While I think that the Christopher Nolan trilogy comes closest than any of its live-action predecessors, I would hardly call it the definitive representation of Batman.
Before you brand me a heretic, hear me out.
Let's start from the beginning.
Batman Begins takes us through Batman's origins, Bruce Wayne's transformation.
A story that I love. From the comic Batman: Year One to the animated Mask of the Phantasm, the different takes on an iconic story have held up.
Where Batman Begins falters is the exact moment that Ra's Al Guhl reveals that Gotham City is to be the target of the League of Shadows. Why is the city to be targeted? Ra's explains that the city represents the penultimate in decadence and corruption. We are told this several times throughout the film, but we never see it. (Yeah, there is that moment between Wayne and Rachel where she gives the nickel tour of homeless, but what city doesn't have that?) Gotham is supposed to be the worst of the worst. But it never really looks too bad. I'd live there. It looks like what you would expect a city to look like. Charlotte. Chicago. L.A. (But I would say that L.A. has more menace.)
Detective Flass is somehow supposed to encapsulate the police corruption and perhaps even the city's, but he isn't enough. He's not dangerous. He's a thug that steals money from street vendors. He never has any real teeth, so when Batman intimidates him, while being cool to watch, lacks the dramatic power that it should have had.
Flass' character works in the comics because he's a tool of the corrupt Commissioner Loeb (a missed opportunity for the film). He's also a threat. At one point, Flass and a few other venal cops in ski-masks ambush the young James Gordon and give him a message in the form of a beating. Get wise or else. Flass as portrayed in the film is little more than a clownish buffoon.
But enough about Flass.
The real culprit is when the Wayne Tech microwave emitter is introduced. This frankly marks the downturn in what is otherwise (with a few exceptions) a good film. Since the microwave emitter hasn't even been alluded to until two-thirds of the way through, its not an easy plot point to work in. But it is necessary.
How is it accomplished? By this point in the story, the only way it can be. It's delivered as a bit of undramatic expositional dialogue to Rutger Hauer's Mister Earle with cut-a-ways to a ship being sunk by the device (the cut-a-ways, I assume were meant to make the exchange of information dramatic. It doesn't).
What makes the introduction of the microwave emitter worse is that it is an obvious story device, one that is wedged in. There's no finesse in this. It's a big deal, but not because we see it as a big deal. The characters tell us, so it must be so. But it is a big deal. The finale rests on it. Wouldn't you think that it would rate a better intro?
But enough about the damn microwave emitter.
The nail in the coffin. Where the film loses its credulity (not entirely, mind you, but enough to bother me for what that's worth), is when Ra's returns from the dead (at least metaphorically), to wreak havoc on the city of Gotham. His reasons are still the same. Corruption and evil must be purged. I'm still not buying it. Why? We haven't seen it. People have talked enough about it, but talk is cheap. If you're building a whole movie on this, then we have to see it. Seeing is believing after-all.
I still love Batman Begins, but I say that with reservations. For me, of all the live-action representations, it comes closest to capturing the essence of the Batman myth.
Next:
Why the Dark Knight is the worst of the trilogy and brings us closer to why the trilogy is not the definitive Batman.
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