Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Colin
Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Andy Serkis, Peter Sarsgaard
In this latest reboot of the Caped Crusader, some of American pop
culture's most iconic characters are stripped of the eccentricities that
made them icons in the first place. This is a "dark" and "gritty" take
on Batman, darker and grittier than any we've ever seen before, which
means it distances itself from its comic book origins as much as
possible. It robs The Penguin of his umbrella, even though it's constantly pissing down in this version of Gotham.
This results in a Bruce Wayne/Batman who is almost entirely devoid of a
personality. Were it not for a voiceover that lazily fills in some
details, we'd know very little about Batman's motivations.
Robert Pattinson does his best to inhabit the character, but
there's not a whole lot to inhabit. This Batman largely resembles a
sullen teen, and initially it seems like we might be in for a Batman
whose heroism is more ambiguous than we're accustomed to. The film opens
with a Travis Bickle-esque voiceover from the caped one, and we witness
him over-react to an attempted mugging by seemingly smashing a hoodlum's
face to pulp. In these early moments Batman appears to be a school
shooter and Gotham his Columbine. Could this be a Batman movie in which
Batman himself is Gotham's biggest threat?
The answer comes early on when we're introduced to the movie's real
villain, The Riddler (Paul Dano). Gone are the wacky costumes of
earlier incarnations, replaced by an army surplus outfit and balaclava.
Even his riddles are bland this time out, and could be solved by anyone
who made it through primary school. It still takes Batman a while to
figure some of them out however. The world's greatest detective isn't
the sharpest tool in the box here, constantly relying on others to
explain what's going on.
When this movie was announced, the filmmakers made it clear that it
would follow the format of a detective movie. They've been true to their
word, and action is very thin on the ground here as Batman spends most
of the movie following up leads and piecing together clues. What the
filmmakers don’t seem to understand however is that nobody in their
right mind watches detective movies for their plots. We watch them for
the eccentric characters the detective protagonists come across in the
course of their investigations. Even Raymond Chandler admitted that the
plot of The Big Sleep didn't make any sense, but nobody
cares because it's packed with interesting characters. This movie has
The Penguin, Catwoman and The Riddler, but they've been stripped of
their larger than life personalities and moulded into dull stock crime
movie archetypes. Zoe Kravitz's Catwoman is simply a working
class female Batman, The Riddler is just an edgelord (the sort of person
who will harass critics who dare to write negative reviews of this very
movie) and The Penguin is a stereotypical Italian-American mobster with
a heavily made-up Colin Farrell mugging like peak De Niro.
An opening montage establishes Gotham as a crime-ridden hellhole, but
it also tells us the city's criminals cower in fear at the thought of
Batman lurking in the shadows. Huh? Which is it? A similar contradiction
comes later when a character refers to Commissioner Gordon as a "white
privileged asshole," despite the fact that he's played by the
African-American actor Jeffrey Wright. Such moments are
emblematic of a movie that doesn't seem to be sure of its identity. For
most of the running time you could be watching some second rate David
Fincher thriller, but then Batman will sprout wings and start flying
above the streets. I'm not sure who the movie is for either. Kids will
be bored senseless by its plot heavy and dialogue reliant narrative,
while there isn't enough meat on its bones to satisfy an adult
audience. With a length of three hours, watching The Batman is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge; by the time you get to the end you've forgotten what kicked off this plot in the first place.
Several filmmakers have openly complained in recent years that they
can't get certain types of movies made unless they rework them as comic
book adaptations. The Batman however doesn't feel like a pre-existing
story with Batman shoehorned in, but rather a Batman movie desperate for
a story. There's nothing here we haven't seen before, with a few moments
reworked from Christopher Nolan's trilogy in a manner that comes off as
very expensive fan fiction. It's the darkest Batman movie to date, and I
don’t mean thematically. I mean literally. Even Gotham's wealthiest
citizens seem to be cutting down on their energy bills by keeping the
lights off in their homes. In every way, this franchise really needs to
lighten up.
