The modern superhero movie owes much to Sam Raimi's Spider-man, which started this whole thing back in 2002, when we were sorely in need of heroes. (And, in turned out, in need of a mass expungment of the Twin Towers from our collective consiousness, the better to properly memorialize them and cannonize those who, at the time Spider-man came out, still smoldered under their ruins...but that's another story.) Batman Begins initially disapointed me, the same way all legends of the Dark Knight disapoint me, save those told by Paul Dini and Co., over in Warner Brother's animation Purgatory. I can remember leaving the theater in late 2005 with my Ambassador on my arm. She turned to me and said, "Somebody forgot to tell them they weren't making Spider-man." At the time, this struck me as a pretty acurate characterization.

Looking back now (after the abysmal failure of Spider-man 3, the X-men sequels and the rest of Marvel's second-stringer hero films) I realize how unfair this was to director Christopher (Memento) Noland, writer David S. (Blade) Goyer, and even Our Hero, as played by Christian Bale. All did the best with what they had, and a better job than anyone had any right to expect given the Bat's long, laregly-depressing, cinimatic history. To be sure, this movie went through its own developemental hell, its makers fighting wars and rumors of wars that no doubt weighted on my mind as I stepped into the the theater, coloring my initial assesments.

Alongside that, add the twenty years of faithful adherence to the Batman and his adventures, and you've got a cirtic primed to find fault with even the best picture in the world. Batman Begins is not that. It is, however, the best Batman film in thirty years, easily surpassing Tim Burton's opening salvo, no matter how much that film did for Bats as a character, or for his genre as a whole.

After a credit-less, surreal-impressionist intro, we disolve to stately Wayne Manor, a Georgian nightmare of a building overlooking the Wayne family feifdom of Gotham City. (It's like Versailles and the English House of the Parliment had a torid love affair, birthing this ungly bastard of a sturcture.) Young Bruce Wayne (Gus Lewis), age 8, plays in the garden area with his family's housekeeper's daughter, Rachel Dawes (Emma Lockhart). Their pre-pubescent hide-and-seek leads Bruce to the old, rotted coverings of a well head, through which he promptly falls. At the bottom of the well, a swarm of bats rises to great the young Wayne, scratching destiny into the boy's arms and face.

Rescued by his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne (Linus Roache), young Bruce recovers...or seems to, at least. Bats plauge his and intrude into his waking moments, inducing minor panic attacks, like the one that grips him during the opera his parents drag him to that night. Prompted by the boy's sudden desire, Thomas and Martha exit with Bruce through a side door, into an alley.

A man named Joe Chill (Richard Brake) waits for them. Gun in hand, he demands Thomas Wayne's wallet and Martha's pearls. Bruce watches from his mother's arms as Joe Chill gets what he wants...and fires twice, leaving both Wayne's dead at their sons's feet as their murderer flees into the night. Thomas Wayne's last words to his son are, "Don't be afraid," words the boy will need at least eighteen years to fully comprehend.

After said time Bruce (now played by Christian Bale) returns home from Princton, on word that Joe Chill is about to be freed on appeal. Seems the small-time punk shared cell space with big time mob boss Carmine "The Roman" Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). This Bruce learns from Rachel, now a crusading Assitant D.A. (played by Katie Holmes). Bruce, the young avenging son, swelled with all the anger and angst you can pack into a twenty-three year-old's frame, plans to kill Chill as he exists the courtroom. Only a successfull hit from the now-freed mob boss ("Falcone says 'Hi'," the assassin tells Joe Chill as she shoots him down, under Bruce's unnoticed gaze) saves Bruce from becoming the thing he hates.

With captial-V Vengence denied him, Bruce pops into Falcone's sterotypical mob boss eatery. "I wanted to show you not everyone in Gotham is afraid of you." The Roman is not impressed, holding a gun to Bruce's head, threatening his remaining loved ones, rightly informing Bruce, "You haven't thought it through. You haven't thought about your lady friend down at the D.A.'s office, or your old butler. Guys like you, they always have something to loose...So don't--don't come down here with your anger trying to prove something to yourself. This isn't your world, kid. You're--you're Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham. Down here's a world you'll never understand. And you always fear what you don't understand."

Tossed into the street, Bruce spends the next seven years attempting a greater understanding. Shucking his identity and birthright as Gotham's prince, he travels the world, learning about "crime" (in a nebulious, general sense) and the means to fight "injustice."

