"Batman Begins":superhero DVD made me feel super-stupid

I recently bought a Panasonic Blu-ray Hi-Def DVD player, and purchased and rented a pile of movies to play on it.

When I saw Batman Begins, I was blown away by the sharpness and detail on the screen, and the super-power coming from my speakers.

It's also a super story: the prequel to the other Batman movies. Christian Bales stars as Caped Crusader/Dark Knight Batman (the only superhero without super powers) and billionaire/wuss Bruce Wayne. He Bats better than previous Batmen Burton and Keaton.

We learn that the Boy Bruce was afraid of bats, and Young Man Bruce got ninja-like training from League of Shadows master Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). We meet Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) when he was just an honest Gotham City cop. Michael Caine plays a perfect Alfred-the-butler: calm, wise and nurturing. Morgan Freeman is Lucius Fox, a "Q"-like hardware geek at Wayne Industries who supplies Bruce/Batman with the Batsuit and the Batmobile. It's like a Hummer on steroids, and much more macho than the later batty-looking versions. There's no Robin or Batgirl. This is a serious movie.

In 1817, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about the "willing suspension of disbelief" that is necessary for the enjoyment of fiction. I'm usually able to play by Coleridge's rule, but sometimes I annoy my wife and fellow movie-watchers by yelling "BULLSHIT" while a particularly preposterous scene is on-screen. There's only one unbelievable scene in "Batman Begins," where BM uses his Bat Rope to hang from a speeding monorail train, but miraculously does not get tangled, knocked down or battered by the track support towers. Somehow, it bothered me less than a BS-y scene in the first movie, where BM shoots down an evil airplane with a hand gun.

The day after I watched the DVD, I told a friend about the movie and how great Blu-ray is. He gently informed me that Batman Begins is not yet available in Blu-ray, and I had been watching and salivating over an excellent, but ordinary, DVD.

I felt like an idiot, but at least I was a happy idiot.