From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the weekly Superhero Movie Rewatch. In this latest revisit we’ve covered some older movies—It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman!, Mandrake, and the two Timecop movies—and two December 2021 releases—Spider-Man: No Way Home and The King’s Man—we now catch up with the first of three 2022 movies, The Batman.
The original plan for The Batman was for it to be the first solo film for Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne and his chiropteran alter ego following Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. Affleck was also going to co-write and direct the movie, with several members of his supporting cast seen in those two movies coming over to the solo film.
Those plans changed in rapid succession, and by the time 2022 rolled around, we got a completely different movie in The Batman.
Affleck found that being both director and star was too overwhelming, and he wound up going into treatment for alcohol abuse and pulling out of the film. Matt Reeves was on the short list of directors to replace Affleck, and he wanted to go in a different direction than Affleck had been planning, and that, combined with the less than wonderful word of mouth for the DCEU in general and the poor box office of Justice League in particular led Warner Bros. to have The Batman be completely separate from the continuity established in the films from Man of Steel forward.
Reeves instead decided to do a younger Batman, one who’d only been working for two years and is still establishing his cred, and his legend. Reeves also (thankfully) avoided retelling Batman’s origin yet again. He also used two comics miniseries—The Long Halloween and its sequel Dark Victory, both by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale.
Robert Pattinson—still probably best known for his role as the male lead in the Twilight movies—was cast as Bruce Wayne, a move that caused as big a hue and cry as Michael Keaton’s casting did in the late 1980s. Joining him are Jeffrey Wright, replacing JK Simmons as James Gordon, here still a lieutenant in the GCPD; Andy Serkis (previously seen in this rewatch in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther, and also directing Venom: Let There Be Carnage), replacing Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth; Paul Dano as the Riddler; Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle (never actually referred to as Catwoman); Colin Farrell (last seen in this rewatch in Daredevil) as the Penguin; and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone.
The movie did very well, and a sequel has been announced, with much of the cast returning. In addition, Farrell will be headlining a spinoff TV series on HBO Max, The Penguin.
“What I’m doing is my family’s legacy”
The Batman
Written by Matt Reeves & Peter Craig
Directed by Matt Reeves
Produced by Matt Reeves, Dylan Clark
Original release date: March 1, 2022
On Hallowe’en night, Mayor Don Mitchell Jr. is watching footage of his debate with Bella Reál, who is running against him for mayor. Mitchell is pissed that she’s tied with him in the polls, but his anger is short-lived, as someone breaks into his home and beats him to death, then duct tapes him to a chair and scrawls “LIAR” on the tape.
Over a very pretentious voiceover, Batman patrols the city. He’s been operating for two years and is starting to gain a reputation. He stops some thugs with clown paint on their faces from beating up a commuter, but the commuter is just as scared of Batman as he was of the thugs. At one point, a thug asks who he is, and Batman replies, “I am vengeance!”
Lieutenant James Gordon of the GCPD has activated the bat-signal—which is just a huge-ass spotlight with bits of metal wedged into it in the vague shape of a bat—and he brings Batman to the Mitchell crime scene. The uniformed officers and Commissioner Savage are livid at having a masked vigilante present, but there’s a note on the body addressed to “The Batman.”
The greeting card has a riddle (“What does a liar do when he’s dead?”), and also a cipher. In addition, Mitchell’s thumb has been removed, and there’s more accusations of lying scrawled all over the home. Batman is also visibly moved by the fact that Mitchell’s son—who was out trick-or-treating with his mother—is the one who found the body.
He returns to the Batcave and removes his special contact lenses that contain cameras. He prints out the image of the cipher, and Alfred takes it to try to figure it out. Alfred also tries to get him to focus on Wayne family business, but Batman doesn’t care about that, rather stupidly forgetting that the only reason he can be Batman is because he’s fabulously wealthy, and he literally can’t afford to let the family business go to shit.
Using just the letters in “he lies still,” the answer to the riddle, Alfred and Batman discover a simple message in the cipher: “DRIVE.” On a hunch, Batman and Gordon check out the mayor’s rather large fleet of cars. One of them has a blood-covered tool wedged inside it. They find a USB drive with Mitchell’s thumb attached to it (yes, it’s a thumb drive…). For some stupid reason, they plug it into the car’s USB port and it shows pictures of Mitchell at the Iceberg Club—a known mob hangout—with a woman who is not his wife. Also visible is the club’s proprietor, known as “the Penguin.” The drive immediately e-mails the pictures to every news source in the city (which is why you don’t just plug thumb drives into things willy-nilly!).
Batman goes to the Iceberg Club, beating up a bunch of bouncers before Penguin finally agrees to see him. Penguin claims not to recognize the woman with the mayor, but the server who brings Penguin his drinks (as well as money in exchange for drugs) obviously does recognize her.
The server, whose name is Selina Kyle, immediately leaves the club and hails a cab. Batman follows her to her apartment. The blonde in the pictures is her roommate and lover Annika. Kyle then changes into a catsuit (ahem), and goes to Mitchell’s place. Batman thinks she’s going back to the scene of the crime because she killed him, but it turns out she was there to retrieve Annika’s passport, which Mitchell was holding onto to keep her from leaving the country.
They return to Kyle’s apartment to find it trashed, and Annika missing. A news report reveals that Savage has also been killed, a rat-maze attached to his head allowing the rats to nibble him to death.
