Okay, perhaps saying that I don’t like comic book movies is too much of an unfair blanket statement, but let me explain:
I have never in my life read a comic book. I was never a superhero kid. I have various memories of being exposed to comic book movies throughout my childhood, like watching the X-men movies with my parents, my brother looping our DVD copies of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy over and over, and my dad taking me to see Iron Man, the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in the cinema. They were a part of my cultural upbringing, but only in the way that they were for anyone of a certain age and they never particularly compelled me the way other things I saw throughout my childhood did. That era of the first eight-ten years of my life is a sort of golden age for comic book movies with the X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies as I’ve mentioned, but while I enjoyed those films, whatever it was about comic books and comic book movies that appealed to the interests of so many kids and teenagers, just didn’t particularly appeal to me.
I had frequent sleepovers at the home of my cousin who was an obsessive comic book/superhero kid and so I credit him for the majority of my early education in comic book movies and characters. In fact, my first ever memory of Batman is him showing me Batman Forever (1995), a campier and more theatrical (or some may say silly) iteration of the comic book hero. As there has been so many takes on the character in cinema throughout the years, I still haven’t seen a couple of the Batman films and have honestly never been interested enough to. While there were aspects of what I saw that appealed to me, like the campy fun of Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (1997) or the fact that my brother and I used to obsessively play Lego Batman: The Video Game (2008), there was nothing interesting to me about the vigilante in the bat suit from anything I had seen, and that has remained true.
Throughout my teenage years, as I was falling in love with cinema, the world at large was falling in love with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I have followed along with the franchise’s trajectory, seen all of the films and kept up with the lore, but mostly just because how could I not? It’s such a dominating part of our media culture. Especially as someone who was becoming so engrossed in the film industry, there was no real way for me to not become a close follower of the MCU.
I have a complicated relationship with those films. Even though I find myself becoming engrossed in the ongoing narrative and the crossover of characters, I think that the vast majority of the films are just okay? They’re enjoyable and many are pretty good, but they’re almost never great? I am aware that it’s a weird contradiction. I continue to anticipate new MCU films even though almost every time I watch one my reaction is pretty neutral. I think that just represents the problem with those cookie-cutter superhero blockbusters. They reel you in and keep you hooked with mindless spectacle and because you’ve come so far now and are so invested in the ongoing storyline whether you like it or not. But the filmmaking is never particularly impressive and the storytelling almost never creative. They all have the same lifeless, bland look and style with no creative or directorial vision. They blend together for me into this grey blur of stories which all follow the same basic structure. Again, I find a lot of them enjoyable, but I would go as far as to argue that no MCU film has ever crossed over from being ‘a great MCU movie’ into just being ‘a great movie’. They exist in their own category and don’t represent true, creative filmmaking.
I know it may seem very confusing that I just went so deep into my feelings on the MCU when this piece is about The Batman (2022) and Batman is a DC character, not Marvel. And of course, there are tonal differences between the two, with DC properties typically being much darker. However, I am simply using the MCU to illustrate my feelings about comic book films in general, because they are so dominating in the culture with there being so many. I feel the exact same way about The DC Expanded Universe (DCEU) films and the likes of Man of Steel (2013), Wonder Woman (2017), Aquaman (2018), etc. are just as aggressively mediocre as most of the MCU, there has just been far less of those films.
I am of course not including the few recent outliers in this dull, repetitive format like Logan (2017) or Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018) which defy the monotonous pattern and are uniquely compelling. And I also do think there are films which fully embody the genre but just manage to be better-made, more elevated executions of it like X-Men: First Class (2011), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (not even my favourite MCU film, just more elegantly and purposefully made) or even The Suicide Squad (2021). And of course, the real elephant in the room is the Nolan Batman trilogy which I will discuss shortly.
All of this to say though, that I can’t help but follow along with them as they continue to reign over the film industry. But I have never found comic book movies, in the way they are mass produced to satisfy audiences, to be truly compelling in any way past surface entertainment value. And generally speaking, excluding obvious exceptions, I frankly don’t think they suitably represent the creative and visionary craft of cinema. The way I feel about them is so separate to my true tastes and passions in film. They’re like the fast food of filmmaking (or to use the controversial but accurate Scorsese analogy, they’re like theme park rides!)
