what's going on there reject nation we literally just got out of the batman if you're here if you
can leave a like that'd be very much appreciated you know we gotta talk about our instant thoughts
and emotions or feelings because there's a lot to unpack here this movie is almost three hours long
for a reason and i'm still processing i'm sure john is too we're both still processing a lot
because there's no i think i know what i did i think i knew exactly one word review this movie
is so different than every other live-action batman movie that has ever existed if you guys
stick around for some of our trailer reactions commentary part of it you'll probably heard us say
from time to time i'm expecting a little bit of a slower film something that's much more deliberate
what surprised me was it is so much more of that so much more to the point where i found myself
occasionally getting pulled out going you want to talk about no more lies matt reeves was not
lying my first thought was it's kind of like if francis ford coppola produced a remake of
chinatown directed by david fincher that took place in the batman universe and was written
while a guy was listening to nirvana that was my first thought yeah it wasn't just like halfway
it's pretty spot-on i think nicholas wind in refn but not as slow yeah speed in half and take all
the synths out and there you go so the story takes place in batman year two where batman is
more known as vengeance a mysterious presence that criminals fear but is not quite viewed as a hero
by the citizens but especially not by the cops this movie deals a lot with batman's position in
the world is he a vigilante who punishes criminals or is he a hero can he be both so as established
in the trailers the story's kickoff point is a murder mystery where a popular figure in gotham is
murdered and the serial killer leaves many riddles often being one specifically delivered to batman
one of the many amazing things about this movie is it is purely what matt reeves said he wanted this
film to be it's a pure dark psychological drama and i cannot stress that enough the marketing
team specifically put out these three comics which was batman ego long halloween and batman year one
it is so much of those comics but also such a 70s movie at the same time yeah it really leans into
the to the film and and neo-noir aesthetics and just the approach to unraveling the mystery and
the psychosis that onsets for everyone in the process of doing that while the action
is good that's certainly not the main takeaway the main takeaway is the storytelling the mood
the rot tension and turmoil this ensemble but especially what batman is going through
it has this incredibly executed escalation the tension-filled build is in a gritty bleak world
where the mood is really captured through the soul of gotham it's a time to straight up horror movie
but primarily a film noir detective murder mystery film and in many many ways it's the most pure
batman movie ever made the movie is so cold yet by the end of it i was also like some of the most
emotional i've ever been in a batman movie like i did find myself like really moved to tears it's
kind of insidious in the way it creeps up on you well yeah they let the cinematic language
speak where i feel like a lot of movies and a lot of batman movies let the scripting and the graphic
novel inspiration speak whereas this one does have moments that are just tonal and are just the pure
magic of cinema through the lens of batman that are quite moving in a very unique sort of way
there were so many aspects of this movie that has a lifelong batman fan i found myself going like
they're doing things i started getting misty-eyed early on because i was like they're doing the
things that i've wanted to see in batman movies done before the first 15 to 20 minutes of this
movie is easily the best 15 to 20 minutes opening of any batman movie just my opinion but i stand
by it robert pattinson as batman i feel like you essentially got like two different performances
here you got bruce wayne and then you got batman he is mainly batman in this movie i think it'll
take audiences a little bit of time to adjust especially to like who he is as bruce wayne i mean
the way he plays batman i think is just so awesome is he badass yeah of course what's unique though
is he's sort of like an alien observing humans it's a very detached performance but again that's
a compliment similar to ryan gosling's performance in drive this character is immensely observant
empty but with a rage underneath that like menacing coldness it's more batman ego less batman
year one where the effects of year one have really weighed on him into year two simultaneously it's
mainly a private investigator emotionally broken and tormented detective portrayal with batman
robert pattinson talks so much about how and in some ways batman's kind of a freak he's a weirdo
you watch the trailers you're like batman's such a badass everyone just views him like
weirdo in an outsider but he's an ultimate badass then you watch this movie you're like
that's kind of a weird guy yeah that's what it would take he wouldn't actually be the billionaire
like hey guys and then want to go out and be the same kind of batman that we're all used to and
yeah as much as there is like a clear duality i thought there was also a great connective
tissue between bruce wayne and batman you can tell all the parts of bruce wayne that inform
the batman that come with him when he puts on the cape and the cowl and then all the parts that are
left when he takes them off i thought that was a very wonderful and you know cold interplay a
really fascinatingly hewn character yeah that would be a reclusive odd kind of distant guy
yeah there is a distinction but also it's the most they've ever felt intertwined to me and of
the same root or not like one is simply a veneer to hide the other like they both feel integral
to the way he plays the character and it felt quite unique in the array of on-screen batman
and bruce wayne performances that we've seen thus far for sure it's definitely unique matt reeves
talked about how he really was inspired from like kurt cobain and listen to a lot of nirvana while
writing this movie and so much of bruce wayne does feel like okay i see all that inspiration it feels
so like punk grunge type of portrayal of bruce wayne so much of that performance in his eyes
