Re: Batman Begins (Movie spoilers).
His voice in costume is nothing more than a gutteral growl. That's not scary. It's called food poisoning. It sounds as if he's always hugged over the toilet vomitting whatever it is he just ate. It just doesn't have that intimidating factor Batman has in the comics and cartoons.
I agree with this.
I didn't care much for his Batman, but it wasn't enough to really bother me. I did like his Bruce Wayne. I didn't read it as trying to be 'aloof and suave' as you did, though.
I interpreted his performance as that of being the perpetually bored and directionless yuppie who goes on a 'soul-searching' hoo ha. He's basically a really self-absorbed, selfish and solipsistic, a navel-gazing twit moaning and whining inwardly about his loss and what the city has come to.
This is why actually like the Rachel Dawes character. She pretty much *****-slaps Bruce Wayne by reminding him what a total prick he is, and by the time he returns from his Life-Changing Soul-Searching Journey, he becomes the Bruce Wayne I like --- the seemingly perpetually bored fella, a character Bale has experience playing in films like
American Psycho.
If he was going to be playboy businessman Wayne the movie would be thirty minutes longer, but then again, maybe Bale will get the opportunity to show that side of the character in
The Dark Knight.
That said, being a 'playboy businessman', but that wasn't really as important as portraying him as a guy who pretends to look brainlessly flippant as he bathes in the fountain of a hotel he just bought.
In fact, he plays almost the same character he does from
American Psycho, except his outlet isn't delusions of homicidal glee, but wearing a perv-suit and striking fear into the hearts of the superstitious and cowardly.