*Please remember as I go on to discuss The Batman (2022) that any aspects of Batman’s origin story or lore around the character that I refer to are simply based on what I have absorbed from the culture and picked up from other films. I don’t claim to know everything about the character or how he is portrayed in the comics so don’t come at me if I mistake/don’t know something!*
I can hear people screaming at me about the Nolan Batman trilogy and The Dark Knight (2008). Because obviously these do not fit into the framework I have outlined of bland, safe comic book franchise films. I’ve actually never seen Batman Begins (2005) and I wasn’t particularly fond of the overly long The Dark Knight Rises (2012). About The Dark Knight though, let me say my piece and hope that people don’t hate me for it. The Dark knight is undeniably one of the greatest mainstream blockbusters ever made. It’s a fantastic film. I feel though, that The Dark Knight is a great film in spite of being a Batman film. The set pieces are great, it’s thematically interesting and of course, Heath Ledger’s staggering performance as the Joker is nothing short of legendary.
However, I can’t help but feel (and I have seen others echo this so I know it’s not just an opinion held by me) that Christopher Nolan was embarrassed to be making Batman films. Christian Bale is great as the suave, playboy socialite Bruce Wayne, almost doing a riff on his Patrick Bateman performance in American Psycho (2000). But Nolan tries to downplay and overlook the true fantastical nature of Batman as a deeply troubled man who dresses in a ridiculous costume to skulk around the city as a vigilante because he has never gotten over the murder of his parents. That is an inherently outlandish and odd story, yet Nolan is obsessed with toning it down to be as mundane as possible. The Dark Knight is not concerned with unpacking anything about Bruce, and the film isn’t really about Batman as an idea or a symbol, he’s just the necessary framework for the plot to occur.
Nolan’s Gotham doesn’t feel like a fully realized original setting at all, it’s really just a fairly basic riff on New York or Chicago with very little stylistic flare. And separate from his Bruce Wayne, Bale’s Batman therefore feels a little awkward or out of place with the largely grounded setting and tone of the film. It’s the reason why so much of the film features Bale as Bruce rather than as Batman. I can’t help but feel like Nolan was making the films with the thought process of “well yeah this is about Batman but it’s really about x, y, z themes” or “yeah Batman is the main character but I really just wanted to make a great drama”, as if Bruce Wayne being Batman is a necessity of the plot, rather than the thing that makes it interesting.
So as a non-Batman/non-superhero fan going into Matt Reeves new take on the character, the only thing that had me anticipating the film in any way was Robert Pattinson. I know the mainstream audience has quite a different experience with him, still seeing him as teen heartthrob vampire Edward Cullin or teen heartthrob wizard Cedric Diggory. However, anyone as immersed in cinema and the indie film scene as me, knows Pattinson for the incredibly impressive filmography he has formed over the past five or so years, giving exceptional performances in a series of audacious indie films from esteemed auteur directors (Ben and Josh Safdie’s Good Time (2017), Claire Denis’ High Life (2018), Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019), etc.) He is one of my favourite actors and he commits himself so deeply to every role he inhabits, that there was never a doubt in my mind he would be similarly fantastic as Batman.
But my Pattinson love aside, I saw absolutely no need for yet another Batman film. Seemingly coming right on the heels of Ben Affleck’s Batman, with Affleck’s Batman coming only four years after Bale’s run as Batman ended, I felt like we were in this continuous loop of recycling the same character over and over. A character whom, as I said, I had never even found particularly interesting or unique through what I had experienced of him in the many films (and the Lego game).
Then, with no expectations, I saw the film on opening day in IMAX and I think it’s appropriate to say that I was blown away. It blew me away not by the standards of comic book movies, but as a deeply effective, exquisitely crafted and at times moving film which honestly shatters that generic comic book movie form. It doesn’t carry any baggage of the character from the comic books, other films or in the sense that it feels like it’s attempting to be a franchise starter. It exists completely independently in a way that someone who has been living under a rock with absolutely no concept of Batman and who has never been a viewer of comic book films could still thoroughly enjoy it.
It doesn’t burden you with having to watch any sort of origin story or laborious setup. This is, as many have been referring to it, a “year 2 Batman”. We meet Bruce Wayne over a year into being Batman and you are just trusted to know all of the classic tropes of the character. We don’t need it to be explained to us that Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered when he was a child or that the Wayne family are extremely wealthy. We don’t need to be told that Bruce has a butler, Alfred, who is his closest confident, the closest thing he has to a father figure and the only person who knows he is Batman. We don’t even need it to be explained that Batman doesn’t use guns and has a no-kill policy. These things are so engrained in the cultural understanding of the character that we don’t need to be explicitly shown them, it would be tiring. However, I stand by what I said about someone with no knowledge of Batman being able to enjoy the film because even if you didn’t know/forgot some of these things, there is enough narrative groundwork that you could pick up on them yourself fairly easily. I have a lot of problems with the Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy, but The Batman takes the best thing about those movies which is the elimination of the origin story and the fact we meet that Peter Parker long after he has already become Spider-Man, allowing for much more freedom in the story.