Years of this find Bruce voluntarily trapped inside a Chinese jail. A man named Heri Ducard (Liam f-ing Neison) steps from the shadows to offer Bruce another way. "[W]hatever your original intentions," Ducard tells Wayne, "you have become trurly lost." Ducard, on the other hand, walks the path of the League of Shadows, a secretive network of vigilante ninjas, headquartered in the mountains of Tibet and led by the mysterious Ra's al Ghul.(That is, the Demon's Head.)

Passing the Legue's tests, Bruce balks at the last. Rather than execute a murderer in front of the assembled Shadows, Bruce touches off a fire in the League's powder room, destroying their mountain home. Only he and the unconscious Ducard escape within camera range.

With the League's lessons in theatricality, invisibility and deception ringing like mental church bells, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham, finding it much the same hive of scum of villiany that he left seven years (and two reels) ago. Only Alfred and Rachel, the crusading A.D.A., remain unchanged in this city of corruption and decay, where every cop is on someone's take...save for Sergeant Jim Gordon.

Alfred's cooperation is essential and unquestioned from the start. (Aptly provided by Michael Caine, though with the wrong accent.) There's no debate between Bruce and Alfred over the course of Bruce's new-born mission--only its tactics and accoutrements. Bruce ignores Rachel, seemingly forgetting her until circumstances (that is, the plot) force him to reconsider her existence. In all the world outside his house, Bruce reaches out to only two men--his father's old friend in "the Company," Lucius Fox...and the beleaguered city cop, Gordon, who first dismisses the half-formed vigilante as "some nut"...until mob bosses start showing up, tied to spot lights, at the scenes of their crimes.

Believe it or not, this is only the first hour of what is, more or less, two movies unevenly grafted together, and packaged as one, much like that first Lord of the Rings cartoon. The first film that goes to make up Batman Begins opens with young Bruce and ends with the fully-formed Batman pulling "Roman" Falcone through a moon roof and announcing, "I'm Batman." The next hour and twenty minutes trace the ripple effects of this event, culminating in the revelation of a plot to (what else?) destroy Gotham, and Batman's attempts to thwart it.

Right away I notice a greater respect for the source material than, say, that displayed by Superman Returns (which shamelessly aped Chris Reeve's movies while almost completely ignoring the last twenty years of comics). Falcone, Joe Chill, Lucius Fox--all canonical characters given short shift in previous movies, now allowed to see the light of day, if not exactly bask in it. All are brought to life by dedicated actors That strike precisely the right notes. Wilkinson's Falcone is the perfect pre-Bat Gotham gangster--that is, a stereotype, so smug in his power he could've walked right out of a Mario Puzo novel. Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox is an absolutely triumph--for the first time in forty years, Lucius becomes more than Bruce Wayne's Token Black Dude, reincarnated as another vision of Alfred; another bridge between the Batman and his civilian identity. Even Gordon--a non entity in all previous films- -receives the opportunity to throw his dramatic weight around and by-god contribute. I only regret Gordon's absence from the first half hour of the picture...which is understandable. This isn't Jim Gordon Begins and it is most certainly not Year One. Mores the pity.

A personal disclaimer: I have never met Frank Miller (obviously). Nor do intend to. I find his politics repulsive, his view of the world childish and dangerously naive, and his knee-jerk retreats to sexploitation positively revolting. His comics are the worst kind of sequential art-literature Anglo-saxon man has ever produced. And if you're pissed that Batman's an asshole these days, Frank Miller, more than any other man, disserves your blaime. The fact that he shares his name with a childhood friend of my family only compounds my distaste his work.

Nevertheless, his Batman: Year One is a seminal milestone in comics: the first in-depth examination of just what it takes for someone to turn themselves into a vigilante*. It is also the story of a cop from Chicago, attempting to raise his family in what is, at first glance, the worst city in America, where only cops not on someone's take are in the hospital.

I could write a whole PHD dissertation on pre-Batman Gotham as a microcosm of America, with its pompous authority figures mouthing empty platitudes while the real power players confer in the darkened backrooms of front businesses...I could make it into a movie. I'll have to, because I won't find it here, in this movie. Batman Begins doesn't trouble itself with how to save Gotham. Instead, it busies itself with the question, "Is Gotham worth saving."