Gordon sneaks Batman into the morgue to check Savage’s body, and also the rat trap, which has another card addressed to the Batman hidden in it, with yet another riddle and cipher. While Alfred works on the cipher, Batman sends Kyle back into the Iceberg Lounge—specifically to the 44 Below club-within-the-club which is where all the mobsters and corrupt officials hang out—while wearing the special contact lenses. Kyle chats up District Attorney Colson, who reveals while flirting that everyone’s scared because of Savage and Mitchell being killed, making it clear that they’re all part of some kind of conspiracy related to the destruction of Salvatore Maroni’s criminal empire, which was the biggest drug bust in Gotham City history, and which was a career-making bust for both Mitchell and Savage. Kyle also tries to find out what happened to Annika, but while she gets some hints that something bad has happened, she finds out nothing concrete.
While heading home, Colson is kidnapped by the Riddler.
The next day is the funeral for Mitchell, and Bruce Wayne shows up for his first public appearance in years. The press goes nuts, and Carmine Falcone greets him as well, reminding Wayne that his father saved Falcone’s life from a gunshot wound years ago. In addition, Reál talks to Wayne, wishing to get his support for her mayoral bid.
The funeral is interrupted by Colson’s car crashing into the church. The DA has a bomb attached to his neck and a phone attached to his hand. The phone keeps ringing, but nobody answers it, the cops instead clearing the church. Wayne changes to Batman and appears in the church, which pisses the cops off. Batman answers the phone call—which has been ringing for a long time, which is, um, not how cell phones work—and it’s Riddler, who has three riddles for Colson—the answer to the last of which would reveal who informed on Maroni. That informant is the rat Riddler was referring to in his murder of Savage. But Colson refuses to answer, and Riddler detonates the bomb.
Batman is injured in the explosion and brought to police headquarters. Gordon convinces Chief Bock to let him talk to Batman alone, that he can convince the vigilante to play ball. Behind closed doors, though, Gordon tells Batman that he needs to punch Gordon out and escape, as he’s a dead man if he stays. This happens, and Batman gets away.
Later, Gordon and Batman meet up after Alfred has provided another clue from the latest cipher: “You are el rata elada.” That’s sort of Spanish for “rat with wings,” which Batman assumes means “stool pigeon,” or another name for the informant Riddler wants to expose.
They go after the Penguin, interrupting Kyle trying to steal money from the Iceberg Lounge, and accidentally finding Annika’s corpse in a trunk. After a shootout and a car chase with the Batmobile going after the Penguin, the latter is captured. He is not the rat, however, and he doesn’t who know it is. He also knows Spanish better than Batman or Gordon, as he knows that the proper formulation is “la rata elada,” not “el rata elada,” and only then does Batman realize that the first three words are a pun for “URL.” He goes to rataelada.com and winds up in a chat with the Riddler, who reveals that his next target is an old orphanage that was funded by Thomas and Martha Wayne, and where Bruce lived for a time after they were killed.
The place is long-abandoned now, and it’s clear that Riddler still harbors an animus against Thomas, who was running for mayor when he was killed, and according to Riddler, his Gotham Renewal Fund, which was supposed to help the city, was built on lies. Realizing that Riddler’s next target will be Wayne Tower, Batman calls Alfred, only to find out that he received a letter bomb an hour earlier and has been hospitalized, with tremendous damage done to the tower.
Riddler also leaks evidence that Thomas hired Falcone to kill a reporter who was threatening to expose Martha’s history of mental illness. (Martha’s maiden name is Arkham, and the Arkham State Hospital was funded by the Waynes.) Wayne goes to Falcone to confront him about it. Falcone claims that Thomas went to him because Falcone owed him a favor; he also hints that Maroni is the one who had Thomas and Martha killed because of his relationship with Falcone. However, when Alfred awakens from his coma, he reveals that Thomas only wanted Falcone to pressure the reporter, not kill him, and he threatened to expose Falcone’s role in the murder. Alfred believes that it’s possible that Falcone had Thomas and Martha killed, but he’s not sure—it might have been just some random asshole.
One thing Alfred is sure of: despite what the Riddler is saying, Thomas wasn’t concerned about his image, he simply wanted to protect his wife from the scandal.
A bouncer at the Iceberg Lounge is also a cop, Detective Kenzie. (When Batman recognizes him in the station house, Gordon opines that he must be moonlighting at the Iceberg, and Batman replies that he may be moonlighting as a cop.) Kyle brings Kenzie to the rooftop where the bat-signal is housed, having turned it on to summon both Batman and Gordon. Kenzie admits that they all work for Falcone, and that Falcone is the rat they’re looking for. He informed on Maroni in order to get rid of the competition. Mitchell told that to Annika, which is why Falcone had her killed. Kenzie also says that they all used Thomas Wayne’s Renewal Foundation to launder money and fund their bribes and payoffs after Thomas died.
Kyle reveals that Falcone is her father, having knocked up her mother when she worked at the club. Kyle kicks Kenzie off the roof, and heads to the Iceberg while Gordon and Batman save Kenzie, pulling him back up.
Kyle goes to the Iceberg to kill Falcone—who didn’t even know she was his illegitimate daughter until this confrontation—but Batman stops her from doing it, convincing her to allow Gordon to arrest him instead. However, Riddler kills Falcone while he’s being put in the car, and then is rather easily captured and arrested.
The Riddler is a forensic accountant named Edward Nashton, who was inspired by Batman. He asks to see Batman, who visits him. Nashton goes on for some time about Bruce Wayne, and how Wayne never understood what it was really like to be an orphan because he had so much wealth. It’s several minutes before it becomes clear that Nashton hasn’t figured out who is under the cowl, but is instead lamenting the one target he didn’t hit, as Wayne wasn’t home when the letter bomb went off.
