The only bad thing about seeing Batman Begins in Vancouver before the DiGRA conference was reading the silly assholes in some Canadian newspaper do some dialogue thing about the film where they talked about how insanely great the Burton films were and how boring and lousy the new one was by comparison.
Yeah, right, the great Burton films which happen to be missing little frills like a plot. And which seem basically disinterested in the title character. Which, I know, is a problem with the genre: the villains are usually more interesting. But not with Batman, for god’s sake.
Anyway, Batman Begins is just great. See it. I’ll probably go on a geekfest about it here soon. What I especially liked it that they weren’t so scared of the mythos that didn’t do some smart rewriting of various things, but also not so contemptuous of the mythos or the character that they ignored decades of work, either.
P.S. don’t even dream of taking the kids. Not only is the Scarecrow actually scary, so is Batman. There’s actually one sequence where for the first time they successfully convince the viewer that a criminal would break down and confess things to Batman.
I agree: Batman Begins is scary. I for one never read Batman comics (spare me the lecture! Only DC was Teen Titans and Legion of Super Heroes, Keith Giffen-T&M Bierbaum) so I was totally shocked at the Scarecrow character. Especially not knowing that he existed or that the slimy but cute doctor was a real villain.