Then what was the point of the movie? It didn’t give me any reason to like Batman, or care about him that much. In fact, the film might have been better if it hadn’t had Batman in it at all - if it were a just film about Jeffery Wright hunting down a serial killer and uncovering a conspiracy.
He basically allowed himself to be caught, so it still went according to his plan.
And even then Batman missed the last clue that had been left for him.
I didnt feel like I needed to like Batman or care about him in a personal way.
I thought he was in an interesting situation as someone with a lot of power and ability, who had to work out what to do with that. If there is no Batman, then there is no superhero with all this supposed superpower, but who is basically just floundering. I think they wussed out on the final confrontation between Riddler and Batman. They could have set up a much stronger moral dilemma. But I also kind of like that they didn’t push it too much, because it leaves questions lingering. So, yeah, I didn’t care about him, I thought he was kind of a dope, but he was still interesting.
It seemed like there was a lot of stuff they felt they needed to have in the movie, iconic characters, the Batmobile, a vengeance story, a romance, superhero tropes, and they managed to get it all in there in a fairly graceful fashion. I didn’t expect to like it, but I did.
I rate this movie as excellent. It was a super hero movie that didn’t depend on rad special effects or super powers. Instead, our heroes had strength of spirit but were also emotionally vulnerable. It had a very strong story line. I normally get antsy watching a movie of that length, but I was so absorbed that it just didn’t happen this time.
I hope they don’t feel obligated to include a Robin in forthcoming sequels.
See, and I think they failed on almost all counts. Batman wasn’t a superhero, wasn’t a vigilante, wasn’t a great detective, wasn’t an iconic character - he was just a kid in very expensive body armor who had a talent for riddles and was pretty good at punching people. As Bruce Wayne, he was a whiney little shit. The vengeance story was undercooked, the romance story was carried almost exclusively by Zoe Kravitz’s charisma, and the Batmobile was just a black muscle car whose sole scene was probably the worst in the entire movie.
The action scenes were poorly choreographed and shot, the film was completely devoid of anything resembling humor, and half the time, it was too dark to see what was happening onscreen. The director had some talent, I guess, but maybe next time they should actually hire David Fincher instead of his non-union Mexican equivalent. And most of all, the film just didn’t get Batman. Batman is a fucking ninja - he’s a stealthy, mysterious figure of legend with tons of wonderful toys. Having Batman knock on a nightclub door and ask the bouncer to speak with the manager is like having James Bond walk into a bar in a track suit and order a lite beer. It completely misses the point of the character.
The Batman’s Batman is a lot like the Joaquin Phoenix Joker’s Joker: a great big “Eh, I guess. Kinda.”
…what Adam West would’ve done? (And now I kind of want to see that version of this movie.)
Exactly - except that the movie wasn’t self-aware enough to be campy, and had no concept of fun.
I really liked that this Batman was grounded in reality instead of being just another flashy superhero movie with big fight scenes and explosions and fancy gadgets. I wouldn’t even call this one a superhero movie, it has more in common with noir detective stories and films like Zodiac, Seven & Saw. To me, that’s a plus. I am so sick of the typical superhero movie.
Was that really in the movie?
In “The Batman,” they said Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered in October of 2001. Meaning if you go by release dates, it’s possible they were leaving a screening of Zoolander when it happened.
I don’t see the need for every incarnation of Batman to have to hew to this description. I found it a refreshing take. I for one am tired of stories in which he is inconceivably good at everything and is never unprepared.
If we are going to have a new set of Batman movies every year, I prefer that each writer and director try something new, from their own vision, instead of trying to re-create the same vision as before.
He is not the Batman who is already brilliant at everything but one who has limitations, one who has a handful of tools and abilities but not all of them.
He’s immature, raw, and improvising. He means well, perhaps, but he isn’t always absolutely certain of what he is doing.
And I found this version of Bruce Wayne refreshing, too: young, damaged, and out of place when he isn’t dressed up.
When they did show his face, the impression I got is that he is shellshocked and barely functional as a human being. He is suffering from PTSD. And that makes absolute sense for someone who has chosen to put on a mask and spend every night punching people.
Overall, a very successful and interesting take on Batman.
I get that the filmmakers had a very clear vision of what film they wanted to make, and I respect that. I just didn’t find their vision particularly compelling, or interesting.
I suppose it depends on what draws you to Batman in the first place. If you’re into the whole traumatized orphan thing, or the borderline psycho vigilante edgelord thing, then this is probably the film for you. Personally, I find all of those aspects of his personality kind of tiresome. To me, the entire movie can be summed up in 1 minute and 8 seconds:
Give me a suave billionaire ninja gadgeteer any day.
What drew me to Batman in the first place was that he was in a Saturday morning cartoon and I was five years old and it was colorful and exciting and people could fly and stuff.
What draws me to Batman now—really any character I might roich base with over many encounters is discovering new ways of seeing or understanding that character.
I grew up with Super Friends Batman and then Adam West Batman and then when I started reading comics regularly in the mid to late 1970s a Batman largely based on Adams and O’Neil’s vision of a lone detective.
The Frank Miller came out and there was a new vision of Batman. That was interesting to see. And now I’m quite interested in Tom King’s Batman.
For a character to remain interesting enough for constant revisiting, the creators have to bring something new to the table.
The Batman movies of the 1980s through Christopher Nolan gave me nothing new. They bored me. This new Batman isn’t boring. I was engaged every step of the way because it was building a cohesive world, an interesting story with interesting relationships and motives and I liked it.
That’s not to say I want every director to make this Batman from now on. I want their own vision. I want to be surprised. This one surprised me in a pleasing way.
This version of batman takes this comic and turns it into a full length movie.
This version of Bruce Wayne doesn’t do philanthropy. He thinks that all crime is caused by the choices of individual criminals, and his only idea about how to deal with that is to punch muggers.
The point this movie makes (and that Batman begins to understand only at the very end) is that that isn’t an effective approach to solving systemic problems.
I went to see it again last night in the theater. This is an absolutely gorgeous film, just so clearly painstakingly made. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, with real, three-dimensional sets, ambient lighting, point-of-view cinematography. And that cinematography is so stunning and life-like because it uses lenswork that makes it look more like human vision, often with much of the scene out of focus.
It’s really an amazing movie, intricate, textured, immersive, and gives you a feeling of tangibility.
Yes, Batman has a real character arc in this movie, which isn’t usually the case.
I liked that and I hoped that they had a follow up scene where Bruce Wayne steps into a board meeting in a suit with his hair combed to announce that he will be there now. His charity was corrupted and he will not let that happen again. I guess that will be in the next movie.
Otherwise, I thought it was a decent movie. It was very long and it felt like they kept setting up the ending just to move onto something else. I did like that Batman had an ethos to not kill and he endeavored to adhere to that. That makes him trying to stop Catwoman from killing more credible. Kravitz was good as Catwoman but I think the secret about her past was unneeded. I thought Pattinson was fine as Batman but I also think that the suit does a lot of the work in these movies – and that goes all the way back to 89. I liked that the Batmobile was muscle car and not a monster truck or glowing rocket car but the actual scene seemed kind of goofy. He goaded the Penguin into a car chase by revving his engine?