Directed by Matt Reeves, The Batman gives us a much darker adaptation to the Caped Crusader.
Roughly two years into donning the costume and becoming the crime-fighting vigilante, Bruce Wayne is faced with new villains who are destroying Gotham City even further. With The Riddler uncovering disastrous secrets that even the Wayne family was involved with.
So right off the bat (no pun intended), I’m going to say that this is probably one of the best superhero movies in terms of cinematography. While other superheroes with otherworldly powers get to showcase their greatness using exaggerated power displays, The Batman answers the question of “what if a street-level hero, with no powers, wants to play in the big leagues?’ perfectly.
The answer to the question is a 3-hour movie that offered varying shots as you went along. Shots that made you feel like you were in the movie itself. It was almost like at every point in time, you were seeing things through the lens of someone; whether it was Batman, Catwoman, Riddler, a regular thug or some random civilian.
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Many people were scared of Robert Pattinson taking on the mantle of Batman, but I wasn’t one of them. I knew he was going to do the role justice and I am glad that he proved me right. Zoe Kravitz played Catwoman in a delightful manner, Colin Farrell played The Penguin as if his career depended on it, and honestly, every cast member acted their full money’s worth and more.
The musical score was an absolute beauty. It was almost like Michael Giacchino didn’t let a scene go by without an appropriate score to accentuate the darkness, rot, and fear that was the general tone of the movie.
Where the movie failed to convince was showing us the appropriate character development a Batman, in his early stage, needed. It was almost like that part was forgotten until the very end and got slipped in to hopefully tie it all together.
Another negative was the fact that even though this movie may probably be the most we’ve seen a Bruce Wayne stay in his Batman costume for the most part of a Batman movie, it somehow didn’t really encapsulate it.
While The Dark Knight trilogy didn’t really give us enough detective scenes and instead focused on more hero-villain interactions. The Batman focused too much on him being a detective and not really much else.
It truly felt like a detective movie, where the main character keeps unfolding layers of crime and he can’t get on top of it or move forward until he gets another victim or clue.
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Pattinson’s Batman was not really portrayed as the proactive/contingency Batman that we’ve come to know.
One can make the excuse that he was still in the early stages of donning the costume, but then again. The fact that he already had a light in the sky, and a costume as durable as that, meant that he had at least put away one or two really big villains and was very well known in the city.
Also, I think the movie relied too heavily on its dark tone, that it wasn’t able to fully convince of the chemistry between Batman and Catwoman. It also felt like it was forgotten and just slipped in at odd times..
Regardless, The Batman was a good three-hour movie.
Beautifully shot, musical scores to make your adrenaline flow and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, with a good-enough, dark and (maybe just enough) convincing new take on the caped crusader.
Yes, the Batman is worth watching.