Early in his career, the Batman (the Robert Pattinson) faces a new foe, the Riddler (the Paul Dano).
On the trail of obvious clues, he enlists the aid of cat burglar the Selina Kyle (the Zoë Kravitz) to dig into Gotham’s generically seedy underbelly.
Cue rain and say hello to extreme foregrounding of faces and objects.
When The Batman was announced, I was not that interested. There have been so many different versions of (the) Batman, and this one did not sound that distinctive.
On the other hand, I was kind of intrigued by the idea of a programmer Batman flick. One with no origin that just tried to tell its own story. The creative team sounded solid, and Robert Pattinson’s casting made me think that it might be weirder and more unique than it seemed to be.
Before I dive in, I want to get through the things I liked.
Pattinson’s suit is utilitarian but I liked the freedom of movement he and his stunt men had. I also liked the new take on the Batmobile. While I think it is a bit played out, I appreciated the attempt to avoid God Batman and treat him as an ordinary guy who can be hurt or stumped.
But aside from those things, I find it hard to really hook into anything with this movie.
Maybe this is just me, but along with No Time To Die, this movie has put a nail in my interest in pared-down, ‘grounded’ takes on genre characters.
Sure, this is a mystery involving big city corruption. But it involves people who dress up as bats and cats and various other colourful characters. Where’s the sense of drama or fun?
This is a comic book movie that has no interest in being a comic book movie. We have already had a grounded, epic retelling of Batman in the Nolanverse.
This one is so grim it feels like an extended joke about what a ‘darker than Nolan’ Batman would look like.
This one wants to be more overtly noirish, in terms of its style and genre trappings. That is a great mode for a Batman story, and there are probably countless examples that comic book aficionados can supply.
The bigger point is that this movie’s ingredients are totally fine.
I just wish this movie was a little more focused and way more energetic. This is a mystery movie with no tension, no real mystery and it is so determinedly morose that it is hard to get any fun out of it.
This lack of pizzazz is the direct result of this movie’s lack of pacing. Funereal is the only word for it. If this movie was 90 minutes, I think I would like it more. The story is not original, and its take on the titular The Batman is not particularly unique, and the runtime only draws attention to this.
Because it is THREE HOURS, whatever is working in terms of the characters and what they go through is so unnecessarily drawn out that it just falls flat.
And then there is the way the movie looks.
About five minutes in, I wished I had brought my glasses. The movie takes place in muddy darkness, and I had great trouble following what was going on in certain scenes.
Reeves keeps the narrative perspective with the Batman, which is interesting except that the film is so anchored to his POV that it sacrifices a sense of geography and audience wonder. The money moments of Batman zipping to the top floor of a building, or jumping off said building are perverse in that the camera stays mostly on Batman’s face.
While I do not need to see the Wayne’s hit the pavement again, the movie is premised on an investment in Bruce and his parents that it does not properly establish. A couple of clips of old campaign videos does not a relationship make.
I want to applaud the film for trying to press forward without flashbacks, but this movie needed them.
There is an important revelation that occurs towards the end of the movie that did not hit the way it was intended to. Partially it is the lack of proper development, and a frustrating unwillingness to truly mess with the familial foundation the Batman has built himself upon. That lack of nerve highlights how superficial the movie is in its pretensions to be a Seven-style thriller with a Batman (sorry, a The Batman) skin.
In the lead, Pattinson is fine. He spends most of the movie in the suit, and his portrayal is of a man who is locked himself off from the world. It is fine for what it is, but I wish the script gave him something more to do than walk slowly out of the darkness or open birthday cards to read riddles.
I would have liked that emotional distance if it played off the other characters.
For instance, Zoë Kravitz’s the Catwoman.
Kravitz was great in Kimi. As Selina Kyle, she feels muted. Of all the character, she really suffers from only being shown from The Batman’s perspective. I wanted to see more of what she was like when The Batman was not stalking her from across the street. There is no clear shift in their dynamic, so the attempt at a romance comes off as abrupt.
It feels like the movie missed out on an opportunity to lean into Pattinson’s portrayal by making the Batman a complete neophyte in the ways of love. But then again, having the Batman pining after the Catwoman like a teenager with a crush would be an emo bridge too far.
I cannot figure out how to describe Paul Dano’s performance. Like Pattinson, I think he loses something wearing a mask, but the bigger problem is that the script thinks it is building toward a massive shift in the Batman’s character, and I did not find any of that building compelling. Dano is trying to give the character this berserker energy, but I did not get any sense of unpredictability or danger. He is just there.
In contrast, John Turturro is great as Carmine Falcone, and the most menacing villain in the movie. He is a part of the movie’s flirtation with muddying the good-evil binary, and I wish the filmmakers had leaned into it.
As the would-be Penguin, Colin Farrell’s casting feels completely pointless - he is just in make-up to resemble a huskier character. I know other people have made this critique but his casting is so pointless. He gives a good performance but anybody could have done that.
While the performances are fine, there is a sense of rote-ness running through the cast. It is like they are all keyed into adding to the movie’s pace. No one is too big or too small.
It might have helped if anyone displayed anything resembling a sense of humor.
I clocked one actual joke. And it comes late.
If you are patient, the movie’s self-seriousness does have its own comedic pleasures.
The mystery-solving aspect of the plot is so laborious and the riddles so obvious that you might find some laughs in how long it takes the world’s greatest detective to figure out what is going on.
You will also find laughs in how many times the movie stops dead to show the Batman slowly clomping out of the shadows onto the scene. It is a cool moment the first time it is used, but by the third time, when he is trying to defuse a literal timebomb. The rule of threes!
It became so predictable, my friend started miming The Batwalk in his seat every time it happened.
Making it worse, at the end of the movie Selina pitches a more interesting idea for a The Batman movie than this one. That is not a joke but after three hours it felt like one.
At home, The Batman might be in a better setting to work as entertainment. But the mystery is not that compelling, the Batdetecting is ridiculously simple and its visual style renders the whole thing (including the car chase!) claustrophobic. And at THREE hours, the movie is a slog.
My final takeaway from The Batman is a fear.
I am not worried that its success at the box office will lead studios to continue avoid taking chances and continue mining the same ideas. My big fear is that studios continue mining the same ideas through a more limited cinematic presentation based on what has come before.
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