sirshannon.com

In the summer of 1989, The Charlotte Observer was B&W every day except for Sunday. The Friday that Batman (1989) was released, I was the fool on the front page that caused them to make an exception. If you were around the CLT back then, you might remember the photo of me and Joe Goodman showing off my newly dyed hair. I had just gotten rid of my funk-infested red dreadlocked mohawk (by shaving my head, of course) and Joe dyed/painted my hair black with a bright yellow Batman logo on the right side.

Yeah, that was me.

By that time, the silliness of the 1960’s Batman TV series had been replaced in the comics by a dark, gritty, troubled hero that was only hinted at in Tim Burton’s bright purple and plastic Batman movies. Batman Returns was much better at capturing the dark side of the Dark Knight, but then the series began a spiral into something so bad that it made the Frog Brothers seem like high art.

For the last decade, the thought of another Batman movie has made me cringe. When I heard that Batman Begins was going to take on the genre-redefining Batman: Year One series, I was afraid. Very afraid. To have Ahnold ruin Mr. Freeze isn’t all that life-shattering. To have Tommy Lee Jones turn Harvey Dent into a cackling hen was pretty tough to handle. But to destroy Batman: Year One? That would be unforgivable. So I skipped the movie. Until now.

Boy was that a mistake. Batman Begins may be the first serious Batman movie ever. It is definitely the best.

Ra’s Al Ghul and The Scarecrow are not easy characters to nail, especially when attempting to be serious without falling into cliche melodrama. Yet another retelling of Batman’s origin? Batman Begins managed to do it without being boring or mucking with the canon too much. The Bat Cave is even explained in a manner that doesn’t embarass the average adult’s intelligence.

It is smart, it is dark, and, of course, it has all those wonderful toys. Batman Returns is, in short, the Batman movie I have been waiting for since 1989.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 4:10 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.