"The Batman" was pretty good

WARNING: The following includes spoilers for Matt Reeves's "The Batman" (2022).

Apologies for the brief hiatus in this newsletter. Turns out, finishing a thesis while trying to sort out post-grad living and working arrangements is quite the juggling act. I know you've all been stirring in your seats waiting for the next senseless, largely inconsequential article. It's not like you completely forgot that this even exists...right? Right. It's not like that at all.

I suppose this is my first attempt at a movie "review," although I'm not sure it will meet all of the conventional requirements of the genre. I refuse, for now, to make a Letterboxd profile, really for no reason other than that I've seen some of the shittiest takes ever documented on there. Also seems like it's quickly falling victim to what I refer to as the Goodreads Phenomenon, where a social platform devolves into a grandstand for users to flex on each other instead of "building community" like it's supposedly designed to do.

Anyway, let me start by saying that I'm a very casual Batman fan. The Batman and Spiderman franchises are by and large the only superhero movies I can stomach. I grew up alongside Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy, which I love, and haven't made much of an effort to watch anything from before then (aside from "Batman and Robin" (1997), one of the worst, most delightful films one could hope to experience). I saw "Batman v. Superman" and "Year One." Both were fine.

It's difficult for a movie to deliver when it has as much hype as "The Batman," and that is not necessarily anyone's fault. It's just how shit goes now: big-budget movies have big-budget marketing campaigns, and "The Batman's" was about as comprehensive as it gets (did anyone try the downright terrifying Batman Calzony from Little Caesar's?).

For the most part, Matt Reeves's first (but seemingly not last) Batman movie came through on its promise of being dark, gritty, and exciting. It helps when your lead man is Robbie Pat, who has a pretty emo disposition even when the cameras aren't rolling. Give him some self-pitying dialogue while wearing heavy eye shadow and you're halfway there. But really: Pattinson's performance was great. His most shining moments were when he hung up the bat-suit and traversed Gotham as Bruce Wayne – scenes in far too short supply in "The Batman." Much of the allure of cloaked crusader is his ability to lead an oft-conflicting double-life as a justly motivated vigilante and as the heir to a billionaire's philanthropic legacy. We saw hardly any of the latter in this film, leading to only a couple of moments where I feared he might be found out. Admittedly, one such instance was perhaps the best overall scene in the film, where Batman confronts the now-unmasked Riddler from behind the glass of his Arkham cell.

As much as I love Pattinson and Kravitz on their own, I left the theater confused and unsatisfied about the nature of Batman and Catwoman's severely underdeveloped romance. The film is nearly three hours long and I still felt as though every longing gaze and kiss between them was somehow forced. Now, trust me, I fully understand the urge to put such beautiful creatures in extremely close proximity. I know I'm not the only one who was upset we didn't get to see a little more, let's say, physical engagement between the two. I suppose it was always meant to be PG-13, after all.

Both Pattinson and Kravitz were underutilized in "The Batman," to be sure, but the film's greatest hindrance of talent was Jeffrey Wright's Lieutenant Gordon. Wright is one of my favorite actors working right now, but his dialogue in "The Batman" often felt like merely a hand-holding mechanism for the audience. There was always a "Wait, so you're telling me that _____ did _____?" architecture to his lines, which is only one instance of the film leaning too heavily on dialogue for plot development and exposition. Another noteworthy example is Bruce Wayne's conversation with Alfred in the hospital. The scene opens with Bruce sitting next to his caretaker and confidant, sleeping and bandaged, the unfortunate victim of an explosive package sent by the Riddler intended for Bruce. Suddenly, Alfred wakes up from what was ostensibly a coma induced by his injuries. Bruce inquires about his father, who he learns from Carmine Falcone in the scene prior, might not be the righteous, upstanding man he thought he was. Alfred, apparently making significant medical improvements in real time, speaks with Bruce for nearly five minutes about Thomas Wayne's relationship with Gotham's underbelly. It was a lot of explication, all at once. Again, I feel like a three-hour movie could have afforded a little more nuance to its character and plot development.

So I guess I've been mostly shitting on the film so far, but I really did like it. Quite a lot, actually. For one, "The Batman" has the most fully realized Gotham I've seen in any live-action Batman movie. Reeve's noir inspirations for the film really underscored Gotham as not just a place where crime happens, but a place that looks and feels like crime is always happening, everywhere. Unlike the Nolan films, I actually had a sense of geography as I was watching.

"The Batman" also has some extremely cool action sequences, including a scene where Batman is taking out half a dozen gunmen in a pitch-dark hallway, gunfire creating a strobe-light effect as he moves from victim to victim. It was really, really badass. True to the Batman formula, there is also the obligatory "let's fuck up the Batmobile" car chase, which was probably the most gripping ten minutes of cinema I've seen since "Fury Road."

For me, the true star of it all was the completely unrecognizable Colin Farrell as the Penguin. Every scene with him was this strange cocktail of danger, levity, and charm. It is truly criminal he didn't get more screen time.

There are several moments in "The Batman" where the audience becomes seriously disoriented, be it from a headlight shining directly into the camera or a shaking pan of a building's windows as Batman looks through his binoculars. I found these touches very effective, and I suppose it didn't hurt that I saw the movie on an UltraScreen DLX with Dolby Digital surround sound. If you can swing it, you should do the same.

If you were to ask me what score I would give "The Batman," I'd say I don't really operate that way. If you put a gun to my head, I'd say, okay, probably a 7.5/10. It's good – better than I thought it would be. Some moments even made me sit upright in my DreamLounger. But, on top of all I've already mentioned, the plot just got too stuffy, especially in the last hour. If I'm limited to one stamp of approval, I gotta give it to Nolan. For now.