Disclaimer: I could write a spoiler free review, but I don't wanna. So! If you haven't seen this film yet and don't want to know what happens, please do not proceed to read. This post will still be here after you've seen The Batman, if you so wish to return (and I hope you do). As a note, this also applicable if you haven't yet seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, because reasons. (If you don't care about being spoiled, read away!)
I went to see The Batman this past Sunday, and I just have to say... Wow! I then went back to see it again on Tuesday.
First off, I feel I need to point out I'm not much of a DC person. I don't know why, but I've just never particularly cared for their repertoire of characters. I used to like watching Lois and Clark, but I have definitely gotten a distaste for Superman and his ridiculous levels of OP-ness in the comics (which I have read about due to that whole 'Superman vs Gokuu' debate from the early-ish 2000's). I enjoyed the Wonder Woman film, but know very little about her otherwise. Don't know much about Flash or Aquaman or whatnot, either...
I have always liked Batman, though. As a kid I watched re-runs of the 60's television programme with Adam West, and, when it started airing, I watched the Animated Series. I have also seen all the movies since Tim Burton's Batman, save Batman Forever and Batman and Robin (and probably will never watch them, either, to be honest).
This film feels different from other Bats I've seen on screen. It's heavy on the storytelling, almost poetically so. It starts out with a voiceover of Bruce reading an entry from his journal about Halloween... Very lost in darkness, angsty stuff. (Okay, technically it starts out with a murder, then goes to the voiceover.) He reveals in this that he's been doing the whole vigilante thing for two years by this point, but he doesn't know if he's actually making a difference, as crime is still rampant in Gotham. He points out that there's a signal now, cutting to a view of the Bat Signal lighting up the sky, and says that even though he can't be everywhere because he's only one person and it's a big city, it is helpful that the lowlifes don't know where he is.
Our first fight scene starts with a gang of bros in clown-like face paint who decide, upon exiting the train cars they were on, to rough up a poor soul who had the audacity to recognise that they were punks and tried to put a little distance between them and himself. (One of the guys in this gang only has half his face painted, perhaps as an initiate, but the symbolism is dripping. He is hesitant about participating in the violence his cohorts are so keen to commit, so it's showing that he's not quite 'in' with them yet.) Bruce gets to a point in his journal entry where he is talking about the criminals thinking he hides in the shadows, but that that isn't correct: he is the shadows. At this point we start to hear some heavy footfalls from a darkened tunnel, which the gang starts to notice.
This is one thing I absolutely loved in this film. Batman is, traditionally, a ninja of sorts (I think in comic book lore he actually has been trained in ninjutsu, but I'm still in that 'I really need to read the comics' phase of not actually having done so). Most of the time we see him either fighting from the shadows themselves or stealthily materialising from them to beat the shit out of some thug, but in this? He uses his heavy arse boots as an intimidation factor. The baddies hear him coming, slow, deliberate steps, before they ever see him emerge into the light. 'Fear is a tool,' he says.
The Bat, being a brawler, pummels the living daylights out of this gang of young men (to be fair, they attempted the first strike), all save the hesitant one (who didn't attack him at all and ended up running away). It ends, however, with the gang's victim, collapsed and prone on the ground, asking Batman to not hurt him, either.
That small interaction is what sets the tone for the story, really.
The main villain in The Batman is Riddler, who we are introduced to as he spies on and subsequently violently murders Gotham's mayor (the aforementioned murder the film begins with). Riddler's goal is to expose the corruption in Gotham's government and judicial system, which is a pretty noble goal if I'm to be honest, but he just kinda... goes about it the absolutely worst way. After beating the mayor half to death with a carpeting tool, wrapping his head in duct tape, cutting off his thumb, and leaving him to die from either exsanguination or suffocation or possibly the blunt force trauma (it was a bit ambiguous there), he moves on to murder Commissioner Pete Savage, Gordon's old partner, with rats (after injecting him with rat poison, because, you know, gotta have a theme). He then moves on to the district attorney, etc, etc, etc...