Batman makes it clear that he doesn’t view the Riddler as a partner, and he’s appalled that Nashton was inspired to become a serial killer because of him. Riddler in turn reveals that he has one more attack left.
Batman goes back to Riddler’s apartment, where the officer guarding the place reveals that the weapon used to kill Mitchell was a carpet tucking tool (the officer’s uncle installed carpets). That prompts Batman to rip up the carpet in the apartment, which reveals a chalk drawing on the underfloor of his plan: to use car bombs to blow up the already-crumbling seawall that keeps Gotham from flooding.
The bombs go off, and Batman discovers that Riddler recorded a video for his online following before he was arrested, urging them to don similar costumes to him and infiltrate Gotham Square Garden in order to take out Mayor-Elect Reál.
Batman heads there. The city is in chaos as the streets are flooding like whoa. GSG is a designated shelter, and Reál refuses to let Gordon take her to safety, as she insists on helping her people. Batman—aided by Kyle and Gordon—stops the various Riddler-inspired snipers who somehow managed to sneak into a major arena that was hosting a mayor. When it’s all over, Gordon unmasks one of the snipers and asks who he is, and he replies, “I am vengeance!”
Batman realizes he needs to be a symbol of hope, not vengeance. He works tirelessly to help those injured or left homeless by the flooding. Meanwhile Nashton is incarcerated at Arkham, and he befriends one of the other inmates, who giggles a lot…
Kyle and Batman meet one final time in a cemetery. She’s leaving Gotham, considering it beyond saving. Besides, with Annika dead, there are too many bad memories. She asks him to come with her, and he, of course, refuses. They kiss and she then heads out of town, with Batman heading back in.
“You’re gonna die alone in Arkham”
On the one hand, I’m very disappointed that we didn’t get to see Ben Affleck’s older Batman in a solo film. One of my favorite aspects of the mostly awful Justice League was seeing a Batman who was pushing forty and struggling to fight the one enemy he can’t defeat: the aging process.
But alas, it was not to be, and I’m extremely happy with what we got in its place.
Batman has had several different modes over his eight-plus decades: noir vigilante, wise-cracking superhero, the world’s greatest detective, violent vigilante, obsessive nutjob, brilliant polymath. Often different interpretations of the character have mixed two or more of those aspects.
However, one element that has been missing from pretty much every screen interpretation of Bats is him as the world’s greatest detective. Only Adam West’s version has remembered that Batman is often the smartest person in the room. Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery, and Michael Keaton played the noir vigilante. West, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney did the wise-cracking superhero. Christian Bale and Affleck did the violent vigilante, and the two of them were not only not the smartest person in the room, they deliberately handed over the smart-person stuff to someone else, Bale to Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox, Affleck to Jeremy Irons’ Alfred.
But Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson actually give us the dark knight detective, as Batman has to think his way through a lot of this movie. There’s a great line from the comics, The Question Annual #1 from 1988, written by Denny O’Neil—one of the greatest writers of Batman, as well as one of the greatest editors to work on the Bat-titles—where the Green Arrow says, “I thought you just swung down from the rooftops and cleaned bad guys’ clocks.” Batman’s reply: “Occasionally, I do. That’s approximately four percent of my activity. The rest of it is finding out things.”
Pattinson’s Batman is always finding out things, and it’s great to watch. He’s also a Batman who’s still figuring stuff out, isn’t always together, occasionally makes mistakes, and sometimes bites off more than he can chew.
What I especially like is that Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is young in a way that Christian Bale never was, even when he was doing Batman’s very beginnings. He’s still in seventeen kinds of pain from the death of his parents, and he hasn’t figured out how to balance his life just yet. But he’s working on it. It’s a stage of Batman’s career that we rarely see (though not as rare as Affleck’s older version), and it’s a nice change from the prior iterations of Bats on screen. I particularly like the way he evolves from his “I am vengeance” declaration at the top of the movie—an appellation that both Kyle and Penguin make fun of him with throughout the film—to realizing that he needs to be a symbol of hope and justice, not vengeance.
The movie itself is beautifully filmed. There’s a miasma hanging over Gotham throughout the film that is very fitting: it’s a dark, dank place, where it feels like it’s going to rain any second. It’s also a very corrupt place, but there’s hope in people like Gordon, like Batman, like Reál.
The acting is stupendous here. Nobody ever went wrong casting Jeffrey Wright in anything, and he just kills it as Gordon. Zoë Kravitz is an extremely worthy addition to the pantheon of great live-action Catwomen alongside Newmar, Meriwether, Kitt, Pfeiffer, Bicondova, and Hathaway. Paul Dano is devastating as the most psychotic iteration of the Riddler yet, Colin Farrell is barely recognizable as he plays the Penguin as a goombah gangster right out of a Scorsese film, and John Turturro practically steals the movie as the sunglasses-wearing Falcone, who just oozes pure nastiness.
And Andy Serkis is the latest in a series of brilliant Alfreds. Has any comics character been so constantly brilliantly played onscreen as Alfred Pennyworth? Alan Napier, Michael Gough, Michael Caine, Sean Pertwee, Jeremy Irons, Jack Bannon, and now Serkis, all perfect in the role…
As good as the movie is, however, it is way too long. It never quite drags, but it never is particularly fast-paced, either. It was much easier to sit through in my living room with its pause button than in the theatre, I can say that for sure. There are plenty of great movies that are very long, and you don’t notice the running time—Seven Samurai, Avengers: Endgame—but The Batman seems to embrace that it’s a long story, almost calling attention to it. That’s not always a benefit. There are also a few minor plot holes and head-scratchers, and some of Riddler’s clues are so abstruse that it strains credulity that anyone would figure them out. By the same token, others are even more simplistic than Frank Gorshin’s silly wordplay from the 1960s…
Next week we look at the next step in Sony’s continuing series of Spider-Man-adjacent movies, Morbius.
