hey remember how prior to 2005 the most recent batman films had been high contrast with lots
of bright neons remember how they were sometimes a little bit campy and knowing? well you need to
forget all that take your camera off its tripod and welcome to the superhero genre reboot! No I'm
just kidding i'm not going to do a whole video like that you would get seasick and frankly so
would I. spoilers for Batman Begins. the style of filmmaking for most of the action scenes in Batman
Begins, for most of the scenes really, is grounded and that desired style and tone takes precedence
over clarity. instead of making sure that you can see everything that's going on in order to
appreciate it fully, the opposite is true: lots of things are only half seen hinted at obscured
in shadow. the editing is all quick cuts and the camera is often in motion you aren't meant to feel
like an impartial observer of these action scenes you're meant to feel like you're right there in it
feeling confused or exhilarated or like the floor is gonna fall out from under your feet too
hi i'm Jill Bearup in my free time i like to pretend to hit people for theatrical purposes
and i make videos about fights in media. I thought i'd have another swing at the director project
for January which is Christopher Nolan and so i watched the dark knight rises for the first time a
couple of weeks ago and i was not into it so much so that i was worried when i re-watched Batman
Begins that i wouldn't like it this time around because my tastes had changed so drastically in
the intervening years luckily that did not happen but whereas 2012 Jill didn't know anything about
stage combat and so sang the praises of the action scenes in Batman Begins aw look at her she's so
well rested and low resolution modern Jill has opinions I'm really glad i still like the film
though because it sucks when knowing more means that things are less enjoyable that's not really
relevant at the moment though in this video we're going to talk about the two set-piece
fights between Liam Neeson and Christian Bale because they use similar techniques they bookend
Bruce's journey as Batman and i really don't like the latter fight but in the context of the story
it's okay it works so briefly because it's probably been a while since you last saw
this movie the plot goeth thusly: Bruce Wayne is a man lost when the man who murdered his parents is
murdered before he can do it and he has a run-in with a crime boss he decides that he needs to
understand criminals in order to fight crime so he travels the world incognito eventually winding
up in jail in a foreign country there he is found by the league of shadows in particular whisper it
Ra'as Al Ghul, but he doesn't know that yet. he trains him to fight for justice it turns out by
justice they mean killing people and raising decadent cities to the ground which bruce is
not up for he burns their home down returns to Gotham and becomes Batman trying to save the
city from destroying itself and trying to stop Scarecrow who has the backing of the league of
shadows from poisoning the city's water with an airborne hallucinogen in order to destroy
the city through fear thematic when Ra'as Al Ghul returns to oversee Gotham's destruction
he and batman fight on a monorail and bruce wins hooray that kind of covers the basics Rachel still
doesn't want to be your girlfriend though you kind of scare her now sorry when he took on the
project of rebooting batman for DC Christopher Nolan was really go hard or go home on the whole
gritty realism granted an emotionality thing and as i recalled when i watched it recently the movie
really is a genuinely good time it holds together really well in all ways but particularly tonally
speaking combining seriousness and emotion and humor and action beautifully. "oh you wouldn't be
interested in that" [enthusiastic engine noises] and i think that's partially down to the script
and partially a desire for that more realistic take on the superhero genre but the consistency
is helped by the fact that every single shot is Nolan's. he famously doesn't use a second unit
to direct his action scenes so he's there making sure every shot is exactly how he likes it which
is something which has its upsides and downsides but as a whole i think this movie really works
bluntly a lot of the later action in batman begins is so bewilderingly cut because they're trying
to hide from you the fact that batman couldn't really move in his suit and because a lot of it
takes place at night the scenes for example in the Narrows most closely resemble my darks tumbling
around the washing machine the fights in general are difficult to parse in terms of choreography
the camera waves about all over the place your view is often deliberately obscured by
things passing in front of the characters in terms of clarity it kind of sucks but
generally it also works not only do the batman begins fight scenes effectively hide the costuming
mobility difficulties they do a great job of making you feel the right things and because none
of the fights go on for too long and are often intercut with things which aren't so wibbly wobbly
mighty fighty it makes you feel the right things while not giving you time to notice anything that
might look a bit iffy and i think that's pretty clever so let's talk about our bookend fights
the ice fight occurs near the beginning of the movie as part of a montage demonstrating Bruce
learning to be a super duper ninja guy with the league of shadows and the style of the editing
is consistent through the whole montage not just the fight on the whole as a matter of personal
taste i could have gone for slightly more of the multiple move shots maybe zooming out a bit it's
not like this is Liam Neeson's first sword fight after all but the editing does add to the feeling
of overwhelm as Bruce processes his guilt and anger at the death of his parents during the fight
it's also reasonably clear what's happening in the macro even if we're not really clear on the
details of the choreography they're fighting they getting close for a nice all the emotions on the
actor's expensive faces shot and Liam Neeson i mean secretly Ra'as Al Ghul but that's not the
point tells bruce that it's your father's fault your parents died and disarms him bruce attacks
getting increasingly angry but he's tossed aside quite casually because anger does not
change the fact that your father failed to act i'm reminded of the Vers/Yon Rogg fight from captain
marvel at this point i have a video on that too if you're interested because of the use of this i'm
deliberately trying to rile you up to make a point trope which is one that i'm very fond of and the
scene works even though most of the time i'm kind of like where is the sword oh he still has it it's
just out of shot are their arms locked together I- oh never mind the emotion is the point and the
emotion is the point because it's a sparring match not a duel to the death Ra'as Al Ghul wishes bruce
to be like him and therefore makes his points quite forcefully and with violence at this point
we've only had vague hints that the league of shadows are not maybe actually the greatest of
guys so we still see this fight through the lens of a good ish mentor relationship but the montage
has a whole hint at the darkness to come even though the fight itself could be passed off as
very tough love i guess it also works because it's followed up with a moment by the fire
which is genuinely touching and we understand the characters a little better. i may not like
it stylistically but it's short effective and it sells you the characters and their relationship
and their issues because it includes that dialogue it includes those close-ups even at the expense
of clarity of action it wants you to feel things and i did the ending fight on the train is awful
at least the actual fighting part is it's just so confusing and it's so hard to tell what's going
on luckily it's extremely short and it's intercut with things where you can tell what's going on and
again even though i don't like it stylistically it works at making you feel the right emotions
something exciting is happening oh no bruce is on the floor but in this sequence the
bulk of the emotional and plot related heavy lifting is done by Gordon and the characters
in the water tower the actual characters on the train until they stop moving around at least are
just having an even shakier cam version of the ice fight with even less clarity by what's going
on the ice fight helps to tell the story and the dialogue and emotions during the fight help us to
understand the characters better on a choreography and who is doing what to whom level the fight bit
of this fight is just a mess but the reason that batman begins gets away with it is because this
fight is just flavoring in the climactic scene and the important thing is getting bruce to the floor
so we can have that dialogue the details of how he got there are not that important. great fight
scenes enhance a movie but if a movie is good already a couple of not so brilliant fight scenes
won't ruin it unless you linger on them too long maybe that's why i was so meh when the dark knight
rises the action scenes just went on or maybe it was just because i didn't really care about