The most remarkable thing about Matt Reeves’ The Batman is that, despite the dark knight’s enduring status as a superhero who feels ubiquitous to the point of redundancy on the big screen, this still feels like the caped crusader movie we’ve been anticipating for decades. Without making any obvious attempt to reinvent the character, Robert Pattinson offers us everything we ever wanted from a Batman flick. Reeves gives us a silky, well-oiled machine of a movie, a glorious Gotham City yarn that delves deep into every dirty corner of the masked hero’s world at a stage of his heroic journey when he barely knows what he stands for or who he is standing against. It’s the closest thing we’ll ever have to a big screen sequel to Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, without needing to borrow so much as a sniff of a storyline from the seminal comic.
A tortured, thinking man’s Batman who lives in a Gotham more violent than ever
Reeves has gone on record to suggest that he imagined this new Batman as Kurt Cobain, if the singer had been a billionaire whose tortured soul has Wayne Manor as an echo chamber, rather than the 90s grunge scene. And yet ultimately there’s little to link the dead rock star with Bruce Wayne other than a shared penchant for shedloads of mascara and Michael Giacchino’s doom-laden score (which seems to have been inspired by Nirvana’s Something in the Way). The Cobain connection acts more as a mood palette than anything else, with the idea of Batman as a suffering hero hardly that different from the iteration essayed by Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
Still, it’s a huge change from the oversized frat-boy gone loco portrayed by Ben Affleck in more recent films, and a welcome return to the superhero’s gothic roots. If anything, the PG-13-rated (15 in the UK) The Batman is even more violent than Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, but crucially it is the caped crusader’s brutal and freaky new nemesis, Paul Dano’s Riddler, who takes on most of the grim heavy lifting when it comes to brutality. Did Warner Bros make the right decision by pitching the new film firmly in grownup territory?
The Fincher-esque pacing
Pattinson’s Batman is gun-less, morally uncompromised and uses intellect to try to solve problems before resorting to violence. The fact that the Riddler has been reimagined as a Zodiac-style serial killer who goes after Gotham’s corrupt elite helps here hugely: the dark knight and his sidekick Lieutenant James Gordon – a nailed-on Jeffrey Wright spend more of their time unravelling the villain’s devious posers than beating up lowlife street scum (though there is a fair bit of this for Battinson to dig into too).
With its insistent, desperate back and forth of cat and mouse, the near-three-hour film’s slow and steady pacing might almost have been borrowed from David Fincher’s Zodiac, which is notorious for its deliciously glacial path to the final credits. Where the two movies differ is that Fincher was never able to give us the big reveal, as his real-life subject ultimately remained at large, or at least, incognito. By contrast, Dano’s eventual appearance is masterfully held back by Reeves for The Batman’s perfectly pitched final descent into the heart of darkness. Where would you place the new Riddler in the pantheon of big screen supervillains?
The voice, the gadgets, the cruel-eyed hunger
We’ll never know what Pattinson’s initial Batman voice (the one he has gone on record as admitting to abandoning) sounded like, but there’s a fair bet the Englishman was influenced by Christian Bale’s slightly silly husky growl in the Nolan movies. However he sounded, we do know that Pattinson’s final tones in The Batman are remarkably restrained, as if they are far from the most important aspect of the dark knight’s tonal arsenal. It’s a less showy performance, in many ways, than Bale’s, but one that’s just as dedicated as his predecessor’s. Gaunt and arched, it’s easy to see why Pattinson was once cast as a vampire – he has that look of cruel-eyed hunger about him even when he’s playing the hero.
Ben Affleck’s best line as Batman was that his superpower was being rich. It doesn’t take long for Battinson to show that he’s also taking advantage of the vast wealth brought to him by Wayne Enterprises: the new Batmobile is a shiny, black rocket on wheels, as if Darth Vader has somehow been transformed into a motor vehicle. And yet this version of Gotham City’s finest son also relies on more subtle gadgetry – the souped-up contact lenses that record everything they witness are a particularly splendid development for a superhero who wonderfully makes good on his reputation as the world’s greatest detective.
Catwoman, The Joker and a reimagined rogue’s gallery
Zoë Kravitz’s Selina Kyle is superbly vulnerable and spectacularly badass all at the same time, an expanded backstory as the forgotten child of Gotham gangster Carmine Falcone giving her greater depth than any previous big screen iteration. Colin Farrell’s Penguin may not be a large enough role for the Irishman to be considered for the best supporting actor Oscar, but Mike Marino is surely a shoo-in for best makeup given how completely unrecognisable Farrell is as the new Oswald Cobblepot.
One of the biggest questions surrounding The Batman is whether Reeves’ film might connect in any way to the critically acclaimed The Joker. Early on, Pattinson fights thugs who closely resemble devotees of Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ film, and then there’s that scene near the movie’s denouement in which the Riddler meets a shadowy, cackling figure in Arkham Asylum. It seems likely that the new clown prince of Gotham, in The Batman’s inevitable sequel, will be a figure inspired by Fleck, rather than the man himself. But Warner Bros has certainly given itself at least a couple more years of wriggle room to persuade Phoenix to make a return, should the studio decide that’s the best path forward. If issues with the earlier film’s timeline can be overcome, would you bring him back?
Magical elements and the future of DC in Gotham City
Pattinson’s version of Batman does not seem quite so grounded in reality as the Bale iteration, but the two caped crusaders probably have more in common than any of their predecessors or successors. As far as we can tell, real superpowers do not exist in either version of Gotham City, which means more far-out supervillains such as Clayface, Poison Ivy and Killer Croc are unlikely to appear any time soon. With Joker having so successfully expanded the Batman mythos without any need to dip into the realms of magic and mysticism, perhaps there’s room for a less fantastical corner of the DC multiverse. It’s certainly hard to imagine this version of the dark knight battling Superman, though Reeves hasn’t ruled out the possibility, so the man of steel could turn up at some point.
Are you keen to see Battinson joined by other, more fantastical, superheroes in future episodes? Or did The Batman help convince you that the DC movies are much, much better when they just keep it simple?