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at GalaxyCon Raleigh in North Carolina this weekend. He’ll be appearing at Bard’s Tower, Booth 1125 in the exhibit hall, alongside fellow word-slingers Claudia Gray, Christopher Ruocchio, and Marion G. Harmon, as well as actor Carlos Ferro. Keith will be selling and signing his books all four days of the con, and also doing some panels. Come by and see him!
For me what strained credulity the most was nobody figuring out Falcone was the stool pigeon like the moment the possibility of one was brought up. Or if not saying “Yep, it’s gotta be Falcone” then at least have him SUSPECTED. Instead nobody seems to consider him until the big reveal that it’s him.
Like wow, the mobster who would have had the most to gain from wiping out all of his competition and is buddy buddy with all the cops who made their careers because of that bust? He’s the guy who did it? SHOCKING.
I HATE this movie! I hate hate hate HATE this movie! Seriously, I hated it!
I don’t see the redeeming qualities you seem to find. (I mean Zoe Kravitz looks good when she doesn’t have that stupid mask on, but that’s not enough!)
I actually felt nostalgia for George Clooney watching this!
Okay, rant done.
This movie makes up for all the darkness and dumbness of the Nolan trilogy. Not only is Batman a detective, but he also offers hope. The problem with the length is that the third act drags and should move a lot faster and be more action packed. Other than that, this is a very good movie.
Great film, and one of the four best of 2022 so far (the rest being Top Gun: Maverick, Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent)
I’ve found something to like (and even love) about nearly every iteration of Batman films, so I expected to at least enjoy parts of this movie. I found myself caught up in the atmosphere of the film almost immediately and it just got better from there. Pattison is a much better actor than his reputation often suggests and he has a great supporting cast along for the ride. Really glad this is getting a sequel and spinoff material, even if Wright apparently isn’t getting the Gotham PD series he deserves.
I no more hold the Twilight films against Pattinson (or any of his costars, really) than I do the Star Wars prequels against Hayden Christiansen, Natalie Portman, and Samuel L. Jackson.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
There is a lot to like about this movie, but it feels way to long and needed some ruthless editing, possibly has far back as the story breaking phase.
I will give it credit that the actual ending violence hit hard. A pack of radicalized white men hold a mass shooting with a special focus on killing a progressive woman of color. That’s a lot closer to home than anything in the previous trilogy.
One interesting thing is that both this Batman and the arc of the Affleck version are about transitioning from violent withdrawn cynical creatures of the night to something more hopeful just at different points in their career. (I won’t say it was a well executed character arc for Affleck, but I’m not blaming him for that.) Hopefully in this case it will lead to some dark gray and dark blue on the next iteration of the costume instead of the blacks on blacks combination we’ve been filming this century. (The Frank Miller Bat-Armor from Dawn of Justice is the main exception.)
I’m still on the library waiting list for this movie, so I skipped over the plot recap. But in your list of great live-action Alfreds, you forgot Birds of Prey‘s Ian Abercrombie, who was the best Alfred since Alan Napier.
Okay.
I’ll say it.
Someone’s going to, and it might as well be me.
*deep breath*
Next week? It’s Morbin’ time.
Sorry, not sorry.
I still haven’t mustered up the energy to see this.
Despite the praise — and agreeing that even Nolan didn’t really delve into the Detective aspect of Bruce’s character — the Nolan Trilogy also pretty much accomplished everything else I wanted from a cinematic Batman.
Like Spidey, I think I’ve had my fill of Batman adaptations for the foreseeable future.
I really enjoyed it and liked the detective aspects. I really liked the police’s frustration with Batman being included in the investigations. But I agree it was too long. There were two things about its length that stood out to me, one nitpicky and one a little more annoying.
First the nitpicky, some individual scenes just felt a few seconds too long. For example, when Kyle is playing the phone recording to Batman and Gordon, it’s so long! It could have been 10-15 seconds but it felt more like 2 minutes of just looking at a cell phone. Then when it plays later on the news with Falcone we listen to a lot of it again. I think they could have shaved a few seconds off most scenes in the movie and knocked 10-15 minutes off the runtime without losing anything important.
The more annoying part was the climax. Some of this is due to being conditioned to expect a certain flow to a story, but the Riddler is finally captured around the 2 hour mark, which should have started to wrap up the movie, but instead there are 45 more minutes of Batman fighting nameless minions. It felt tedious. It’s like if at the end of Endgame Thanos was defeated but then there was still 45 minutes to go of the heroes fighting the alien army. My interest has expired, you should have done that before finishing off the main bad guy.
Overall a great take on the character though. I’m looking forward to what the sequel may hold.
I also was looking forward to seeing Affleck continue as an aging Batman (he really should do The Dark Knight Returns). There were some good moments in this film, and I thought Pattinson would be fine as Batman. Unfortunately, most of the movie didn’t work for me. I just didn’t care for emo-Batman. The costume has to be the WORST batsuit since Robert Lowery’s (really, those pathetic bat ears on the cowl? And the rest of it looking like something someone did as a first attempt for Comicon when they were 16 years old?) Even the Batmobile looked like something cobbled together by some high school students in shop class. Visuals are important in a Batman film, and this one failed. Paul Dano’s Riddler didn’t work for me at all. I’ll stick with Frank Gorshin (even Carrey’s horribly mugging version was better). All this movie did was reinforce how Nolan’s Batman has become definitive.
