Interested in the new Christopher Nolan film?

I haven't gone to the movies in a long time, but I'm slightly tempted to go see "Batman Begins." It's not that I love Batman, though I did like the first Tim Burton Batman movie well enough. It's that I like Christopher Nolan, who directs the new film. That is, I loved his film "Memento." "Memento" -- unlike virtually every other movie of the last twenty years -- did not underestimate your intelligence.

But one thing is bugging the hell out of me about the new Batman. As usual, they've redesigned his outfit. Superhero outfits are always ridiculous if you think about them rationally. You'll spoil the fun if you're distracted into thinking, why would that help? But the new Batman cape is so expansive and volumnious that it would be a hazard to wear if Batman were just tinkering around the stately mansion. But in a fight? Wouldn't he get all twisted up in it? Wouldn't his opponent use it as a weapon against him? And now I'm distracted into thinking that all superhero capes are counterproductive. The new Batman helmet extends rigidly around his neck and hits his shoulders. How can he even turn his head? Just sneak up alongside him. He'll never see you. And now I'm distracted into thinking that no one should ever want to wear a mask in a fight.

(One time, at a big children's party at a famous ad agency where I used to work, "Spiderman" got the kids riled up, and one of them grabbed his headgear. I was just looking on, laughing at the hijinks, when Spiderman came lumbering over to me, begging for help. I backed away. Horse around with the kids. Don't come at me. But eventually I got the message that the poor man really needed help. He couldn't see and the kids were scaring him. I straightened out the eyeholes and saved Spiderman.)

Anyway, maybe I'll overcome my distractability and give Nolan's movie a chance.

Here's a piece by Caryn James in today's NYT about the film that tries to make some political points and to compare it to the current "Star Wars" effort:

The [two] films' conflicts are not simply about good guys and bad guys, or even good versus evil, always the elements of broadly framed fantasies. With spiritual overtones, and an emphasis on an eternal struggle between equally matched forces of darkness and light, the films suggest a kind of pop-culture Manichaeism. And as crowd-pleasing movies so often do, they reflect what's in the air, a climate in which the president speaks in terms of good and evil, and religion is increasingly part of the country's social and political conversation.

Well, maybe I'll have something to say about all of that. Re Batman, at least. But I'm not going to suffer through "Star Wars" just to get into a position to make a comparison and pontificate about politics. Not that I wouldn't. I just can't put up with the experience of sitting through it.

Did you see the NYT op-ed about “Star Wars” by Neal Stephenson? I just wrote about that for GlennReynolds.com, ending my week of guest-blogging over there. If you have any comments about that, feel free to use the comments section of this post.