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Reality is that Tim Burton is one of the few great film-makers left in the Hollywood dream machine, and the sort of worthless crap sequels and rubbish that the factory has been churning out these past few years is one of the reasons the box office has gone off the boil in the States and Australia.

Take the Batman franchise. After Burton did a neat moody gothic atmospheric opener, the shows went down the toilet. A long way down, all the way to Rainer Wolfcastle (sorry, Arnie) playing Mr. Freeze. Ever seen an Austrian sitcom? Well they might be funnier than Dutch sitcoms, but not by much, and Arnie was the measure of how the world of the bat fell apart. Even the telly series began to look like hard edged realism.

Batman Begins is Christopher (Memento, Insomnia) Nolan's attempt to revive the franchise, and he does an okay job of it, along with his co writer David Goyer. They do a Burton and go back to the Frank Miller sensibility that rescued Batman from the space Adam West and the telly show had taken the bat man and a cast of villainous clowns.

Nolan's not as good a director as Burton - the thinking man's chenius at dark spaces, but he does have the advantage of Christian Bale in the cloak. Poor Tim had Michael Keaton, who cuts quite a dash as Mr. Mom, but never really convinced as a tortured bat person.

Bale has recovered from his outing in American Psycho to look mean and moody but with enough charm to make you want to watch him for the duration (you couldn't say that about Captain Corelli's Mandolin). And he's assisted by the usual assortment of B picture Big Picture stooges, not least Morgan Freeman, who manages to invest most of his roles with gravitas, even when asked to read the telephone book. Throw in Liam Neeson and Michael Caine - regulars who'd turn up to a funeral if the fee was right - and Katie Holmes as the squeeze factor, and it all adds up to familiarity street.

The same familiarity infests the plot. The poor bat's parents are murdered, and the young innocent decides to go vigilante. Who'd a thought it. Nolan spends a long time on this kind of Freudian pop psychology, and the brooding, so straight action fans might feel let down - it takes a while before the show gets into the zap, kapowie mode expected of this kind of Gotham night stalking.

The show managed a respectable $15.46 million at the Australian box office - not up there with the really big hitters, but respectable enough. By way of comparison, Batman made $13.752 million on its release, but that was way back in 1989, so if you did an inflation weighting Burton is still king of the Australian box office. For the record, in '92 Batman Returns made only $9.491 million, while in '95 Batman Forever clawed in $17.936 million, proving you can fool some of the punters all of the time. Even Batman and Robin (and Wolfgang) managed A$13.474 million in 1997 before the studio decided to draw a temporary line in the sand on the caped clown.

What does all this mean? Not much really. If you want a popcorn and pizza night, Batman Begins is an okay contribution to the genre, and at least it's a way of avoiding George Clooney or Val Kilmer in the role. If you're a genuine fan of the bat, dig up replicas of the early comics or take another squiz at Frank Miller. None of the movies are a match for the original vision. If you're a nerd, time to put Burton up against Nolan and spend restless hours zapping the boards with your opinon on who's the best. Burton still stands as overall champeen (Nolan really didn't do that great a job on Insomnia) but you can't handicap a show pony with a klutz like Keaton.

Simpler folk amongst us will simply dread the sequel, because the show did enough business to generate a follow up. Will there be a new Joker who thinks he can out do Jack Nicholson in sheer cornball ham? Probably. Will the sequel therefore be a turkey in a bat gown? Most likely. Is Donald Rumsfeld a good movie critic? Well, he knows how to ask questions ...

Batman Begins will begin to hit the rental shelves on October 19th '05 in a two disc special edition, but only the desperate will be excited by endless extras about how a man was turned into a bat.