Come thrill to the exciting finale, when the Batman fights his greatest challenge: A bunch of anonymous goons.
To its credit, it’s clear no-one is phoning it in, neither in front of nor behind the camera. And it’s great to see Batman do actual detectivin’, which has been sorely missed in many of the previous incarnations. I thought Pattinson’s performance was a bit one-note, though — I keep hearing he’s a much better actor than Twilight let him be, but everything I’ve seen him in he comes off sullen and sulky. I miss the juxtaposition of the feckless façade Bruce puts on in his civilian guise against his true soul as the Dark Knight.
For whatever it’s worth, I enjoyed The Batman just peachykeen. Yeah, it was long, but it held me, so there you go. (Being able to watch it from home didn’t hurt.)
I still haven’t seen a Batman movie that gave me what you might call “my Batman,” but I tend to evaluate movies for what they are, and not what I think they should be.
Addendum: After Scorsese for Joker and Fincher for The Batman, I can’t wait to see which well-regarded, typically R-rated director they, *ahem,* pay homage to with the next film.
@14 Mask of the Phantasm and SubZero are the movies that gave me “my Batman”. Kevin Conroy and the Animated Series are what I picture when I think of Batman generally.
I was prepared to hate-watch this film, but my wife and I were pleasantly surprised at how well it actually came together, so much better than the Nolan trilogy. Though the trailers made it look like Batman was just going to be a Batman: Year One-style thug beating people up — which, well, he kind of was — he did do some actual detective work to solve some puzzles. (Though I ranted about Locard’s exchange principle and chain of evidence issues whenever Gordon let the costumed vigilante traipse right up to a corpse.)
@6 – I hold Hayden Christiansen against the prequels, though. The guy can’t act. Sorry, rant over.
I’ve a special fondness for Batman Begins and had a good time watching the rest of the sequels, but there’s something about Pattinson’s Batman that captured me in a way that Bale’s Batman never quite did. Both are portrayed as dedicating their lives to protecting Gotham, but Pattinson’s Bats has an intensity, like he’s really given his all for Gotham to the point of having no life outside of doing vigilante work. Which is completely unhealthy as Alfred points out and which I hope his character arc addresses by having him learn balance.
He doesn’t come off like a privileged brat dressing up as a bat. I get the impression that he really cares about people even when he doesn’t know how to show it, and when he makes assumptions about people, like Selina, it’s not because he’s obliviously rich but because life has taught him to distrust. And he’s even man enough to apologize! (Which makes serious hero points in my book.) I guess this Batman really sold me on his heart (the scenes where he stands and just looks at the boy who found his father’s body, or the rescue clean up where he’s helping the disaster victims), which sometimes gets lost in the gritty trauma of the Batman aura, and I appreciated that.
Everyone gives this movie credit for “finally portraying Batman as a detective” but did it really? Alfred helped Bruce figure out the cypher, Penguin helped Batman with his knowledge of Spanish, and that random cop pointed out the Riddler’s murder weapon was a carpet tucker.
Honestly, I think he was about equal to Bale in terms of actual detective work.
@16 thank you! The Animated Series made it abundantly clear that Batman was a detective in so many episodes. Kevin Conroy has been, and seems will always be, the Best Batman.
I enjoyed this film a lot more than I expected to. I wasn’t a big fan of the Nolan films because of the interpretation of Batman as someone who would allow someone to die when he could save them (though I liked Dark Knight mostly) and the trailers for this had a feel of going over the same ground. It didn’t feel like a retread of other films and I liked seeing a Batman who doesn’t judge everything right at first glance.
The performances were all pretty pretty good.
My main problem is that another villain becomes just a serial killer to make him feel dangerous, though this is partially an issue of having Batman as a character in movies where the stakes are always high. The Joker became a lot less interesting when that became his MO, and in the long run I don’t think it will do the Riddler any good.
I’m also not sure why an ex-soldier/spy from the UK would become a rich American family’s manservant but this is just part of where the concept of Alfred is now. I don’t think there’s any way back from that because it has become his backstory in multiple media, due to unwillingness by writers to accept that he could pick up the skills as a manservant and the old idea that he was in World War 2 just can’t work any more.
I do agree with other commenters that it didn’t feel like Batman solved many puzzles himself and yet, I’m fine with that because this is a Batman who is able to rely on others and that bodes well for sequels.
My mum and I went to see this for our first post-lockdown, post-mask-wearing trip to the cinema. (I swear she’s gone stir crazy from two years with nowhere to go: Every film she sees advertised she’s like “Let’s go and see that.”)
I was worried a bit about how literally dark it all is, but that kind of feeds into it. Bruce Wayne looks like a physical wreck and you get the impression he’s barely seen daylight in years. There was something oddly riveting about seeing Batman wander around a crime scene in costume examining evidence, something that, as pointed out, we haven’t really seen since Adam West’s Batman was treated as an official police associate.
I’m surprised the highway chase/destruction was glossed over: It feels like Batman directly or indirectly killed or maimed dozens of innocent bystanders just for the sake of a “Batmobile drives out of the flames” shot. And I didn’t realise until someone pointed it out, but after causing all that implied death and destruction to catch up with Penguin, he just interrogates him for a few minutes and then leaves him there! Batman being right next to an exploding bomb and just getting knocked out without needing any medical attention required a lot of goodwill as well.
