Of course Begins is substantially better than Schumacher's crap (Forever gets too much credit, and it's more stinker than winner)-- but that wasn't gonna be hard to pull off, and I think as "better" as this flick was, it was overpraised by a lot of people because the last one was just so bad in comparison. As a Batgeek, I thought it was a good but not great movie. The suit was cool, and its origin was very well done. The Scarecrowe was a good, if slightly underdeveloped villain (a little too Joker-esque near the end, though). Michael Caine made a suprisingly wonderful Alfred, as did Gary Oldman=Gordon, and Morgan Freeman was a good, if kind of pointless gadget man (Batman didn't used to get his stuff from Q or M, but whatever, it worked).
Bale was not bad, but not all that great. Any number of current, random, similarly aged actors would've done as serviceable of a job. It doesn't help that once again, Bruce Wayne wasn't given all that much to do (only a couple neat scenes), and few chances to actually be a detective. The training sequence was overlong, and the sight of a bearded Wayne is laughable (I may be wrong, but in 60 years of comics, he rarely, if EVER had a beard). Plus, Bruce Wayne trained himself to be a fighter and detective, not under the tutelage of some mysterious guru in Tibet or whatever. The Wayne parents murder *was* done poorly, and the father stuff was overly soap-operatic/melodramatic. The childhood stuff with the little girl was garbage. The Joe Chill angle was blah (and why remake that portion if it was already filmed previously?)-- and Bruce Wayne contemplating shooting him was ridiculously out of character. Katie Holmes' character was a waste of space, and yet another excuse to give Bruce a "love interest", when Batman is probably comics' loneliest superhero (rightfully so). The Batmobile tank car was an ugly joke, I don't care how "practical" it was-- the Batmobile is one of the coolest and most iconic images (even in its many incarnations), and to take all the design and style and visual flair out of it is just sad. The fight scenes, which are the money shots in a Batman flick, were piss-poorly shot, and super-zoomed-in so you could barely make out what was going on (why?). For the ever-dumbed-down audience of the masses, the constant reminders that Bruce feels guilty about his pops (but apparently, not his mom?), and that Gotham is a cesspool of crime were annoying-- okay, I GET it. Gotham itself (apparently just Chicago with some CGI assistance) lacks the comic-book grandeur of Burton's sets and films-- it wasn't as much of a character as it was before. Batman letting Ras meet his doom was out of character (so was him letting the Joker croak, but that doesn't make it any less inappropriate here). The sequel set-up was kinda cheeseball-- if Bats ain't dead, of course he lives to fight another villain another day. Show that symbol and fade out.
Okay, so I'm nitpicky. As flawed as Burton's '89 Batman was itself, it was more of a unique, cinematic vision and the merging of his weird style with the Bat motif still holds up well to me. A lot of things were sort of left for you to figure out, and it was more atmospheric, instead of beating you over the head with the plot, and Bruce's plight. I don't think Begins captures the character's essence any better than Burton's attempts. Actually, I think pound for pound, the animated Batflicks are better overall movies (esp. Mask of the Phantasm and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker). I just think, as much of an improvement over the previous drivel of Batman & Robin of course Begins was, it still missed the mark enough for me that I wasn't that satisfied.
I'd love to see an edit addressing the things I mentioned. [I mean, why edit it if you're not gonna tinker?] But right now, that's for some industrious, would-be editor with the necessary equipment to decide, and for me to ponder. Or make a rough, Macrovision-laden edit of.