It takes a while for Batman to hit the stage, fully clad in contoured and menacing black.
Too long if you're an seven-year-old boy dressed in similar attire, waving your merchandise in the air and shouting his name.
But when he arrives, spiralling out the sky to curtail an avaricious Catwoman, he delivers: blows, kicks, thumps, straight-faced messages of doom, redemption and bags of style.
Batman Live is a circus with a narrative. It's a 3D neon comic book. It's a theme park ride. It's a valiant attempt to capture the camp and choreography of a superhero tales.
And while the pacing may feel plodding at times and the exposition too lengthy for those action-hungry boys, there are sufficient super villains, painted faces and contorting characters to ensure there's a visual treat around the next corner.
The story takes it all back to the beginning - the orphaned rich boy, the Flying Graysons - and then rushes forward to an unholy alliance of crims looking to finish off their crime-fighting nemesis from the (alarmingly dark and disturbing) Arkham Asylum.
The staging, in the cavernous O2, allows for high flying antics and accommodates a spectacular game-changing 100ft video screen but the space is also something of a drawback.
The action, for many of the seats, is too remote for a production aimed squarely at bringing the bat to your lap. (Harvey Dent's Two Faces, for example, are but a blurred pimple in the distance.)
Perhaps bat masks with glasses attached (Bat-oculars - pat pending) were the answer, or maybe screens a la Glastonbury.
Never mind, the sumptuous staging, amazing colours and adrenalised stylised setpieces, sent home families not in the Honda Civics and Ford Mondeos - but in a thousand imagined Batmobiles.
– From August 2011
