The Darkest Batman Yet
March 12, 2022 Leave a comment
It’s been far too long since I’ve done one of these.
After watching The Batman, the most recent iteration of the famous superhero with Robert Pattinson (Twilight, Good Time) taking on the role, my mind was filled with quite a few thoughts. Thoughts about the legacy and the baggage that comes with making a new movie based on a long-established franchise. Thoughts about the ways in which we relate to the characters we grew up with. Thoughts about how my preconceived notions will color my enjoyment of a film. These thoughts are what led me to write this movie review.
The Batman is a technical marvel, arguably the best-made movie about the caped crusader yet. It has amazing special effects that find the perfect, seamless balance between the practical and the digital. It has beautiful set design that the amazing cinematography highlights and accentuates to build the gothic atmosphere that director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, War for the Planet of the Apes) is going for. Even the costume design is thoughtful and clever. Most of the cast pulled off amazing performances; I think that Jeffrey Wright (The French Dispatch, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay) might just be my favorite Lt. Jim Gordon yet, and Zoë Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road, Divergent) pulls off an excellent performance as Catwoman.
Yet I hated this movie.
Even acknowledging that, objectively, this is a great movie from a pure filmmaking perspective. I don’t regret having seen the film at all. In spite of this, I couldn’t help but be disgusted by what Reeves and Pattinson did to Batman as a character.
As I watched this three-hour movie, I found myself constantly thinking of the old Batman TV series from the 1960’s starring Adam West. Famously, that series was goofy, campy, idealistic, childish, and fun. Ever since that series ended, almost every version of Batman that has been produced has tried to distance itself from that particular portrayal of the character. With each passing generation, Batman has become darker, more serious, more realistic, and more grounded. This new film seems to have pushed that pendulum as far in that direction as it will possibly go.
I get the impression that the filmmakers asked themselves, “If Bruce Wayne were a real-life human being, what would he be like?” The best way I can describe their answer is “a serial killer who doesn’t kill”. Pattinson’s Batman is explicitly shown to be a psychologically unstable, demented, and dangerous man. He calls his nightly campaign against the criminals of the city “The Gotham Project”. He nakedly neglects his duties to Wayne Enterprises and his responsibilities as Bruce Wayne in favor of obsessively being Batman. In one scene, he straight-up ruins one of the rooms in Wayne Manor by spray-painting his broken thoughts about the case he is solving on the floor. He even creepily stalks a woman in one scene. Not exactly behavior that I would associate with a hero.
The film makes this parallel very explicit as well, as the story pits this twisted version of Batman up against a version of the Riddler (played by Paul Dano) who is a serial killer. Again and again, the film hammers home that these two men are not very far apart at all. This theme gives the whole movie a very creepy vibe that I’m not fond of at all, and it makes me question why the Gotham police, and Lt. Gordon in particular, tolerate this masked vigilante.
There are a few other minor gripes that I have about this movie. I think Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Black Panther) is badly miscast in the role of Alfred. He tries his best, but he just doesn’t have the right personality or chemistry needed to be convincing in the part. The soundtrack was also not my favorite, alternating between classical music and the moody guitar notes of Nirvana, giving a very jarring effect.
Yet I did like some of the elements included in this movie. I liked that this particular Batman is shown to live up to the moniker “The World’s Greatest Detective”. Many versions of Batman over the years just have our hero punch bad guys until they spill the beans on the villain’s plot. This version actually investigates crime scenes looking for clues that the police might miss. I also liked how the movie contrasted Batman and Catwoman, two characters who both are ultimately out to find justice but come from very different backgrounds that shape the very different methods they use to pursue that goal.
Even so, for all the many, many positive aspects of this movie that I can rattle off, nothing could overcome my personal distaste for this particular portrayal. To me, this is NOT Batman. This is not the Bruce Wayne that I grew up with, this is not the superhero that millions of children dress up as on Halloween, this is not the character that is beloved around the world. To me, Batman is a relatable, if tragic, figure who turns the trauma of his past into his motivation for doing good, using the resources and gifts he inherited to make the city he loves a better place, albeit through less-than-conventional means. Pattinson’s Batman is a scary, twisted creep who has a compulsion to beat up those he judges as worthy of a beat-down.
I want to watch a Batman that can have some fun. I want to watch a Batman that isn’t ashamed of his origins as a comic book character. I want to watch a Batman that people can look up to as a role model. What I don’t want to watch is a film production that pushes a character so far in a particular direction that it completely misses the point of what made that character compelling in the first place. No matter how good of a job such a production does in making a very high-quality film, I simply won’t be able to set the filmmakers’ original sin aside and enjoy the movie.