I'm going to interject here that the non-traditional portrayal of Riddler in this film is disconcertingly amazing. Instead of the flashy suit and almost Joker-like mentality, we get an incel decked out in military surplus gear. This Riddler is more dangerous because he's pretty much the epitome of the generic mass shooter that the US has had a pandemic of over the last decade or so (save perhaps more intelligent), an angry radical who feels entitled, even compelled, to do what he's doing because he's just doing the work that no one else has the balls to do, you know? ('Cause that's totally justification for murder. /s)
One thing that keeps popping up at all of Riddler's crime scenes are greeting cards, cute little things, all addressed 'To the Batman'. Bruce, seeing himself as a beacon of justice and on the right side of things, views these greeting cards more as bait or taunts, but as it turns out... Riddler viewed himself as working with the Bat the whole time! Viewing Batman as his partner in his revolution, his cards and ciphers were meant as clues for Batman to aid him in his schemes to rid the city of corruption.
I'm sure anyone who has watched the trailer for The Batman recalls the clip used where some lowlife asks Batman who he is and his response is, 'I'm vengeance!' (That sound clip is currently my text alert noise.) The true turning point for Bruce is when, at the actual climax of the film, one of Ridder's cronies is unmasked and Gordon asks who he is. His response is the same: 'I'm vengeance!' Riddler has already professed to being inspired by Batman by this point, but it isn't until this interaction that it actually sinks in. You can see it dawning in Bruce's eyes the true effect he's been having on Gotham, that his actions of brutality against the criminally inclined up to this point really are what gave birth to his first arch-nemesis. (Edit [24 March 2022]: After watching the Joker's deleted scene from the movie, I guess I stand corrected on Riddler being the 'first' arch-nemesis, but still.)
You see, The Batman is, in fact, an origin story.
I am a big fan of Spider-Man, and my favourite movies for him are those in the MCU (Tom Holland is best Spidey). After No Way Home came out and we see what happens with Peter after losing May and making the choice to not reconnect with MJ and Ned, a lot of people made a realisation that what we've seen so far, not only in his headliner films, but in all the ones he was associated with within the MCU, were, in fact, actually the path of Peter Parker becoming properly Spider-Man. We were watching him mature from a geeky, naïve kid with superpowers into an actual hero.
This is what The Batman does for Bruce Wayne. Like with MCU Spider-Man, we don't see the actual 'origin story' in the traditional sense. That's been rehashed over and again. We don't see wee little Bruce witnessing his parents' murders (and it's actually unclear if he did in this version), just the moody aftermath of it. What we do see, however, is Batman maturing from an angry tool of vengeance, who has spent the past two years basically trying to bludgeon the criminal element out of Gotham, to a symbol of hope for a brighter future, which is what Gotham truly needs. (He says something about being a symbol of hope during his second journal entry voiceover at the end, I believe, so I almost feel I'm copying, but I'm not meaning to in this instance. It's just, you know, the theme of the story.)
I do like some of the elements they use to show that this Bat hasn't reached his 'final form' yet. In one scene he had to jump off the Gotham PD building, which is a skyscraper. Turns out his cape turns into a flight suit (which is pretty fucking nifty, if you ask me), so off he goes. He aims to land on top of a bus, but he doesn't properly take into account his surroundings. His parachute catches on the bridge the bus is going under, throwing him up into the structures underneath and bouncing him down over a car and into the street. Looked like it hurt, just a lotta bit.
His relationship with Alfred is also telling. It's obvious that Bruce trusts Alfred, but he also is making a point to try and keep him at a distance. There is a line during the first conversation that we see them have in which Bruce pulls the whole 'you're not my father' thing, and later he takes a dig at him for having Wayne monogrammed cufflinks. Bruce is probably around 28 years old in this (assuming his parents died when he was eight, which I think is when it was comic canon established it happened), no more than 30 or 31 at most, but dude definitely got stuck in his Angsty Teenage Phase™ for way longer than he should have.
(I was told before I went to see the film by an associate who had already seen it that Robert Pattinson's Batman was great, but his Bruce Wayne is lacking. I'd seen mention of this online, as well. Thing is, I feel wholeheartedly that he does a spot on Bruce for where Bruce is in his life at the time of this story.)
Also, also, there's evidence that he's still working on his Batmobile. Down in his secret hideout, you can see it in the background up on risers, presumably so it can be worked on, and several times we see shots of parts lying about that he's assumingly going to use on it. Then, when we do get to see it on it's maiden run, as it were, it seems to stall out briefly. It makes me wonder if he had actually finished it, or if he took it out for a test spin before it was actually ready-ready. (Also, gives me the idea that he lacks a Lucius Fox in this version, at least so far.)
He does get it going, though, and then proceeds to try and wreck the hell out of it.
