review: THE BATMAN

Matt Reeves' The Batman, in many ways, is a bookend to Todd Phillip's Joker.  Both have a similar tone, style, and presentation.  Both films take a germ of the source material from the comics, and build their own mythologies, sometimes in complete opposition to the source comics. And although to date, nothing has been made official, I can certainly see both films part of the same universe. But The Batman, despite all this, is not quite the film Joker was. At nearly three hours, the film is somewhat bloated, and a tighter edit cutting out about half an hour would have made the movie better.  Something else lacking in the movie is anything colorful or fun from the comics.  Much like the Christopher Nolan trilogy, this movie takes itself a little too seriously. There are really only two major action scenes- the Batmobile car chase with the Penguin, and the finale when the Riddler's bombs explode.  There are a lot of great fight scenes, but very little actual action sequences.  Also sorely missing is Batman escaping from a typical death trap.  But on the positive side, this film probably has the best detective aspect of any previous Batman movie even if there are a few times Batman gets things seemingly wrong. I mean come on, the clue is a "rat with wings", and Batman deduces stool pigeon instead of a bat??  Also, this is the first time since the Adam West TV franchise that Batman is on screen in full costume for nearly the entire time, with very few Bruce Wayne scenes.

The simple, yet complex plot has Batman, in his second year of activity (Batman's narration clearly states that for the viewer), encountering the mysterious Riddler who starts knocking off corrupted political and police figures, and it's up to Batman and Jim Gordon, assisted by Selina Kyle who has her own tangent to the case, to figure out the connection. It leads to a revelation about Thomas and Martha Wayne (again, somewhat dovetailing into the portrayal of Thomas Wayne in Joker). It was this kind of deconstructionist attitude that kind of turned me off to the movie at its reveal about at the half way mark. I'm done with this type of "let's see how we can screw up superheroes the most" agenda, and would love to get back to a more truly heroic presentation.

One thing I really noticed about the movie is how there are so many scenes that are homages or recreations of previous Bat-Film moments.  The first fight between Batman and Selina is just like the scene in Batman Returns. Batman's "flying" escape is similar to scenes from both Batman Returns and Batman Begins. The scene where Batman goes into Penguin's Iceberg Night Club is clearly a homage to the "What A Way To Go Go" scene from the pilot episode of the 1966 TV series.  There's a shot of Batman crashing through a skylight that looks similar to shots from both Batman '89 and Batman Forever. When Batman visits Riddler at Arkham Asylum, it echos Batman's interrogation of the Joker in The Dark Knight. There's a shot of Batman hanging from a structure by one arm that looks like a mirror image of a shot from Batman '89. In that respect, this movie plays almost like a "Batman's Greatest Hits" collection.

Robert Pattinson does an excellent job as Batman, much better than I thought he would. Thankfully, he avoids the ridiculous bullfrog voice used by Christian Bale, or the electronically adjusted voice used by Ben Affleck. Instead he speaks in a harsh whisper along the lines of both Michael Keaton and Kevin Conroy.  And after Affleck's serial killer Batman, it's refreshing to have a Batman with a moral code against killing. The Batman cowl really suits Pattinson's face well.  The rest of the costume, though, while better than Bale's motocross style outfit, isn't as good as the Keaton or Affleck costumes.  One thing I hate about the more recent Batman costumes is that the capes have a regular straight edge on the bottom. Why don't they give the capes the bat-points across the bottom anymore?  It's like with Superman, his capes never have the yellow S shield on the back. Pattinson's cape has a Dracula inspired collar, but no bat-points.  Pattinson's Bruce isn't as good as his Batman, having too much of an Edward Scissorhands quality with a sort of Shemp Howard haircut. But thankfully, his Bruce doesn't get much screen time at all.

Paul Dano's Riddler looks more like Hush from the comics than The Riddler.  His performance is fine, but he really doesn't start to shine until the last act after he is unmasked, at which point he starts to act a little more like a classic Riddler, even mimicking Frank Gorshin's dialogue delivery style of raising the volume and getting higher pitched with certain lines.

Jeffery Wright does an okay job as Jim Gordon, but lacks charisma.  If Gordon were more of a background character this wouldn't be a problem, but Gordon is really the film's 2nd lead, so Wright seems a bit flat.  Speaking of background characters, that's what Andy Serkis' Alfred is.  I think you need to go all the way back to the 1949 serial to get an Alfred with less screen time than Serkis.  Colin Farrell, who I always thought would have been a great choice to play Batman, hams it up as the Penguin, getting the film's only humorous lines.  Despite being covered in prosthetics and make up, he still doesn't look like the Penguin, just a heavy, balding, generic gangster.  His role seems quite similar to the position the character had in the Gotham TV series. Zoe Kravitz, much like Pattinson, defied low expectations, and delivered an excellent performance as Selina Kyle, giving the character great range and good chemistry with Pattinson. 

In relation to other Warner Brothers Batman movies, I'd rank this one in the top four:  Batman '89, Batman Returns, The Dark Knight, The Batman. It's far from perfect, it's certainly not the definitive Batman, but for what it is, it's very well done.