The Batman is essentially a gritty and pretty brutal crime drama and psychological thriller, and sees director Matt Reeves clearly evoking the likes of David Fincher’s Se7en (1995). It’s a mood piece that feels somber and bleak and incredibly gothic in its aesthetic, something that I feel like Batman films always should’ve been but haven’t been. We get to see Batman do so much actual detective work which is something I’ve been told is a big thing in the comics but is a really refreshing change for the films. It’s a perfect mix too between clever clues which are skillfully deciphered but also a reasonable level of incompetence and missed clues which at times leads to Batman unknowingly playing against his own interests. It’s a complex narrative web that is highly engaging throughout. The film worked on every level to me, and primarily that means it just worked as an effective and compelling drama.
But here’s what makes it so special. If, as I said, The Dark Knight is a great movie in spite of being about Batman. The Batman is a great movie because it’s about Batman.
The basic storyline of Batman - a rich kid whose parents are murdered, leading to him becoming a vigilante, dressing up and stalking the streets at night, looking for criminals to apprehend – on its surface is quite frankly just bizarre and disturbing. Everything about it indicates to us that this is a strange man who has never been able to cope with his grief aptly and so has taken on an insane role that nobody asked him to, as a violent force in the city. However, it has never been portrayed this way. The reason I have disliked the character previously is that every Batman film until now has done everything it could to try and convince us that this isn’t weird; it’s heroic and aspirational. Bruce Wayne is a suave, sexy, womanizing glamorous socialite and when he dons the Batman caul, he is cool and courageous. Nolan and others bent over backwards to make this feel tangibly normal.
The Batman is the first film to ever unabashedly embrace the fact that Bruce Wayne is a complete weirdo. He’s a reclusive, practically nocturnal outcast with no social skills and doesn’t live anything close to a natural lifestyle, and certainly not to an aspirational one. As is established early in the film, the only regular human interaction he has as Bruce Wayne is with his butler Alfred who has raised him since his parents’ death and whom Bruce treats fairly cruelly at times. He remains confined in his inner-city penthouse during the day, avoiding ever having to be publicly perceived as Bruce Wayne. Then, at night, he puts on the Batman costume and haunts the city, desperately searching for petty criminals to violently punish, which he believes is justified.
Self-seriousness is something that weighs down so many comic book movies, desperate to make their heroes feel rational and ordinary in the world they create. The Batman, on the other hand, makes the risky but brilliant move of embracing how ridiculous the concept and appearance of Batman is. There is a scene early into the film where Batman is in the presence of many law enforcement officers, and the scene is so perfectly shot and staged to emphasize how out of place and abnormal he appears, as people around him express their discomfort. And just by simply acknowledging the outlandishness of the bat suit, it again only enhances our fascination with Bruce as a character in his insane pursuit of vengeance and makes it that much more fascinating why he has chosen this path for himself.
We have been told in every iteration of Batman that Bruce Wayne has unresolved trauma from his parents’ death but this is the first film where he is actually portrayed as having clear signs of this trauma in all of his behaviour. As I mentioned, when not masquerading as Batman he’s extremely reclusive and has poor social skills. Even on one of his rare outings as Bruce Wayne which is heavily shown in the trailer, as Bruce attends a funeral, it is clear how much of an odd presence he is as he awkwardly gawks at others, indiscreetly ease drops and generally seems like an uncomfortable and completely unsociable personality. It makes him such a fascinating and far more empathetic character. It also then makes so much more sense that this odd guy would do something as bizarre as dressing up like a bat to fight crime.
The contrast, or in fact lack thereof, of Bruce Wayne versus Batman is so much blurrier and more authentically clouded than in any other iteration I’ve seen. Rather than Bruce Wayne the public figure who becomes his alter-ego Batman, Reeves portrait of the character is far more entangled. Here, the line between Bruce versus Batman is completely obscured as Bruce is so embroiled in pain and violence and is not living any semblance of a life outside of being Batman. It is actually The Riddler himself who interrogates this idea as he makes a comment at one point about how the idea the public has of Batman hiding his true self behind the mask is actually a deep misunderstanding because perhaps it is the mask which represents his true self, and trying to pass himself off as a normal man when he’s not Batman is the real mask. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle as we see Bruce attempt to untangle what Batman is to him and what it is allowing/not allowing him to do.
