“You’ve got a lot of cats.”
“I have a thing for strays.”
The Batman is a 2022 feature film from Warner Brothers Pictures. Directed by Matt Reeves, it is based on a screenplay written by Reeves and Peter Craig. Initially conceived as a vehicle for the Ben Affleck version of the character seen in Zach Snyder’s 2016 Batman V Superman and the dual, dueling Justice League films, the movie was re-imagined as a reboot when Reeves came on board. His preference was to push for his vision of a younger, more cerebral, and less cynical Batman than the one portrayed by Affleck. Shot on location in Chicago and the UK, the film stars Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffery Wright, Andy Serkis, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, and Colin Farrell.
It’s Halloween night in the city and Gotham throws a hard party. The Mayor is found murdered in his own mansion while surrounded by security. His brazen attacker is so confident of his stealth, that after crushing the Mayor’s skull, he takes his time to elaborately prepare the corpse for the cops to find.
Homicide and Forensics have never seen a crime scene like this before. Lt. Jim Gordon (Wright) reaches out to his associate, the violent vigilante known as the Batman, (Pattinson) who has been terrorizing the Gotham’s criminal element for two years. It’s very convenient, as the Mayor’s murderer has left a message specifically for him, inviting the Batman to discover the motive for the Mayor’s execution. The clues are a cipher and some symbols leading to a cache of compromising images of the Mayor who is being very friendly with a young woman who is not his wife. There is also a video missive by a macabre, gimp-mask-wearing man, (Dano) who calls himself “The Riddler” and raves about corruption and lies before affirming that this is but a start to a series of killings.
The images lead the Batman to the mob-run Iceberg Lounge managed by Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot. (Farrell) Descending deep into the underworld like Orpheus, he questions Cobblepot and meets Selina Kyle, (Kravitz) who works there as a waitress while planning the big heist that will give her and her girlfriend Annika the means to get out of dodge.
Annika is the girl in the photos and when she turns up missing, Kyle gets the Batman to commit to finding her. Now the neophyte Bat has his hands full, and mysteries abound; can he help Kyle, an extremely crafty and capable cat burglar, find her special lady-friend? Can he unravel the web of conspiracy and corruption that ties the Wayne family and Foundation to the Riddler’s campaign of chaos and murder? Can the Batman catch the Riddler before he completes his decapitation strike of the Gotham government? Can he keep Jim Gordon out of jail as an accessory while the trio tries to connect the dots that tie the murders to the missing girl? Tune in next week, same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel.
You don’t have to wait until next week. All of those questions are answered in the movie. It only FEELS like next week. The film is very long. It clocks in at nearly three hours. Reeves has crafted a dream-like neon-noir crime procedural that languidly drifts in places yet rivets your attention with nightmarish intensity in others. Gotham is a city walking on a razor’s edge. At night. In the rain. It rains in Gotham city a lot. There is a lot of soft focus, a lot of fog, and a lot of neon lights mirrored in puddles.
This Batman gets to use his brains and do serious detective work for the first time in all of the live-action incarnations. In another break with his cinematic counterparts, this Batman abhors guns. There are no Gatling cannons on this Batmobile, though the roar of its engine might be more terrifying than those of its predecessors. The film has many brushes with horror movie territory, none more disturbing than the chase sequence where the Batmobile is introduced. Though earlier in the movie it’s made clear that the Batman strikes terror in the hearts of both the thugs as well as the citizens of Gotham, the rumbling, roaring, fire-breathing monster of a car frightens hardened crime-boss Cobblepot to such an extent that he abandons his mooks and his millions and runs for his life.
Colin Farrell is incredible as Oz Cobblepot. He is unrecognizable under practical makeup and a fat suit, yet he infuses Oz with an air of menace and competency that is lacking in just about every other version of the Penguin. This could very well be his Les Grossman moment.
Cobblepot works for Carmine Falcone, played by John Turturro, who combines a world-weariness with the oily confidence of a master manipulator.
In the hands of Jeffery Wright, Jim Gordon is a hard-striving, honest cop who has yet to achieve the accolades or rank of his cinematic forbears but who is doggedly loyal to the Batman, whom he’s had great success working with, to the dismay of his fellow officers.
Andy Serkis steps into the role of Alfred Pennyworth and provides him with warmth and a nurturing aspect that seemed wanting in earlier cinematic portrayals, possibly due to the age gap between actors playing Bruce and actors playing the butler. Though Pattinson has lines like, “Alfred, stop. You’re not my father,” his filial devotion is apparent, even in his most moody moments. This Alfred does not display some of the more unusual skills previous versions had. He is not shown to be a combat medic or mechanic, but he IS very good at puzzles.
Robert Pattinson is surprising in the title role. His physicality seems to crumple in on himself when he is playing Wayne, who is wrestling with severe depression and post-traumatic stress while trying to hide under an emo haircut. His Batman is a bold and brash tank of a bruiser who is nevertheless nimble when the situation requires. Two years on the job has made him a bit cynical and dubious as to the efficacy of his crusade and this fear of failure haunts his eyes. There is a quietness to his diction as the Batman. It’s not that Pattinson’s Batman is soft-spoken, just that he is under tremendous control for most of the movie. He loses his composure twice and his bat voice rises to the famous, unintelligible bat-growl only once.
