The Batman
The Batman is playing in theaters at time of publication.
SCREENPLAY: C-
I always believed the “becoming Batman” sequence was a required ingredient. Apparently not. There may be twenty-three people left in the entire universe who don’t know the tragic story of Bruce Wayne’s parents. They will pick it up with no problem.
Gotham City is alive, in a way. It breathes, but the air it breathes is dark, bleak, and soul-crushing. It’s stuffed full of evil and dread. Are you familiar with the Batman television show from the 60s? It pops with color and camp. The 1989 Batman movie scrapped all that and went dark. And it was amazingly cool. But I’m not sure why every iteration since then has tried to go deeper and darker. It feels like a gloom contest - one I’m not sure I need to keep watching.
ACTING: B
Is Pattinson good? I dunno. It’s like asking me what I think of Pedro Pascal’s performance in The Mandalorian. We see more of Bruce Wayne’s face than Mando’s, but not a whole lot more. Pattinson plays Bruce Wayne as an uber-brooding billionaire. If that’s his goal (which is a reasonable goal for this character), then mission accomplished.
Paul Dano is great in everything he does. But it feels like he’s taken the Gotham challenge - he goes darker and weirder than nearly anything I’ve seen in a Batman movie. His performance as The Riddler rubs me like a famous line from Macbeth: “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Other than trying to be more insane than every other Batman villain, I’m not sure what he’s trying to accomplish.
The standout here is Zoe Kravitz. She’s been around forever, but this feels like her biggest role. She rocks it. Pattinson broods. Dano cackles and squeals. Kravitz smartly plays Selina Kyle as a person loaded up with opposites - like real people. She’s confident but cautious. She’s dangerous yet in over her head. She is the only one in the room who shows you what she’s feeling. It’s a fantastic performance that will demand the doors in Hollywood to be opened even wider for her.
CRAFT: A-
Bruce Cockburn once sang, “Gotta kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.” It’s an image the filmmakers use well. As I’ve said, the movie is really dark. But two scenes use fire to paint something downright beautiful on its dark canvas. In one scene, Batman slowly walks toward his prey. It’s night and a blazing inferno dances behind him. He looks downright poetic. In another, he leads the frightened citizens of Gotham out of the pitch black with a burning flare to guide the way. I’m grateful the cinematographers kicked at the darkness every once in a while.
Additionally in craft, the set pieces are mostly boomin’. Especially the final one.
SIT-COM STYLE LESSONS: D
Most of the pop culture that raised my latch-key and me was made in the 80s. A time when half-hour long sit-coms were king. Apparently there was a rule that these shows needed to be more than just funny. Every single one had to teach you a life-lesson. People would behave badly for 28 minutes, only to see the error of their ways in the final two and become a MUCH BETTER PERSON. The problem was, the first 28 minutes of the show were always the best and funniest. Which means all we remember are the parts glamorizing the things we shouldn’t do. The lessons we’re supposed to take with us fly right by us like a silent bat in the night.
Batman wants to think it shows Batman undergoing a huge transformation. That it has a positive message for us to take with us throughout our lives. The problem is that it comes right at the end. If you blink, you’ll miss it. And with so many memorable parts in this movie, no one’s going to remember a dull, five second voice-over. So if you see anyone wearing hastily sketched question marks on their chests, stop hanging around them. Immediately. Just in case.
FINAL COMMENTS:
If you go into this movie expecting an interesting story, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of leaving happy. I do dig the Riddler’s style. Leaving riddles at the crime scene is pretty epic stuff, criminally speaking. If you like dark and rainy streets filled with floods of punching and gruesome death, then you are 100 % going to dig this movie. But if you yearn for more from your stories than overstuffed, violent detective shows (not that there’s anything wrong with that), you may feel let down by the lack of seeing anything you haven’t seen from the many Batmen who have come before.