... Okay, so can we talk about the badass but so over-the-top-ridiculousness that is the highway chase scene? Penguin should not have survived that. At all. His dumbass decides, after being unsuccessful at losing his tail, to go up the on ramp for the lanes going in the wrong direction, so he's driving against oncoming traffic on a fucking motorway. Speaking from a physics point of view, that first crash he had should have done way more damage than it did. Once he moves over into the proper lanes, he gets stuck behind an SUV, which he decides to boot out of the way by tipping it's back corner and causing it to lose control. Not sure how that actually would have helped, seeing as he's blocked in in the middle lane in the first place, but... okay, sure.
Getting that obstacle miraculously out of the way, his next bright idea to lose the Bat is to, you know, hard brake. In front of a lorry. What should have happened is that the tractor should have run over his car, but what it did was cause the trailer to swing out and start one of those glorious chain reaction vehicle pile up crash explosion things (because of course a gas tanker was involved) that we love so much in action movies. And, lo and behold, a car transport trailer just happens to line up perfectly at the last second so Batman can launch himself over the chaos, through the flames, and back in pursuit of Penguin. (Oz's car has to be armoured, because rolling that many times, after a full on side collision, front collision, and rear collision and still fucking surviving? That's the only explanation I've got, and it really only counts for the car.)
Having said that, holy fucking hell, that chase scene was fucking awesome! And it gave us this beautifully iconic shot:
Edit (23 March 2022): I had written a bit about the fact that the film is rated PG-13, and that I felt that their one 'fuck' ended up trading off with any depictions of blood or injury in the movie. Yesterday I received some news that pissed me the ever loving fuck off (I was involved in a car crash back in early November, and my car is still in hospital, and I was supposed to get her back yesterday, finally, but something else came up and we're waiting on a fucking part again), so I decided to go watch Robert Pattinson beat people up to make myself feel better. This makes my third time seeing the film all the way through (though I've been four times, but fell ill about an hour into one of the showings).
I've determined that my comments were unfair, so I am making an edit to this post.
Granted, there is still an overall lack of showing injury or blood, but it isn't as pronounced as my brain made it out to be that day. For one, poor Gil Coulson's head is covered in blood during the entire scene he's doing Riddler's riddles (the culmination of which is him getting blown to numerous tiny bits of DA). It isn't that I missed this fact during any of the times I've seen it, I just apparently glossed over it for some reason.
One thing I had pointed out was that there isn't an obvious wound when Falcone is shot. The first time I saw the film I thought the hole in his coat on the shoulder was the bullet wound. Second run through, I was thinking maybe it wasn't. Looking again last night, yes it was. It's a small wound, though, and you can only see a bit of pooling blood in the wound that's shadowed over (at least, I think that's what it was), so it could be easily overlooked. It does not help that there really isn't any amount of blood (on the ground or anything) in that scene. I'm thinking, due to the assumed high caliber of the rifle used to shoot him (based on how loud it was), that the exit wound must be much larger than the entry wound. That is the only reason I could think of as to why he would die from the shot, though, as shoulder wounds don't normally kill people in movies and such.
I'd also taken issue with the shooting of newly elected Mayor Reál, as I'd misinterpreted where she was shot. When she's shot, she goes back as if hit in the shoulder, but it looked more like she was holding her side. Watching again, I noticed that the paramedics are actually bandaging her shoulder (no idea how I missed that, honestly), confirming that that was where she was hit, so it makes more sense that she's able to be up and giving a speech the next day.
I will say, I ordered the Nolan trilogy to try and hold over my hyperfixation on The Batman, which worked a little (about as much as watching Daredevil has worked, to be honest), and after re-watching Batman Begins and The Dark Night (haven't had time for the third yet), I gotta say: Pattinson is a better Batman (and abso-fucking-lutely has a better suit), and while I still love Nolan's films, I also find The Batman to be a better movie. (End of edit, save the very beginning of the next paragraph.)
However, can people please stop using that fucking high pitched tone after an explosion to denote ringing in the ears? It's fucking painful, and people who already deal with tinnitus don't really want to have it thrust on them from outside influences when their own ears do it perfectly fine from within, thanks. There is another sound that could be used that's just as good that isn't as bad on the ears, and if I could remember which movie I was watching that used it, I'd name drop, but I sadly don't.
Overall, I give it a 9/10, especially with a soundtrack like this:
So... when are we getting The Batman 2?
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