Because the film is so unabashed in making him a weirdo, every action Bruce takes and every motivation behind it then feel so much more loaded and dangerous than if we were led to believe he was some sort of heroic stand-up guy. The film establishes immediately that this Batman has become a symbol in Gotham, but not one of justice or heroism. He has become a symbol of fear. As he says himself in what is the most memorable line from the trailer; “I’m vengeance”. It’s not a stretch to say that the Batman we see at the beginning of the film is borderline antagonistic. He is a violent and threatening presence. However, that then allows the film to then unfold a really beautiful thematic arc about what Batman as a symbol and as a force in Gotham means and can do. I obviously won’t spoil any specifics but the way Bruce gradually has to be taught that vengeance is not productive for him or anyone else and realizing that Batman has the power to embody something different is genuinely moving. One of the film’s final scenes, which confirms this realization he has come to, is one of the most touching evocations I have ever seen of trying to define what it really means to be a hero.
The other major overarching theme of the film, which really affected me, is Bruce’s ability and willingness for human connection. It’s what allows the film to extract a really beautiful tenderness even out of such a gritty exterior. Again, I won't give away any plot specifics, but because of the murder of his parents, Bruce is coded as being extremely closed off and completely unwilling or unable to be open or vulnerable with anyone. This even includes Alfred who has known him his whole life and been the closest thing he has had to a parental figure for most of it. This film acknowledges the universal fact that there is arguably nothing in the world more terrifying than losing someone you care about. Bruce has experienced this to unparalleled levels with the murder of his parents, and so to avoid ever having to experience that pain again, he chooses to not allow himself to grow attached to anyone. His logic that if he doesn’t care about anyone, he can’t feel the pain of their loss, is devastating. But it makes it so effective when we see him overcome this over the course of the film. He has to learn to allow himself to let people in again and accept the consequences.
This of course leads us to Selina Kyle. Zoë Kravitz dazzles as the seductive and ethereal but also innately good-natured soul of this film, who allows Bruce to unveil a hidden tenderness within himself. I have seen some pretty ridiculous complaints that the pair have no chemistry or that there’s no real romantic tension between them and I simply couldn’t disagree more. Yes, there’s very little overt affection between them, but that is because Bruce is so used to holding himself back and not opening himself up emotionally. It’s completely in line with his character. And this intense restraint between them is what makes their unique and subtle connection so compelling. Over the course of the film, he has to learn to allow himself to feel the vulnerability of caring about another human.
In her own personal arc, Selina really is the moral centre of the film. All of her motivations are driven by wanting justice for others in her life who were unfairly treated or taken advantage of, so her pursuit is extremely noble. She clearly cares deeply about others, and it is this which largely inspires Bruce to reflect on his own cold, selfish instincts, making him realize that caring about others is not a weakness, but a strength. She extracts that from him and that’s the beauty of their connection. Catwoman is another character who, before now, based on my little knowledge, I thought served no meaningful purpose in the Batman universe aside from her iconography as a villain (mostly thanks to Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns (1992). But the way she is utilised in this film as the catalyst for Bruce’s emotional arc and in many ways the moral core of the story, is so effective and a beautifully nuanced portrayal of a female character who was perhaps not been granted such nuance previously.
I have seen some debate online about whether this film is attempting to be grounded or realistic or not and I think it’s more complex than that. The world that this story is set in, Matt Reeve’s Gotham, is exaggerated, highly stylised and largely unrealistic. It’s a fantastical environment full of excessive comical characters and elements. From Colin Farrell’s brilliant but completely wacky and absurd caricature of ‘The Penguin’, to the fictional drug ‘drops’ which are treated like heroine but look like candy, this is not a grounded world. However, the story taking place within this world is grounded in some really interesting ways.
As I discussed, simply portraying Bruce Wayne as a weirdo and deeply troubled person, and acknowledging that even within this world, the bat suit sticks out as odd and outlandish, is very effective in grounding you more than was possible in other Batman depictions. Another change made is that there are really little-to-no high-tech gadgets or weapons in Batman’s arsenal. There’s a couple of cool accessories and, as can be seen from the trailer, the batmobile is pretty impressive. But for the most part this Batman is really only armed with his fists, which again only makes his vigilante work feel far more rooted in reality. It makes it way more brutal too. It is so much more violent and disturbing to see him absolutely pummel someone with his fists than it would be to see him utilise a fun gadget to knock them out. This films Commissioner Gordon is also a really warm and likeable iteration of the character, who I think is a welcome change from the somewhat one-dimensional straight man Commissioner Gordon we have gotten previously. I really enjoyed Jeffrey Wright’s charming take on the character who is modest and grounded and surprisingly funny.