Despite the “Wait, hasn’t this film ended yet?” feel, I did quite enjoy the last act. I was worried they were going to end on a cliffhanger (and some people have expressed a wish that it had), but instead there’s a problem and Batman mostly solves it. Just as at the start, the people he wants to help flinch away from him, until the boy he connected with at the start steps forward, knowing he’s a good guy.
Yeah, this was definitely one of those films that got to the 90min mark and I started shuffling on my seat and realised it still had half to go! Good lord was it slow.
Not in anything in particular mind you, just that it unfolds with stately precision and expects you to tag along. It badly needed a trim of at least 40min, more likely an hour to tighten it up properly. The length ofZac Snyder’s Justice League was *not* an ideal template for DC movies to follow in that regard.
“I’m also not sure why an ex-soldier/spy from the UK would become a rich American family’s manservant but this is just part of where the concept of Alfred is now. I don’t think there’s any way back from that because it has become his backstory in multiple media, due to unwillingness by writers to accept that he could pick up the skills as a manservant and the old idea that he was in World War 2 just can’t work any more.”
Huh? The first depiction of Alfred as a WWII veteran that I’m aware of is 1980’s The Untold Legend of the Batman by Len Wein and Jim Aparo. Its flashback panels depict Alfred in civilian garb helping refugees escape the Nazis, implying he was either a spy or a resistance fighter rather than a soldier. So that idea was there from the beginning of the WWII retcon.
The earliest screen depiction of Alfred as a former intelligence agent, I’m pretty sure, was in “The Lion and the Unicorn,” the final aired episode of Batman: The Animated Series in 1995.
@27 I guess I should have expanded on my point – I find it easier to accept that he was a soldier/spy in WW2, because every able-bodied male of that era was drafted into service. After that to be an ex-soldier, spy, mercenary, he has to be someone who specifically wanted to take military service, but then decided to go into the manservant business. It just feels forced that he happens to have a military record because Batman needs an aide de camp, rather than, as a good manservant he might have taken first aid and self defence courses. But that’s just my opinion and probably in the minority, I wasn’t presenting it as fact or expecting anyone else to agree.
@28/Stuareyou: It makes sense to me that a rich family would want to hire a security expert or retired agent to watch over their son, and that he might adopt a butler role as a cover, as much to avoid alarming Bruce as for public appearances. Although if true, that would mean letting the Waynes get killed was a major failure of Alfred’s duties. Although that would give him all the more incentive to go to whatever lengths were necessary to support Bruce later in life.
Arrow did something similar with John Diggle, an Army veteran whom Moira Queen hired to be her son Oliver’s bodyguard, under the pretense of being his chauffeur.
@24- Yeah- I remarked to my sibling that it was a good thing Riddler turned out to have planted all those bombs, because otherwise I was pretty sure Bruce had killed way more people.
I really enjoyed this – a Batman film seems to be an invitation to a director to really give it a sense of style, whether it’s the Nolan technothriller, the 80s Gothic excess or this rain soaked late noir homage.
Something that really struck me about it was that it seemed to be re-enacting some of America’s biggest traumas – most specifically at the end with “what if Hurricane Katrina happened during Trump’s coup?” But you also had smoke rising from a big financial landmark tower in the heart of the city and someone with alleged ties to the mob sniped by a lone gunman.
And there’s a basic level of satisfaction in seeing incels and the alt-right try to otherthrow democracy but Batman is there to punch them till they can’t stand up anymore, but what really struck me is that the character lives through all these events that have contributed to America’s paranoid, hostile state and what he realises is that he needs to be *kind*. That was my read of it.
@29/CLB yeah, from a narrative point of view, particularly in the current era, it makes sense that the person looking after Bruce is more a bodyguard/head of security – particularly when he’s the only other member of the Bruce household. I guess I’m lamenting the loss of the fussbudget butler version of Alfred, which as we go on doesn’t necessarily make narrative sense, but as a character acts as a good foil for Bruce’s more aggressive tendencies. I guess you could get a similar effect from a man who has spent a good part of his life in conflict and doesn’t want Bruce to waste his the same way but probably not in as waspish a way.
(Sorry I feel like I’ve gone completely off topic!)
@29 You literally just described the plot line of the PENNYWORTH TV series!
@32/Stuareyou: I see your point. I do like Alfred as the DC answer to Jeeves, the ultimate elegant butler, more than I care for the tougher version that’s been popular ever since Michael Caine’s Alfred came along. After all, “my” Alfred was Alan Napier. But Napier’s Alfred was capable enough that he single-handedly held the Joker at bay on two separate occasions. So I’m okay with the idea that he has a history that gives him skills in addition to his expertise as a gentleman’s gentleman. (Or as Batman’s batman, in point of fact.)
@33/EP: Well, of course, because Pennyworth is a prequel to Gotham and an adaptation of ideas that have been done before in other incarnations. I was thinking more of the version of Alfred in the animated series Beware the Batman. As I recall, Alfred was a full-on hardass intelligence agent there and being Bruce’s butler was entirely a cover.
My Review of the Batman:
Watched this on HBO last night. It was by far the worst Batman movie overall. I didn’t think it could be worse than the George Clooney Batman version but in many ways it was. I’d give the movie a grade of D-.
The movie was poorly casted and acted by those portraying Batman, Gordon, Riddler, and Alfred. Literally no actors made you wanting more and everyone in the movie should be replaced.
