The Batman

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🎙️ EPISODE 506: 07.08.22 In the end, what The Batman suffers from is the same plague befalling all of the various comic book/superhero movies and their various "extended universes" (which is itself a concept that I love in theory only to have found to hate in practice, or — more accurately — how its been applied/used by Big Disney who seem far more concerned with brand-building than world-building, lest you thought those were one in the same). Thankfully, Matt Reeves's first step into DC's 1A or 1B I.P. never gets bogged down by this sickness (let's call it "the slickness"); it's grimy, at times comically ugly-ass aesthetic set up as an almost preternatural deterrence against such missteps. However, this set up another problem I hadn't anticipated. A strange cognitive dissonance is created when you portray a character who used to looked like this for the last 50+ years...

...as essentially the Zodiac Killer...


...and not just because of the character's appearance...


So this is far more Fincher than Russo (and that's a GREAT thing!), but the mind can never really fully escape the purview that this is a still a superhero flick. No matter now how dim and dark it looks, or how much rain (endless rain in Gotham City, folks), or how many mysterious neo-noir elements you can squeeze in, The Batman still looks like, well, a dude in a bat suit.

But still, above all else, its biggest crime was occasionally giving into the same CGI cartoon-world FX which makes the MCU an unwatchable slog imo. Granted, I understand it's hard to practically film Robert Pattinson fight a dozen Riddler clones on the barely-hanging catwalk above Madison Square Garden. And it's fully impossible to film him jumping off an 80-story building and flying to the ground with his cape. But this shit still looks like trash, like a little cartoon guy going boom-boom...


However, like I said, this is done sparingly, and most of the film is a visual delight, at times captivating but always entertaining. Pattinson is good in the role (he's at least not doing a Bale voice), and the rest of the cast are all serviceable to excellent, for the most part (even Zoë Kravitz who I have not been a fan of in the past is fine here).

At the end of the day — and it's taken me how many years to realize this? — these movies will never be 'for me'. This one got as close as any are gonna get, and I'm happy to go along for the ride for however many sequels and spinoffs and new extended universes this spawns. I am submitting to this I.P. machine. For now.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 505 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 507 ⫸

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The Batman is a 2022 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character Batman. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, 6th & Idaho, and Dylan Clark Productions, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is a reboot of the Batman film franchise. The film was directed by Matt Reeves, who wrote the screenplay with Peter Craig. It stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne / Batman alongside Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell. The film sees Batman, who has been fighting crime in Gotham City for two years, uncover corruption while pursuing the Riddler (Dano), a serial killer who targets Gotham's elite.It was released on March 1, 2022.