way to go. Someone to stand up and shake us to our foundation, so that it can be rebuilt correctly.