Batman was just wrong on many levels. They tried to instill the Batman fear factor constantly throughout the movie yet at times he loudly walked up to the thugs and introduced himself. He did not act like Batman from the comics, the animated series or even the Batman movies with Christian Bale at all. The actor has a very high voice which counters the concept of Batman and they did nothing to correct this.
The Batman CGI was horrific when they showed him shirtless. Extremely freaky in upper back muscles, not human looking at all. As Bruce Wayne he looked extremely skinny, again completely wrong. The grunge look chosen for Bruce Wayne goes against the grain of the character in every way. Sloppily dressed with ridiculously long sweeping hair he looks like a low level thug. Apparently Alfred did not raise him well.
Bruce has no concern for Wayne Enterprises, another huge mistake in the movie. It is this My Review of the Batman:
There’s much to like about this movie. Carwoman en The Penguin were great and i really liked the ending where Batman swooped down and saved those people from drowning. Great superhero moment!
But man is this movie too long. Many scenes drag and the soundtrack only makes it feel even longer.
It’s much too dark for my taste. The Riddler doesn’t feel like The Riddler but more like a psychopath from Seven.
And i really don’t like bad car chases. We all know the classic car chases but don’t seem to learn from them. It was way too chaotic and cause of the rain you couldn’t see a damn thing.
Nothing against Jeffrey Wright but man this Gordon was boring. He just grunts and gets nothing to do in this role. A wasted oppurtunity especially since he already has a history with the Batman. Should have done more with that.
Another Batman movie who does some things better and some worse. I know i’ll never get a perfect Batman adaption. Even the animated series. Great characterization but never like the look of this Batman design (show as a whole looks great).
Final verdict after the second viewing.
This just in: the Batgirl movie has been scrapped.
I find it that Matt Reeves has had a far more interesting career than his old partner and collaboraror, J.J. Abrams. After working with him on both Felicity and Cloverfield, he went on to do the american version of the swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, and then helmed the last two excellent Planet of the Apes films.
I still prefer the Dark Knight overall as the best Batman movie, but this film comes very, very close. In terms of cinematography and atmopshere, it’s by far the better entry. And even though it has to deal with the usual third act set piece action shenanigans, it maintains a leisure pace that works well. Personally, I didn’t even notice the time passing. The story was that engrossing. As previously said, this is the film that best deals with Batman being a detective (Dark Knight came close on that regard as well).
Unlike the naysayers, I had no doubts Robert Pattinson could pull it off even before watching this. I already knew he was more than just the pretty face on the Twilight films. Not only he had a charismatic turn on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but there was also his superlative work with Cronenberg on Cosmopolis. And sure enough, his Bruce Wayne is very different from prior incarnations – and he really sells both Bruce’s pain as well as the notion that this character could break at any moment.
It took me a while to realize that was Colin Farrell as the Penguin. He really vanished into the role. Quite an achievement of both makeup, prosthetics and performance.
Is it good? Yes. Would it have left more of an impression if it hadn’t been the tenth Batman movie in 33 years (and one of Yog-only-knows animated Batman movies in the same span, including several that had actual theatrical release and not just straight to video)? Also yes.
I ultimately was less fatigued by the running time than I was by the realization I was watching yet another Batman movie. Which is a shame, because The Batman has a lot to recommend it, particularly re: the acting and cinematography. But a live-action Batman movie roughly every three years–and I haven’t even seen all of them.
(And I didn’t even count the first Suicide Squad movie, where I understand he has a cameo, or the Snyder Cut of Justice League as a second movie. And even if you drop the ensemble movies and just count straight-Batmovies, it’s still, like, what’s the count? Four Burton/Schumacher Batfilms and the Nolan trilogy, plus the Reeves movie? Eight. So. Much. Batman. He used to be one of my favorite characters, and I still love Nolan’s first two and Burton’s second, but I’m so saturated.)
@40/eric: “and one of Yog-only-knows animated Batman movies in the same span, including several that had actual theatrical release and not just straight to video”
The only animated Batman movies to have theatrical releases were Mask of the Phantasm in 1993 and The LEGO Batman Movie in 2017. Batman was a character in a few other theatrical animated movies including the other two LEGO Movie installments, Teen Titans Go to the Movies, DC League of Super Pets, and a 2017 Japanese comedy called DC Super Heroes vs. Eagle Talon; but I wouldn’t call any of those proper Batman movies.
After “Pennyworth” did anyone else’s head canon explanation for why Alfred is still part of Bruce’s life become that he is actually Bruce’s biological father? I haven’t exactly worked out why he never tells him but I’ll get there.
@42. Owen: I thoroughly dislike that explanation, on the grounds that it assumes one cannot possibly care for a child unless you’re their biological parent (acknowledged or unacknowledged): I tend to assume that Alfred sticks around because he actually ENJOYS tackling the Forces of Evil (even if he does rather worry about Bruce’s preferred method of doing so) and because he’s long since grown even more attached to ‘Master Bruce’ than he was to his parents (and quite possibly vice versa).
I really enjoyed this movie. It felt a bit like “Batman Begins 1.5,” which was refreshing after Zack Snyder’s take. I liked the big fake out when Riddler is talking and it appears that he has figured out Batman’s secret identity – only to discover that he has it wrong after all. Zoe Kravitz was not quite as good as Selina Kyle as Anne Hathaway was, but ran circles around Michelle Pfeiffer’s campy take. A little overlong, perhaps – but definitely the best Batman (or Batman-adjacent) movie since The Dark Knight
I finally got this from the library, and I just finished. I have mixed feelings. It’s quite well-made and well-directed. Stylistically, tonally, it’s very different from any previous Batman movie, certainly the most noirish one ever, which is a good fit for Batman. It’s at once very grounded and very stylized. It’s a pretty fresh take on Batman, and the character work with him, Alfred, Selina, and Gordon is effective. And yes, it is cool to see Batman being the one who walks into a crime scene and spots the key details that a room full of cops missed, rather than just being the one who surpasses them in gadgetry or fighting skills.
