The Batman (2022)
Review of The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves
I think it seems best to preface my review and analysis of this Batman movie by saying I have never seen a Batman movie before now. I did not grow up with these kinds of movies, let alone going to any sort of movies that had an ounce of violence in them, and so later in life I found a lack of interest and nostalgia when it came to the superhero movies.
I knew about this movie because I work in entertainment journalism and it’s been in the mouths of everyone for months, as well as the fact that every movie I saw in theatres starting December were blasting the trailer.
I thought it looked really interesting from the trailer alone because of the color grade that the movie was used to shoot on, as well as the fact that there was the scene where Batman actually is inverted upside down from the perspective of the quote-on-quote victim.
I was interested in how that shot specifically subverted the classic shot where a killer stalks their victim. And so when a chance to see it opened up my schedule during a trip to New York, I took the opportunity to be like yeah, why not? So I saw it at Nitehawk Cinema near Prospect Park with a rowdy audience. Lots of gasps and cackles in this theatre.
That being said, let’s begin the review!
Bruce Wayne, as Batman, must track down the Riddler before Gotham City’s elite are eliminated.
The opening shots of this movie are really intended to instill fear within you. We are immediately introduced and thrust into the world of Gotham City, how it mirrors New York City almost perfectly, and especially within the crime of the world. There are robberies, graffiti, and beatings going down everywhere across the city.
It seems to be complete and utter chaos until we see what these criminals are all afraid of: the bat signal in the sky. They look to dark alleys, spaces where Batman could easily emerge to take them down, and the audience can be fooled into thinking he’ll just appear at any minute because of how ominous these spaces are.
He appears at a subway station, however, to stop a group of clown-faced thugs from beating up a businessman. At the same time, the Mayor has been murdered by someone called the Riddler and James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) brings the Batman to the scene of the crime.
This Batman is very analytical; he uses forensics and basic calculations and deductions to figure out the cryptograms the killer leaves behind. We see more of this when he returns to his tower in the city, where he lives with a maid and his family’s butler.
There, in his mansion of sorts, we see how they’ve used technology (including eye contacts that record everything) to help connect the dots. I think that’s why I was quite interested in this story: it’s mainly a detective story where we’re trying to follow alongside Batman as he puts together the pieces behind the Riddler. He seems less of a superhero figure, someone mythologized in comic books and decades worth of movies, and instead relies on intellect.
The subplot here belongs to the Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz). Batman meets her a bar run by the Penguin (Colin Farrell, who I didn’t even recognize or realize it was him until way after I saw the movie), as she’s a waitress there.
Her story is that her roommate (who may be her lover—was slightly unclear on this relationship) disappears after finding something out about the higher-ups at Gotham City. They later find her body in a bag.
Catwoman’s arc is about vengeance and retribution, while Bruce Wayne’s is that he turns to being Batman as some sort of a coping mechanism for losing his parents.
We don’t actually see the act of him losing his parents in this movie, but one of the many threads trying to tie all of this magic together is the fact that the story of the Wayne family is tied into the Riddler’s plans. At one point he even targets Bruce himself, despite him knowing he is the Batman, and sending a bomb to his residence (that the butler unfortunately opens).
So there is the romantic arc with Catwoman and Batman, but it doesn’t work and starts to divert when she watches him beat a man after injecting himself with a strange green liquid. Suddenly they aren’t two kindred secrets and they’re back to square one; she doesn’t actually know his real identity or who he is. And so when the ending comes where they take two different paths, this exemplifies this notion about how different they are at the end of the day.
Paul Dano as the Riddler is completely unsettling. I thought he seemed actually insane with a cunning intellect throughout, and when he’s finally unmasked he just looks like a normal guy trying to get a coffee while arrested (until he’s not so normal).
Even at the very end of the movie, as he cackles alongside the Joker in their respective cells, you’d think that this is the guy you’d find murdering you on the side street that looks normal until he isn’t. He specifically targets the upper elites of Gotham City because he thinks that they are all corrupt, which he isn’t wrong there.
At the end of the day, this is a story that can be summarized as black, white, and the grey area in-between. Dano’s character, the Riddler, was an orphan basically left behind by the people of Gotham and the politicians, which explains how he’s jaded (minus the criminally insane part). Batman is the grey area, as he tends to fluctuate between violence and being involved with acts of good (especially towards the end).
The only good cop at first seems to be Wright’s character, who doesn’t seem as corrupt, while all the politicians have their pockets deep with corruption. And maybe even the Riddler is in the grey area—he’s a product of circumstance. If he had better opportunities growing up, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up like this.
The Batman is definitely set up to have the potential for many sequels in the future. There are so many threads and so many questions left unanswered that it seems impossible that nothing is going to happen. The introduction of the Joker at the end implies that this is only just the beginning, especially when considering the fact that the Riddler had such an intense following and said that this isn’t the end himself.
Overall Thoughts
The cinematography was my favorite part of the film—it was reminiscent of a film noir in color and added to the drab, mental state with pops of intense color. I’m not too sure about Pattinson in the role, however. He’s a great actor and he shone as the Batman, but as Bruce Wayne I wasn’t as convinced.
He does live up to the memes about being emo, that’s for sure, and I think the fact he doesn’t talk much with either of his identities adds to it. It fits the story quite well though. I also think the plot had some pacing issues because I didn’t feel immersed in it enough and it felt like it was three hours at certain points.
Wasn’t a fan of the romance aspect, but I see where it has appeal and draws people in.
