The Batman

It's impossible not to see a hundred or more sources of inspiration; from 1970s Lumet to thriller Fincher to early Proyas. Ditto when it comes to the inspiration for specific comics, games and cartoons featuring the Dark Knight. And yet, it's purely Reeves's singular vision that doesn't go for traditional blockbuster gilding. It builds on atmosphere, grime, big city corruption, style (just the camera and lighting work), subliminal tension and pacing (or lack thereof). Gotham is more of a character than most of the ensemble. Pattinson plays Batman purely through stubborn silences and penetrating glances as a "voyeuristic inexperienced weirdo in a costume" instead of a traditional (super)hero. What Reeves didn't manage well, however, is the running time. Not that there's anything that feels out of place, and not that it drags, but several of the themes and characters (including Bruce) are so far down the road that they could (and should) be in the eventual sequel. That said, as an origin story of a grounded Bat-universe, it’s flawless. (03/02/2022)

It is not worth measuring how The Vengeance stands against Tim Burton's or Christopher Nolan's concepts; this was primarily about defending Matt Reeves' perspective on Batman's existence. And even though there are many things that don't sit well with me, the living Gotham still immediately gets under my skin and the main character with it. Robert Pattinson doesn't fail for a second, even though this fragile psychological approach could have crumbled in his hands. Bruce Wayne walks in the rain with strands of hair falling on his face and as Batman writes crushing cries like "I am the twilight" in his diary. And yet he never passes into absurdity, he never crosses that emo boundary in such a way that I couldn't take his painfully personal quest seriously in the next scene. Which is crucial because he's literally investigating throughout the entire movie. The crime aspect is so paramount in the film that I even wondered if the comic book stylization was just an obstacle to the creators, distracting them from their obvious desire to make a Fincher-esque movie of their own. Unfortunately, the references to Se7en are so overwhelming that they disturb me and with them the result loses its own uniqueness. The second incomprehensible aspect is the length, which is unnecessary; if they had shortened it, there would have been fewer scenes of watching the dirty and shady city in the background and monologues or dialogues about the dirty city infested with shady individuals. On the other hand, thanks to this, the scale of storytelling never diminishes, as it thoroughly builds a foundation for escalating key scenes (the funeral). In the end, my feelings are mixed, just as they are in the movie, but because they all work, I support the idea that this confident approach should continue and fear not to venture into Batman's enemies and directions. The complete absence of mysticism, or at least caution with supernatural and science fiction elements, could quickly lead to predictability in future sequels. (03/11/2022)

The Dark Knight is Batman's take on Heat and The Batman is a clear salute to Seven, Zodiac, 8mm, Black Rain and all similar (neo)noir movies, but Matt Reeves doesn't rip them off because his film is just another one of them. Comparisons to previous Bat-films are unfair, but they can't be completely avoided either, because The Batman is still Batman. It's not even true that he's just now becoming a detective, because he's already investigated quite a bit in The Dark Knight. But the film's clear trump card is its atmosphere, which really hasn't been seen before – dark, ugly, rainy, dirty, lurking in the shadows and aggressive, a full-on Gotham that brings out perhaps the worst in all the characters. Pattinson's Batman is perfect, and I loved how the weird costumed vigilante seems almost out of place in the cop scenes, for example. But Pattinson as Bruce Wayne is just as good, although we don't get to enjoy him much. I also really liked Zoë Kravitz and John Turturro, whom I only recognized because of his name in the end credits. Paul Dano as the Riddler can proudly stand next to Ledger's Joker, and Colin Farrell clearly enjoyed Penguin as well. The film looks and sounds absolutely amazing, Giacchino's score is the second best Bat soundtrack after Elfman's Batman Returns, surpassing Zimmer's tracks in that it can be listened to on its own and you get something out of it. There are a great many scenes (in fact, ideally the whole film) that I would like to see again immediately, but two of them really stand out, the one at the funeral and the one with the Batmobile. The silence in the cinema was sepulchral and tense, as it should be. (03/03/2022)

This is an intimate, depressing, gothic noir emo that at times looks like a nightmare of a light-headed sociopath, on the one hand lonely, on the other thrown into a claustrophobic space where law and crime embrace each other so tightly that it is impossible to distinguish them. A cleverly adapted origin story and a tale of a man consumed by revenge are superimposed on an almost Fincher-esque thriller. It's slow, sometimes driven to maximum effect, backed by the famous Riddler... three hours doesn't seem like a problem to me, because Reeves does it with precision, heavy-handedly, and unlike Snyder, it's not a masquerade at the bottom of dead mannequins, but still a human drama - even if simplified compared to Nolan. Pattinson fits the role perfectly, but the main asset is Paul Dano as the king of the incels. Reeves has delivered his own similarly willful project like Villeneuve recently did. For me, it's a hundred times better than the comically depressing Joker charade and several levels above the DC duds of the last decade. Finally the darkness breathes, the scars don't heal and the rats gnaw at the flesh. (02/28/2022)

The Batman is a great way to take a new path and not disappoint viewers pampered by Nolan. Matt Reeves is the guy who can take a simple plot formula and make such an engrossing spectacle that intoxicates the audience with every scene over the course of three hours. The deliberate slowness of many of the scenes with their polished staging more thoroughly stylizes the characters and builds up the dark atmosphere of the hopelessness of a dirty, corrupt setting. Giacchino is unrecognizable and, especially in the suspenseful scenes, he transcends the shadow of his own creativity. The actors are well cast and directed (Farrell is again the most expressive of them), and the new Batmobile makes a grand entrance. What diminishes the film’s potential is its PG-13 rating – its very dark spirit in combination with the plot concept involving the hunt for a psychopathic killer, heavily inspired by Fincher’s Seven, needed a bit of graphic violence. In the films greatest display of rage, Batman pounds his fists into the bad guy’s face without even bloodying his nose. And the film contains a lot of such nonsense, sometimes purely logical, that stands in stark contrast to the otherwise fantastically well-crafted filmmaking details. (03/13/2022)