But I’m not as happy with the villains. I hated Paul Dano as the Riddler; he gave a one-note performance that consisted of a) banality and b) screaming, and that is not effective at all. And his actions were ridiculously convoluted to drive the story. They tried to handwave it with his manifesto about how just telling people the truth isn’t enough and you have to shock them into listening or whatever, but it’s hard to believe one incel-Qanon-whatever type guy could manage to single-handedly kidnap and kill so many major city officials and rig so many bombs without being caught.
Colin Farrell left little impression as the Penguin. I’ve never understood what anyone sees in him as an actor, and burying him under makeup doesn’t help any. Going the generic mobster route was perhaps the least interesting performance choice they could’ve made for the character. And the big freeway chase sequence was rather pointlessly tacked onto the film. I mean, we start out with Batman and Gordon closing in on Penguin, then there’s a ridiculously destructive chase scene, then we end up with Batman and Gordon questioning Penguin. The chase could have been removed from the narrative entirely and had zero impact on it. Although I admit, this chase pushed most of my driver-anxiety buttons — driving at night, in the rain, into oncoming traffic or surrounded by trucks. It was ridiculous, but unnervingly grounded in some ways.
As for the Falcone plot, giving him a backstory with Thomas Wayne that was more or less borrowed from Lew Moxon in the Silver Age comics was a bit of a giveaway (to comics fans, anyway) about his big secret. And there was another bit of awkward structuring — Falcone claims to Bruce that Thomas asked for a cop to be killed, then in the immediately following scene, Alfred reassures Bruce it wasn’t like that. It relieves the tension too quickly.
And speaking of Alfred, why was he so slow on the uptake when he opened the package with the bomb? He’d been involved with the investigation, so he should’ve instantly recognized the “For the Batman” note and realized it was hazardous. For that matter, why doesn’t a rich and famous guy like Bruce Wayne have security people vetting his mail on a regular basis?
So it’s pretty much the usual for modern big-budget Hollywood movies: they put great care and quality into everything except the slapdash plotting. And are overindulgent in the editing too, dragging things out too long, especially that closing bit with the motorcycles.
So a year later, I finally saw the movie. Some thoughts:
* I didn’t find it hard to see or hear, as I had been warned. Maybe they tweaked it for the DVD?
* It’s too long, yet nothing in it feels totally superfluous. It plays like a story that was configured not for a feature film, but for a three-part streaming series.
* The mystery plot was not quite as clever as most had said, but not as facile and obvious as a few friends had warned.
* The story progression depends upon characters who have been involved in a deep cover-up for decades confessing huge crimes with very little provocation.
* Overall, it’s like a more tonally consistent version of one of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Like a grubbier Batman Begins.
* Zoe Kravitz is very good.
* Pattinson does a fine job within the narrow emotional range the movie gives him. He emotes well through the mask. I liked him better than Kilmer, Clooney and maybe even Bale, but not as much as West, Keaton or Affleck.
* That costume is ugly and ridiculously bulky. I don’t believe for a minute he’d be able to run, fight or glide in it.
* I like that Bruce did more detective work, but he still relied on Alfred for solutions a bit too much for my taste.
* I still don’t like the idea of the Riddler being a psychotic killer, as opposed to a simple thief who will commit the occasional murder if he has to. And his character here was way too reminiscent of Spacey in Se7en. But boy did Paul Dano make the most of it.
* The cinematography and lighting were pretty engaging throughout. They created a largely believable world.
* It’s about as far as you can go in making a Batman film “grounded in reality” and still have it feel like a Batman film at all. As with the Nolan movies, there were plenty of times when I wondered why it couldn’t have just been a standard crime drama with no superhero elements.
* They made a thoroughly watchable film out of things I love about Batman (the detective stuff and the scariness) and things I hate about many modern interpretations of the character (the thrown-together, “realistic” look of everything and the idea that the murder of Bruce’s parents may have been part of some grand conspiracy. The whole point of Batman’s origin is that despite his family’s wealth and prestige, what happened to them was an utterly random act that could have happened to anyone. That’s what teaches Bruce empathy. Fortunately, this movie doesn’t really affirm one scenario or the other to be the case. I hope the sequels continue to leave it open-ended.)
* I’m glad I watched it, but I can’t imagine being in a hurry to watch it again.
* Middle of the pack as far as Batman movies go. Below Burton and Nolan but above Schumacher. It just doesn’t feel necessary. You can tell it was made to salvage a release date after the original director and star (Affleck) walked away.
@46/Steve Schneider: “* It’s about as far as you can go in making a Batman film “grounded in reality” and still have it feel like a Batman film at all. As with the Nolan movies, there were plenty of times when I wondered why it couldn’t have just been a standard crime drama with no superhero elements.”
But that’s pretty close to how Batman was often approached in the ’70s-’90s comics — as the most grounded, street-level DC character, a noir detective hero dealing with mobsters, serial killers, and corruption, as distinct from the more sci-fi/fantasy characters like Superman, Flash, etc. It reflects the pulp-magazine antecedents of Batman, characters like the Shadow and Zorro. And it illustrates how “superhero” is a term that can encompass a wide range of different character types and genres.