The Batman

 “Oh, you think darkness is your ally” taunts Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, the last live action solo cinematic outing for Batman, a character we’re so addicted to that we’ve been micro dosing him, in the form of Ben Affleck amongst others, consistently since Christopher Nolan wrapped up his genre altering trilogy of Bat-flicks almost a decade ago, “but you merely adopted the dark”. The quip certainly cuts to the heart of the films Batman has been starring in for the last thirty plus years, starting with Tim Burtons landmark in 1989. That film dimmed the lights and deepened the shadows on a character that had started on screen life as a colourful and poppy children’s hero, most famously embodied by Adam West and his onomatopoeia punching effects. Burton slathered the franchise in gothic, this-ain’t-for-kids attitude and the world took that approach and ran with it.  

Batman media has only been getting darker since ’89, as well as grittier and more real (whatever people think that means). Burtons own sequel doubles down on grimy adult perversion and German expressionist production design, while Joel Schumacher’s attempts to reintroduce brightness, silliness and Robin to the formula in the mid nineties were roundly rejected culturally, leading to Nolan’s reboot in 2005 taking more ques from Michael Mann films than pulp detective adventure serials.

That just about bring us to The Batman, Matt Reeves’ near opaque new take on the caped crusader (played by Robert Pattinson), which not only lowers the brightness once again, but covers the lens in so much dirt, rain and oil that its hard not to feel like all the obfuscation is compensating for something, a lack of freshness maybe. There’s not much new here set-up wise, a deteriorating Gotham city drowning in corruption, a psychopathic villain embarking on a twisted moral crusade, and a traumatised billionaire fretting over how to best serve his fellow citizens while wearing a silly bat costume. It might be because the notes aren’t new that Reeves is hitting them extra hard, using oppressive production design and a cranked up (and very good) score from Michael Giacchino to give everything a moody, heavy seriousness.     

The thing about all this self-seriousness is that the more Batman films insist on darkness and reality, the more ridiculous it becomes that the central figure is a billionaire in a muscly bat costume. Pattinson’s gruff, growly voice, while not as bad as Christian Bale’s, is offset by his tiny little ears and carefully applied eye shadow, while Zoe Kravitz’s Cat woman has so little identifying her as such that the few comic accurate details stick out against a world straining to be respectable. When the two are together they positively spark off each other, but put either in a room full of regular people and they stick out like the one guy who got dressed up for an all adults Halloween party.     

Traditionally in Batman movies the grim tone is balanced by one or two theatrical villain performances, adding a necessary dash of camp to proceedings to keep the films from being totally convinced they’re Heat or Seven or something else for grownups. In The Batman that task falls to Colin Farrell and John Turturro as Oswald (Penguin) Cobblepot and Carmine Falcone respectively, two high rolling gangsters being hounded by Pattinson’s Batman as part of his investigation into the city’s terminal corruption. Both Farrell and Turturro have a lot of fun playing to the cheap seats, and their energy is a large part of why the detective half of the movie stays such engaging, pulpy fun.

Less engaging as a nemesis is Paul Dano’s Riddler, whose string of morally motivated murders is the catalyst for Batman’s investigation. I usually like Dano, and his Zodiac inspired performance is not bad per se, it’s just far too dour and strained for a batman film, even one as grim as this. It often gets overlooked, I think, just how much fun Heath Ledger and Tom Hardy were having in the Nolan films, despite being toned down compared to, for example, Jim Carrey in Batman Forever. Dano seems to be another actor taking the wrong lessons from Ledgers iconic performance, the more you try to convince us a batman villain is scary, the more farcical they wind up being.  

The near three hour movie definitely looses some steam once the gangsters are off the board and the Riddler is left as a primary antagonist, though Reeves works hard during an action packed climax to keep everything tactile and gripping, never succumbing to an excess of weightless CGI scale that sinks most modern superhero flicks. There’s definitely enough craft here to admire, the hole thing feels big and important, but if we must keep coming back to Gotham city, we should probably find some new narrative avenues to explore, as opposed to just cutting the lights on the one we’ve already been down many times before, and trying to convince ourselves the darkness hides something new.