And of course, perhaps nothing has been firmly grounded the way this film’s villain has. The Riddler was previously only known by me as Jim Carrey in the bright green spandex, covered in question marks, giving a completely campy performance in Batman Forever (1995). It’s such a comedic and unthreatening portrayal. In The Batman, while Paul Dano is still undeniably leaning into over-the-top humour in places and is still used effectively for a joke a couple of times, the character is completely transformed. The simple fact that I think this is the first time I have ever heard a villain in a superhero movie be straight-up referred to as a serial killer is cool enough. But there is then an intense, gritty realism to his actions. His first scene is something quite literally plucked out of a horror movie and other scenes he features in are similarly terrifying and violent. His green spandex and bowler hat are traded for a khaki jacket, simple leather mask and cling film around his head and without spoiling, they incorporate the internet into his antics in a way that feels authentic and eery.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Matt Reeves filmmaking though, is that The Batman is an absolutely exquisite mood piece and its portrayal of Gotham is gorgeously realised. Endless rain pummels down on the bleak streets of a greyish Gotham whose New York-esque shiny façade has been slowly enveloped in grime. The dreary exterior of the decaying city matches its rotting interior, as street gangs, mobsters, corrupt cops and deceitful politicians eat away at the core of the city’s institutions from the inside out, leaving the disenfranchised, underprivileged city population nihilistic and drunk on fear. As Bruce states his opening monologue “the city is eating itself alive”. It’s one of the most immersive stylistic realisations of a fictional city I’ve ever seen and I couldn’t get enough.
In addition to the writing which perfectly depicts the city this way, the style of Gotham must of course must be credited to stunning set design and remarkable cinematography from Greg Frasier, particularly for how he lights this film which is just sublime. He shot Dune (2021) and this film and between the two he is honestly setting a new standard for the quality of mainstream blockbuster filmmaking. I am so sick of the sludgy grey look blockbuster cinema has with no real locations used (as a quick aside; Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), which I greatly enjoyed, is one of the most visually hideous films I have ever seen and despite having a 200-million-dollar budget, is lit and composed so poorly) and Frasier is proving that there is absolutely no reason these films can’t look as visually dynamic and stylistic as any other films. There are multiple images from this movie just seared into my brain.
The gloomy, gothic depiction of Gotham means that our nihilistic, emo Bruce Wayne fits into the fabric of this world perfectly. It all feels so cohesive as he blasts Nirvana with eyeliner streaming down his face. And with the addition of an absolutely god-tier, earth-shattering Michael Giacchino score that soundtracks our unravelling of Gotham’s corrupt institutions, as well as the genius employment of Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’ at the bookends of the film, a meticulously crafted and immensely effective gothic mood piece has been crafted.
Make no mistake though, it baffles me that I’ve seen some people taking shots at the film for being too gloomy or self-serious because I still think that this is a very funny film. The humour just comes through at smaller, more subtle points and purposeful moments of absurdity rather than cheap, unsophisticated quips like the MCU stuffs every second of its films with.
I do think that the film is a little too long. It has a three-hour runtime and I absolutely don’t mind lengthy films, but at a certain point it does start to feel its length and get a little tedious. It has a little bit of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) syndrome in the sense that the last three or so scenes all felt like the last scene and every time I thought it was about to cut to black it would cut to yet another scene. It’s a bit much. However, for the most part I did enjoy the pace of the film which is a little slow but very deliberate. I also love the final act. It climaxes with an action/disaster setpiece that is really thrilling, well-staged and easy to follow. It allows for high stakes and also some quite moving emotional beats but is also not tedious or overwhelming for the sake of all-out action.
I also understand why they purposely wanted to use him in a controlled way, but I do think Paul Dano is underused and doesn’t quite get enough time to exhibit how brilliant he is as the Riddler. I wish they’d let him shine a little more and not kept him as hidden.
Aside from these small critiques, there is only one big gripe I have that I really wish was just not included. The film is completely independent and exists free of any overarching lore or aim to be a franchise, it just feels like a crime drama. Then, for inexplicable reasons, there is one random scene towards the end of the film which, without spoiling, makes an attempt to tease some future tie-in to the film that I guess was intended to excite audiences. It is just so completely unnecessary, feels inconsistent with the aims of the rest of the film and really took me out of it. It’s not a bad scene but I just wish so badly it wasn’t included because it just detracts from the overall impact.
To conclude, I am aware that not everyone will feel this way but for me, after becoming so tired of the never-ending sea of greyish, blue screen, CGI, formulaic comic book entries, I think The Batman is my favourite comic book movie of all time. It’s made me a love a character who I never thought I would be interested in and is a rich, thought-provoking text that is exquisitely made. I would never detract in any way from Heath’s performance, but I do personally believe that as a film it's better than The Dark Knight and I have a feeling more people will come around on that opinion over time.
コメント