Even this story is subsumed in the dramatic revelations of the Third Act, which dedicated fans will see coming a mile away, thanks to Jonathan Crane (played by Cillian Murphy, channeling Johnny Depp), the Scarecrow. A true villain in his own right, this film reduced Dr. Crane to flunky status, abandoning him during the final battle, without even the courtesy of a punch in the face.

Ever since Batman Returns the Dark Knight has battled Villain Squeezing and lost hands down. It seems two B-list actors do, in fact, equal one Jack Nicholson. True, heroes are defined by their villains. By the same token, the more villains you pack into the film, the less time you have to develop them. Why include them at all if not to use them to their full potential?

Batman is blessed with one of the best rogues galleries in comics. On screen, this has proved a curse. Try convincing movie makers makers they can't play with all their toys at once and they get pissy. It's like trying telling Seth McFarland to write a linear narrative.

Complaining about it wastes more than I have. Instead, I will praise this film for what it does well: normalizing Batman in a way Tim Burton never bother to. But then, Timmy never turns his camera on subtle things, never answers subtle questions. Like Where does Batman get those wonderful toys? (Lucius Fox.) Why the cape? And why such a cumbersome damn cape, anyway, when you know you're going to spend most of your nights in hand-to-hand combat? (Because, apart from completing the Bat-look it doubles as the world's coolest parachute.) Why the little fins on your gauntlets? (Because in a pinch they make handy sword breakers.) "Why Bats, Mr. Wayne?" Alfred asks. Bruce comes right out and admits: "Bats frighten me."

Little moments like this allow Christian Bale to portray the most human Batman in decades (if only because the animated Batman voiced by Kevin Conroy was just that: animated). Less starkly divided than the Batmen of the 1990s, Bale restores a humanity to Bruce Wayne and Batman that will please those saddened by the character's more dickish incarnations (I'm looking at you, again, Frank). Can Batman be a manipulative, selfish bastard? Yes. But so can anyone. In his heart of hearts, the Batman knows that ends do not justify means. Two bullets taught him an object lesson in this at age eight and he carries that stone every night. It weighs him down between the rooftop, heavier than all the armor money can buy.

For all that, Bale plays an amiable sort of dual-identity vigilante, surprisingly personable for someone who watched his parents die and then spent seven years exploring the darker sides of life in the "criminal fraternity," whatever that is. Katie Holmes completes the humanization process, totally selling their relationship. Rachel Dawes is, herself, a complete new character, though a familiar archetype: the path Bruce will not take. Hers is the only famine presence in the film doubling as both conscience and (inevitably) victim...though she kicks a good amount of ass for a damsel in distress. I hereby revise my early mischaracterization: she is no Mary Jane Watson. Rather an anti-M.J., Rachel is the only character (apart from Alfred) who follows Bruce through his entire arch and, unlike Alfred, she is not impressed. Hell, at one point she literally sees through Bruce's mask a fact I don't consider spoiled by my sharing it. Certainly she has an easier job recognizing "her" man than Betty Ross ever did.

I don't necessarily recognize him...he's pretty chatty for a Batman, stopping to share a quip with a homeless man before hauling Roman Falcone into the sky...his Bat-voice sounds more like an emphysema patient's struggle for breath...but I wave these quibbles away. "He's young," I say. "He'll learn." I could've used a few more instances of Bruce getting to know himself and his new suit, in line with the learning curve obviously visible throughout, say, Spider-man...but I realize this would've only made the film longer, and even I think two hours and twenty minutes is pushing it.

Better, I think, to have eliminated the top-tier villains (Ra's al Ghul, the Scarecrow) altogether, building a third act around what the Joker will call "the battle for Gotham's soul." A sort of civil war: the old guard, represented by the mob, vs. the new world order, in the form of Gordon, the Bat, and all the myriad legions Bruce Wayne is able to inspire, whether in or out of costume. I realize I'm once again advocating a Year One adaption...of a kind. For my money, I prefer Rachel Dawes to an entire harem of Frank Miller's female characters.

And I prefer Batman Begins to just about any live action Bat-film out there...save Returns. And there's still The Dark Knight to consider. But that, as they say, is another story. This story is as good an introduction to Batman and his world as we're likely to get in a generation. I pronounce it worthy for new comers curmudgeonly perfectionists alike. Go, then, a procure it for yourself.