A frank review of the ten-minute preview available online

After the dog’s breakfast made out of the Batman franchise by director/ costume designer/hack Joel Schumacher, Warner wisely yanked the plug, gave Batman a few years off, and ultimately decided to call a do-over on the whole thing with the next film.

Some of the early rumors were discouraging, with the casting sounding more Tiger Beat than “crime beat.” Jake Gyllenhaal—the off-brand Tobey Maguire— was initially considered for the role, which would have made a potential Batman/Spiderman crossover a truly confusing experience. Joshua “Pacey” Jackson was also asked to audition — which, with Katie Holmes in the movie, would have basically made it Gotham's Creek. And Ashton Kutcher? Jesus. One can just imagine the previews: "This summer… crime gets punk’d.”

Fortunately, the casting seems to have turned out alright. Remember, the thing about Batman is that he’s crazy; and nobody does crazy like Christian “American Psycho” Bale. Want proof? Bale pulled a reverse De Niro, dropping 63 pounds to get all sickly looking for The Machinist, despite the fact that it is a completely shitty movie. Anyone in his right mind would have simply passed the producers Steve Buscemi’s phone number or advised them to rewrite the role for Lindsay Lohan (who'd intended to drop 63 pounds and get all sickly looking anyway). Fortunately, former serial killer Patrick Bateman merely had to drop a single letter from his last name to play Batman.

It looks like Batman Begins isn’t going to play down the titular hero’s monomaniacal obsession — unlike, say, the vapid Batman and Robin, which treated crimefighting as no more than a fun lark for George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell to while away the hours on weekends. “Anybody who’d dress up like a bat clearly has issues,” scoffs a most-likely-hiding-something Bruce Wayne in an early preview. “Like, perhaps he saw his parents murdered in front of him by a common street thug when he was young,” he fortunately doesn’t continue. “Moreover, he’d probably have to be independently wealthy — like a billionaire socialite playboy — to have the time and money to invest in such shenanigans,” he fails to elaborate, not getting carried away.

The ten-minute preview of the film starts out with some suitably Gothamy looking shots of Gotham. We then see a young Bruce Wayne staring out a window, evidently shortly after the funeral of his parents. Lil’ Bruce is tormented with guilt. Alfred (Michael Caine) assures him that the brutal gunning down of his parents wasn’t his fault — it was, shockingly, the gunman’s.

But as we all know, Bruce isn’t buying this — and it’s a good thing too. If this movie was merely about an orphaned but well-adjusted survivor of street crime growing up to take over his dead father’s business empire and making a lot of money, that would be a radical but piss-poor re-imagining of the Batman legend. Not the worst yet put to film, mind you, but still pretty bad.

Later, a grown Bruce meets Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), who teaches him to master his natural talents. In a remote, craggy locale, the distinguished, grey-goateed man instructs Bruce in the art of swordsmanship. “Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child,” Ducard practically says as their blades clash together. “If your head comes away from your neck, it's over! In the end, there can be only one,” he might as well add.

“Your parents’ death wasn’t your fault,” Ducard does say, which is nice. “It was your father’s fault,” he adds, which seems kind of uncalled for. Also, if you Bat-fans look closely, Ducard blocks Bruce’s attacks here with these spurred arm guards that foreshadow Batman’s gloves, a nice touch.

Ducard also teaches Bruce the secret ninja arts of smoke bombs and invisibility. If you're planning on learning the secret ninja arts anyway, there’s no better teacher than a Frenchman played by an Irishman. To be fair, Bruce is evidently also supposed to be learning this stuff from ninja cult leader (and familiar Batman comics character) Ra’s Al Ghul (aka Ken Watanabe), but the trailer skips over him in favor of showing us the more familiar, non Oriental-looking ninja master Qui-Gonn Jinn as comforting substitute.

Bruce returns to the west, deciding that he can’t fight crime merely as Bruce Wayne— no, he needs to become a symbol. Fortunately, these things have a way of suggesting themselves, and Bruce soon visits a cave so full of bats he has no choice but to become Batman. Seriously — there are a lot of bats in this cave. Pretty much anyone who ended up with a cave with this many bats in it would probably come out of it deciding to become Batman, regardless of whether or not they had any crimes that needed avenging.

Or they’d just completely freak out, I guess.

After that, Bruce meets Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), which I thought was the name of the fight promoter who managed Dredrick Tatum on The Simpsons, but it turns out that’s Lucius Sweet. Anyway, Lucius Sweet takes Bruce for a spin in the prototype Batmobile. There’s some expositional nonsense here about how the vehicle was originally designed for jumping across rivers and trailing a cable so that a bridge could be dragged across; but the fact that it’s painted in desert camo gives a hint as to why it remains an unused prototype. One gets the idea that if Lucius invented a vehicle that could tunnel through sand dunes, he’d paint it forest green.

Anyway, the point here is to show us the new Batmobile, because every time there’s a new Batman movie, the first thing every fanboy wants to know is whether they’ve fucked up the Batmobile. Fortunately, they have not.

From there, it’s back to spelunking in the cave, which Alfred appears to be showing Bruce for the first time. One gets the idea we’re seeing scenes out of order here, as this is pretty obviously taking place before the earlier scene. What’s more, Bruce suddenly goes from wearing a short-sleeved shirt to wearing the Batsuit in this part. That’s kind of disconcerting. It’d be a pretty obvious continuity error, except that, well — this is a trailer — so continuity isn’t really important. Just making the movie look wicked awesome.

And from there, the trailer does just that, given that it's loaded with bats, explosions, bats, Batmobile stunt driving, bats, Bruce spraying down the Batsuit with Armor All, Batman getting tasered by Katie Holmes and not caring, ass-kicking, bats, and bats. Seriously— there are a lot of bats in this trailer.

And plenty of wicked awesomeness too.

Peter Lynn goes wayyyy back to the days of The Trailer Trash, and appears here at JP.com—completely free of charge—as a totally nice favor. In addition to his work at TTT Peter is a professional editor, as well as a published author at the National Lampoon, Good Magazine, Golden Words and other publications. Read his hilarious blog at Man vs. Clown and comic at MK Ultra.