'The Batman' Brings A Mix Of The Old And The New
Starring Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, Peter Sarsgaard, John Turturro, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright
Rated PG-13
Action, drama
Run time: 2 hr, 55 min
Directed and written by Matt Reeves
In theaters March 4, 2022
If you’re like me, you went through a pretty baffling series of emotions when it came to the news about this film. At first, it was side-eyeing the fact that Robert Pattinson (or Ro-bat Bat-in-bat as one of my favorite podcasts called him) was cast as Batman. Then it was cautious optimism when the first trailer dropped, despite COVID halting so much of production for quite some time. Then the caution turned into full-blown excitement as more images, including Kravitz as Catwoman, and a full trailer dropped. Then the reviews came out and the overwhelming consensus is, “Hot damn, this is better than we ever thought it would have been.” The problem I’m now running into is I simultaneously agree with that thought while also having some pretty significant issues with the movie, most prominently the writing and the runtime. So The Batman has somehow both exceeded my expectations and fell short.
The plot of this Batman iteration does us all the great service of not making us see Bruce Wayne’s parents get killed. There are flashbacks and video clips that give us a lot of history, but Matt Reeves doesn’t force us through Wayne’s origin story for the umpteenth time. He’s Batman already. Full stop. The bat-signal is up and running. He has a relationship with Gordon (Wright) that the other police seem wary of but Gordon already trusts. We meet Penguin, played by a truly unrecognizable Farrell, who is an absolute caricature of a mobster in the best way. There’s intrigue, there’s Catwoman, there’s corrupt politics, there’s more villains than we know what to do with. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Batman movie, but some of it is done even better than anticipated. At least for the first 2/3 of the movie, anyways.
One of the things I’m pickiest about when it comes to entertainment is the writing. You can have an incredible plot, wonderful actors and a beautiful looking film, but if the script is stilted, it’s going to fall flat to me. It’ll take me out of the movie and I’ll be hyper aware of the issues in the dialogue. Unfortunately, that happened to me frequently in this movie. The solid cast really helped it be better than a lesser film would have been, but specifically in moments featuring Gordon or Alfred (Serkis), it felt like they were saying the quiet part out loud. In this respect, it’s probably a true adaptation of a comic book, but where the “show don’t tell” requirements for a movie are necessary, it is a struggle when every single emotion is voiced explicitly out loud. We can have the emotional moments without the subtext becoming text. And by cutting that back, it probably would have helped with my runtime issue. If the movie had been trimmed down by 45 minutes or so, I think it would have been cleaner, sharper and overall better.
All of that being said, there are so many wonderful aspects of The Batman. There is a level of realism we don’t often see in superhero films. At one point, there is a flying squirrel-style suit used to glide, and it looks utterly ridiculous, which it should! Sometimes if something is going to work, it’s not going to be stylish. We are also thrown into a world that we learn about as we go. They assume we understand the premise of Gotham, comic book crime and Batman himself. Which we do. They let us see the detective aspect of Bruce Wayne that is often pushed to the side in deference to the physical abilities he possesses. However, they also add a weird aspect of naïveté to Wayne, where he seems to take everything at face value and believe the last thing he was told. While he does seem great at solving problems, his gullibility is in direct contrast to that admirable quality. A lot of those moments that made me cock my head in confusion could have absolutely been cut in my “make text subtext” recommendation, but I digress. Overall, the movie probably has something for everyone, and Pattinson does a great job as the iconic character. If I dig into all my thoughts on The Batman, it’d probably take as long to read as it would to watch the film itself.