The Batman (2022)
Of all the Batman adaptations made so far this is, definitely, one of them.
What is there to say about Matt Reeves' take on the material? On one hand, actually quite a bit, on the other though, I'm already exhausted thinking about it. Movies can be fun to write about for very different reasons. It's enjoyable to vent frustration on a truly dreadful one, as much as it is to to have an opportunity to heap praise onto a great one. Let's get this out of the way right away, The Batman is neither. Yet it doesn't have the decency of bland mediocrity either. The Batman is a wild rollercoaster ride of fluctuating quality and I'm not quite sure yet where it settles.
You know who Batman is. The movie knows you know who Batman is. It doesn't go over his origin story again. The Batman' Batman is a relatively young one, not a complete beginner, but not quite settled in his role either. Gotham City is as corrupt a cesspool as it's ever been. A masked terrorist calling himself The Riddler is targeting Gotham's rich and powerful. Batman is on the case.
Things sure have been looking bleak for cinematic Batman lately. He actually managed to catch a short break after Burton's gothic pulp adventures to do some more lighthearted swashbuckling in Schumacher's duology, only to be pulled into an entire trilogy of self important action schlock by Nolan, until facing Superman as a PTSD ridden madman in Batman v Superman. And just as he was about to see the light again in Justice League, Reeves'decided to pull him into his bleakest outing yet
Straight up, The Batman is a nightmare. Burton's Gotham was gothic, Nolan's was gritty, Reeves', however, is hell.
The Batman takes the noir trappings present in most versions of the material and injects them with steroids so potent they'd make Bane blush. The Batman is the 3 hour long, poorly lit, sepia toned, expressionist nightmare that's as much the natural evolution of the franchise as it's toeing the line separating it from self parody. The funny thing is, it's probably closer to what people were accusing Snyder's movies to be than anything Snyder has ever made. The Batman is a gloomy, convoluted, self serious brick of a film that treats levity as something to be avoided at all cost.
Yeah, but, is it any good, though? And this is where things get complicated. I never liked the Nolan movies, mainly for two reasons: The direction and the script. Nolan's directorial style owes a big deal to Michael Mann, yet Nolan's grey, concrete cityscapes completely fail to capture the beauty Mann finds in the urban wasteland of the modern megacity. Reeves certainly brings a sense of mystique back to Gotham City, taking it away from Nolan's matter of fact depiction of Chicago and into the oppressive majesty of a gothic hellscape deluged by constant rain and near constant night. it's very opening shows a gamg of hooligans who look like they're right out of the The Warriors and a single shot of its rain slick streets has more texture to it than Nolan's entire trilogy. The Batman certainly has something that the previous Batman trilogy was sorely missing, which is style and personality. It's about as grimdark as you can get (Tonally, that is, the movie still pussyfoots around depictions of explicit violence) while still making a mainstream blockbuster. It makes Batman v Superman look like The Superfriends. It's kinda cool, until it starts to sink in that there's three hours of it, where it becomes a test of endurance.
And that's probably the best point to segue into a discussion of its actual plot. The Batman has, in its center, a noir style crime drama and I will admit, I couldn't give you an accurate recap of the criminal conspiracy it revolves around even now, mere hours after seeing it. There's something about drug trade, a murdered Russian woman, a charity founded by Bruce Wayne's father, the mob, corrupt cops... And I'm fine with that, honestly. Having Batman engage with an actual crime mystery is an approach that was long overdue, even if it gets a bit opaque. Tying it together with its interpretation of the Riddler, in his way himself a vigilante seeking vengeance (and isn't that a word that comes up a lot in this movie) is clever. But it's the specifics where The Batman gets caught up in its own odd quirks. Despite constantly evoking the corruption of Gotham City, it still has a naively optimistic depictions of its police force. Its corruption is brought up, occasionally, yet Batman still acts as almost an inofficial deputy to it, working directly alongside police, even outside of the obligatory inclusion of Jim Gordon as archetypal "good cop". Even all personal ideology aside, having institutional law enforcement work side by side with a jaded vigilante makes for a jarring image.
Batman himself, as played by Robert Pattinson, is probably one of the most interesting parts of the movie. Or, well, not so much Batman, who's about what you've come to expect, but Bruce Wayne. In the (unfortunately infrequent) moments where we see Pattinson's Wayne out of his custom, he nakes for a surprisingly compelling presence, playing the orphan billionaire almost like a junkie, a broken, pale, sickly looking man who stands in stark contrast to the tough guy he portrays after putting on the cape. Some very corny narration aside, I found that interpretation interesting.
The other big standout is probably Zoe Kravitz' Catwoman, who, a pretty poor costume aside, does a fantastic take on the old femme fatale archetype and serves as almost a secondary protagonist to the story.
John Tutorro does a good job as a mob boss and Colin Farrell is almost unrecognizable as The Penguin but the elephant in the room is certainly Paul Dano's Riddler.
I think I had the problem with him a lot of people had with Jesse Eisenbergs take on Lex Luthor. When playing a genius crazy person, there's only so far you can go with the crazy until it crosses the line to the ridiculous and to me, Dano did cross it. Not only does Dano's Riddler look like he's about fifteen years old, his actual mannerisms gleefully disregard that sage advice Robert Downey Jr. gave to Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder. He comes off as genuinely unhinged, sure, but scary he's not.
It's also quite representative of the movies main issue, where it falls into a lot of the cryptoconservative trappings that also dragged Nolan's movies down. Where it's the heroes who protect the status quo (one of its few spots of optimisms being the election of a "better" mayor) and the villains trying to topple it being depicted as deranged, violent madman. As a matter of fact, it reminded me so much of Nolan that I had to double check whether him or Goyer were involved with the script, but surprisingly, they weren't.
I feel like one genuinely great performance comparable to, say, that of Ledger in Dark Knight, could have elevated it from being a weird and kind of awkward oddity to an actually good movie, if not exactly a great one. The closest it has to that is probably Kravitz's Catwoman. The Batman is the longest Batman movie (if you don't count v Superman). The Batman is the most narratively complex Batman movie. The Batman is the darkest, edgiest Batman movie. The Batman might even be the most stylish Batman movie, though I think I still prefer the Burton ones. But I don't think The Batman is remotely the best Batman movie. In the end, I liked it more than Nolan's, mostly on the virtues of its presentation. There is something I admire about the way it goes all in on its over the top 90's/00's edgyness. At moments, it reminded me of The Crow, of all things. I respect how long and complicated and ambitious it is. I just don't think it's all that good, at the end of the day.
Maybe this needed to be made. Hell, maybe it is the only Batman movie that could have been made, considering what came before it. It certainly seems like the logical next step in the properties evolution. An rainy noir, completely purging itself from Snyder's baroque romanticism and doubling down on grit and gloom. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, quite the opposite, I reckon it had to. It was certainly an interesting watch, I'll give it that, though whenever I felt like I was finally tuning in to its wavelength it did something that took me out of it. It's not quite like any other Batman movies. But considering the ending is teasing a sequel (It's suggested the Joker's gonna show up. Don't get your hopes up, it's not Joaquin Phoenix.) part of me is dreading the prospect that there's gonna be more of it.
