When the credits rolled on The Batman I had a lot of thoughts, some good, a lot not-so-good, and one very bad one. At no point did I look at Robert Pattinson, while he was in Bruce Wayne mode, and think that’s Bruce Wayne. This is not a bash on Pattinson, I actually really like the guy from what all I can tell, he was really good in Good Time, and his charming career retrospective on YouTube, where he attributes getting cast in Twilight to showing up to the audition on Valium, is a treat. As an actor, he can definitely do wounded and he made his career on brooding but the singular and most effective way the film communicates his identity is having other characters literally point at him and say “That’s Bruce Wayne.”
It doesn’t help that the film is almost entirely humorless, which is not to suggest Batman should be a standup comic, but I think the fact that Michael Keaton is a naturally gifted comedic performer is what makes his turn so iconic and resonant; there was a sense of irony and dry wit in his Wayne. Over the years the actors portraying the character have gotten increasingly serious and dramatic, in my opinion to the detriment of the stories told and if that seems superior and broad it’s because my benchmark for the IP is Batman: The Animated Series. While there are good things about almost every iteration (sorry Clooney, no points for you…also The Midnight Sky sucked), The Animated Series is the only interpretation that embraces the nature and pathos of both personas, Bruce and Batman, exploring each to great effect. And if this feels like an incredibly long-winded tangent…now you know how I felt watching The Batman.
There’s a lot that the film does well. It is dripping with atmosphere, Gotham feels more lived in and palpable than ever before, you can practically smell the place and that’s a good thing. Gone is the austere, staged poverty of the Nolan films, where corruption is often talked about but usually happens off-screen. Matt Reeves’ Gotham feels dangerous and barely controlled. There’s a scene in the opening of The Dark Knight where a drug deal is about to take place but one of the criminals sees the Bat Signal and waves off. The other bad guy shouts something to the effect of, “Are you kidding? You got a better chance of winning the Powerball than running into him!” And I cringe during each and every rewatch because of it. I love Chris Nolan dearly but we are all aware of his affinity for expositional dialogue, and given the complexity of his movies, I can’t blame him.
Sometimes, though, it’s just grating and this concept, that the mere existence of Batman and his signaled presence is a part of his superpower, however illusory, wasn’t something I remembered until Reeves repeated the message. In The Batman the effect is amplified in the opening few mintues by the way it is almost entirely dialogue-free, with it’s potential evil doers spying the signal and then slowly slinking back into the shadows, it’s show don’t tell and is a brilliant way to introduce the character and his effect on this city at this point in his mission. Particularly when, and this is one of the great parts, Batman shows up and rights a small wrong, demonstrating that his contempt for evildoers is all encompassing, not just reserved for organized crime or secret mythical ninja death cults.
One of things I originally disliked about Batman Begins is how completely it ejected anything fantastical or surrealistic. It’s not, in effect, a comic book movie so much as an action film based on a comic book character, and as a comic book reader from a very young age, it irked the shit out me to ground in reality a story that is at it’s essence escapism, about fantastic and surreal things. To be more succinct, it took the magic out of it and that’s what I look for in these characters. I eventually came around to Nolan’s vision, when taken as whole but I was glad here to see that mystique returned, with that sense that this is another world entirely, with unknown boundaries and properties. The Batman, for my money, feels more like a graphic novel than any other film than Zach Snyder’s 300 or Watchmen, but I don’t count those, despite their qualities, for the simple fact that he literally used the books as storyboards. It’s one thing to crib and enhance someone else’s work in another medium, it’s something else to create the tone from scratch which is what Reeves’ film has done, to it’s great credit. However.
Had this story been told in the form of a limited series or a season of television I would have called it a grim but terrifically promising introduction to a new incarnation of Batman, brimming with vivid characters and potential for character arcs and rife with opportunities to improve in little ways that might ultimately lead to something like DC’s answer to Marvel’s Netflix’ Daredevil but with a premium budget and A-List talent. I would have done that, except this is a three hour long film. Instead, this entry feels like either too much story or not enough at the same time. At times it’s more Catwoman’s movie, which is great because Zoe Kravitz was terrific and at the conclusion of her arc I almost got up to leave before remembering there was this whole other drama going on.
I don’t really have a lot to say about Jeffery Wright’s take on Commissioner Gordon. By virtue of the film taking place in Year Two or so his relationship with Batman is already established, which makes it difficult to understand their implicit trust of each other. Stan Lee once said about writing that every comic book printed is somebody’s first comic book. And the movie, because of the broad popularity of the IP, ignores that with this assumption that we should just know who these characters are and why they put their lives in each other’s hands, which is a little disappointing. I’m not saying we need to see Thomas and Martha murdered all over again but for a three hour long film there seemed like time see why Jim Gordon is so close to Batman he’s basically Robin with a gun.
For the villains, man, it’s hard to not like Colin Farrell’s turn but I am baffled by the decision to cast him here. All in, it’s the prosthetics and make-up that are center stage and there are no shortage of talented character actors who could have brought Penguin to life without hours in a chair being done up. It was a massive distraction trying to constantly recognize the actor underneath it all but hey, I also can’t find Heath Ledger under all that make up either, so maybe I’m being overly sensitive but it just seems weird. Speaking of Ledger, it’s kind of in poor taste to compare anyone else in the Rogue’s Gallery to his Academy Award winning performance…but I’m going to. The thing that made his performance so memorable and evocative is that the way he is written, with his anarchistic dialogue and relentless confidence, he kind of makes some sense. It’s that brand of fuck society claptrap that incels and crazy people glom onto but everyone else was hypnotized because it’s delivered by Ledger with so much fucking verve.
When we finally get a conversation with Dano’s Riddler, something like 3 years into the film, he is absolutely unhinged. Nothing he says makes sense and I, personally, didn’t care that he was bouncing off the walls. There’s nothing calculated or menacing about the part, I wanted Hannibal Lecter and we got the Tasmanian Devil. Also, I love riddles despite being very bad at them, and the fact that I solved every one the second I saw them, followed immediately by Battinson, sucked the fun out of having a mastermind riddling genius as the antagonist. For a film that sets itself up and takes heavy inspiration from Se7en, all I can say is how dare you, this is more like a 2wo. Like Two with the number. Don’t know if that will translate.
I don’t like hating on something other people are loving. I really don’t, there are almost exactly as many started or unpublished drafts of reviews on my blog as there are published, I exercise strict editorial control of assholery. But. All of this is really meant to be constructive, as I’ve said publicly, this movie succeeds at being exactly what it wants to be whether or not it’s what I was expecting. Matt Reeves is a terrific storyteller, his Planet of the Apes movies had no right to be as good as they are. The Batman doesn’t hit the same compelling chords for me, for as joyless and pensive as it felt at times but, when it is hitting it’s stride, there is a fucking rock star under the hood. From the sound of the proto-Batmobile revving up to the hand-to-hand combat to the ridiculous cinematography that is both filthy and lush, the things that are good are very good. It’s anyone’s guess where the DCEU is going with the Snyderverse, which, despite my griping, is officially outpaced.
Brave It All Alone 