Paul Dano has taken one of the sillier characters in the Batman oeuvre and made him horrifying. His Riddler is erratic and sinister, excitable yet sad. Dano plays him with the steel-eyed passion of a wound-up zealot willing to martyr himself for his cause but whose cruel calculations and desire for savage revenge masks a shattered man-child. He is a dark, lonely mirror of the orphaned scion of the Wayne family.
Zoë Kravitz’s Selina Kyle is sleek and sagacious. She’s a den mother collecting broken strays. There is a knot of contained, coiled fury in her that she keeps buried until it bursts to the surface and runs riot. Reeves has mashed up parts of the origin of another DC character, Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress with Selena’s story. There is a lithe kineticism to her body language and sass in her smirk. She spends most of the movie acting against the bottom half of Pattinson’s cowled face yet is easily able to inject more than enough verve and vitality in their scenes together for the two of them.
This movie is having ALL of the feelings and has a lot to say, which accounts for the runtime. It edges up on being bloated but keeps your interest. Matt Reeves’ The Batman probes many issues: grief, gentrification, corruption, despair, drug addiction, depression, environmental degradation, mental illness, the pernicious influence of social media, and the dangers of a cult of personality. He uses a heretofore-unexplored slice of the Batman’s career to dissect these points.
Batman: Year Two is a controversial four-issue arc in Detective Comics, #575-578 from 1987 where Batman is forced to deal with Gotham’s first masked vigilante, known as the Reaper, who has come out of retirement. When they clash, the Reaper’s armor, experience, scythes, and guns prove too much for the caped crusader. Batman contemplates breaking his greatest rule, violating his prime directive by shooting the Reaper with the gun that killed his parents. Suffice to say, this movie is not drawn from that source material. However, there are elements of ‘87’s Batman: Year One, ‘96’s The Long Halloween, ‘98’s Cataclysm, ‘99’s No Man’s Land, and several other stories contained within.
There were a few theatre-wide laugh-moments, most from Farrell. His Cobblepot has an observant eye, quick wit, and a sharp tongue. Another moment had me hooting as it seems to draw heavily from a running gag in The Blues Brothers, which was also shot in Chicago.
The city of Gotham has a lot of character in the movie, and the layers of decay and graffiti add to it. The Wayne Renewal Foundation is fundamental to the plot and the back half of the picture has the city walls repeatedly defaced with the slogan “Renewal is a Lie!” Michael York will be glad they agree.
The interrogation scene is a master moment of trope-inversion. After a decade of film villains deliberately getting captured to advance their fiendish schemes, and with quite a bit of runtime to get through, The Riddler is put into a (by now) very familiar-looking glass box. Though he is under observation, it is the Batman’s brutal impotence and ignorance that is put on display after a revelation by the Riddler. The Batman learns that there are a few more steps to their dance.
Many films in the superhero genre tend to shy away from real-world questions and political themes, however, The Batman leans into several of them. Beyond the drugs, corruption, and crime, the city is surrounded and sustained by seawalls which are mentioned with Chekhov-like frequency that keep the ocean out. Gotham’s climate isn’t changing, it’s changed. The Riddler amasses a MAGA-like online following, and there is a moment in the movie that mirrors the 1/6 insurrection.
Two things kept knocking at my suspension of disbelief, and they both have to do with eyes. In the comics, since the very beginning in 1939, the Batman has had white lenses over his eyes. The modern versions in the cowl have computer-aided heads-up displays, infra-red and night-vision abilities, and are networked to the bat computer. This movie tries to pull the same trick with contact lenses. It didn’t bother me until they were used to transmit data and video. I can’t get my phone to work in the subway sometimes, yet these contact lenses can communicate through several basement floors. I also kept wondering what was powering them, which I found distracting.
The second thing is the frarkakte eye makeup. Because none of the modern movie Batmen has lenses over their eye-slits in their cowls, each has used copious amounts of black eye makeup to make the mask look seamless. It doesn’t. It looks ridiculous. This Batman is not the exception. Each time he changes in or out of the suit, it’s jarring, though the movie does not apologize for it and integrates him doing his eyes into the story. It’s still silly.
The script is trying really hard to make the viewer not notice that the entire plot and both directions of the dovetailing investigations hinge on the Batman and Ms. Kyle meeting each other at the exact right moment so she can have the exact reaction that he observes and follows up on. That’s not a whole hell of a lot to hang two hours and fifty-six minutes on, but there’s so much else going on that they hope you won’t notice.
The Batman is a tempestuous, dark and mercurial dream that ends with the warm glow of sunrise. With the day, a dawning of hope comes to Gotham city and to Bruce Wayne who learns how to be a better man and a better Bat-man. Matt Reeves has made a good, entertaining movie, but please visit the bathroom before the film starts.
The Batman is in theatres now.
The Riddler was created by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang.
The Batman, the Penguin, and Catwoman were created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.
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