so engrossing yeah like in the world of the movie he draws all the energy in and when you're
watching him on screen he draws every eyeball to him the whole supporting cast is so good
you can name everybody like everybody brings such a presence and feels so distinct and they
are a great ensemble together i mean even though there are certain characters that you want to see
and that you're looking forward to they all feel like integral pieces of the puzzle and everybody
brings their a game like everyone's got multiple moments that really grab you paul dano as riddler
i mean look paul dano he's phenomenal all right elements of the zodiac killer elements of jigsaw
and it's a very realistic take of what this genius high-level intellect killer would be they really
treat him like an equal counterpart to batman i would say where their goals of uprooting the
corruption to gotham are similar but their methods are just much more different he's
just as obsessive if if not more and is way more demented it's just kind of weird how the
trailers hide him so much but they put him in interviews i know he's like you're not
gonna see his face right he's like we're gonna yeah we're gonna get to know a lot about them
but i appreciate that they went to the effort at least doing that in the trailer does add to this
sort of like larger than life persona that does kind of have an interesting effect on you when
you're actually watching it unfold and discovering what the true circumstances are on screen freaking
uh selena kyle zoe kravitz definitely an origin tale for her some of the biggest emotional
weight is most given to her out of a lot of the characters i would say there's some big surprises
to be had with her you know talks and articles about like can't she have her own spin-off show
yeah i think she can yeah i'm just gonna say yeah i would watch yeah just great chemistry with
robert pattinson i wasn't like in love with like oh batman and catwoman i wasn't like feeling that
like such a weight of romance and the way how the the movie's going for that film noir femme fatale
kind of quality but i still think zoey kravitz herself as an isolated performer is really good
and overall their chemistry robert patterson's strong john chituro's karma phi falcone was one
of the biggest surprises of on-screen presence here it's like not surprising if you know his
his work but in terms of like a standout character jeffrey wright as uh gordon you know some people
when they saw the trailer would sort of compare it to morgan freeman and brad pitt it's not that no
not at all definitely not but but jeffrey wright brings something so refreshing to gordon himself
of course he has that older man qualities because of what jeffrey wright is there's also something
that feels more relatable about his performance but he uses his dialogue like little things like
him going like hey man you need to calm down like things like yeah yeah little very little
remarks that he'll make yeah and that are also kind of informed by his very relatable like
what i love one good cop well what i love so much about her was it really felt like him and batman
were doing detective work together a lot of the time it can just sort of feel like batman shows
up to do gordon's job and keep yeah here they they are investigating together and you get the
sense that you are the only person i can trust mutually and they're learning to trust each other
in the building this is year two of batman so you're uncovering the corruption of gcpd and
i think the way they flushed all that out with the world was also really well done as someone
who's seen so much batman movies seen so many batman shows like a lot of this is very familiar
plot but to still feel like something is very reinvigorating and unique about this angle a nice
welcome surprise and to not have it be ruined in trailers either was very interesting to me
and colin farrell it's weird and the trailers i could never see colin farrell when i was watching
the trailers but then the movie i'm like i guess yeah i can pick up notes of his acting yeah yeah
exactly it's like he's so immersed in the makeup and the character itself so you can lose him but
also he's got his signature in there andy circus who doesn't have as much screen time as kind of a
common rhetoric i was hearing when the movie was done he doesn't have as much screen time but in
a lot of ways you know it's you you could argue that the heart and soul of this movie is bruce
wayne's relationship that strand relationship and everything they got to unpack there between
them that's kind of like the heart and soul of the movie for me actually i would lean more there than
with catwoman i think a lot of people probably apply that to catwoman as brief as it is it lent
a little bit more to alfred for me in this film because he's his one true ally in his one true
familial bond yeah i still feel like we could have used a little bit more screen time with
him especially towards in the last parts of this movie but in terms of what we did get i was very
much affected by the performance here the music with michael giaccino the variety that he does
i think in terms of like the genre splicing it's captured exquisitely through michael giaccino's
score absolutely time to strip a badass batman movie it's always always an air of tread the
cinematography is as beautiful as you'd expect it to be very orange the action to it's great action
but it's maybe not as much of a stand like there are moments within action scenes i would say that
really stand out like that car chase scene they keep freaking showing all the time fantastic
like in a theater experience wonderful however i would say that a lot of the hand-to-hand combat
maybe not as gripping or as exciting as even when that first teaser trailer came out that when it
was like what the [ __ ] nothing quite rivals the first time you see that you know punch medley go
down and yeah the movie isn't so concerned with making those moments oh [ __ ] moments so much
as it is about making those moments painful yeah it just feels like a part of the story and the
style is very specific to the kind of movie this is that i never found myself just like in awe of a
lot of the action scenes there are some moments i immediately went to like but that moment was
pretty cool but that moves right yeah yeah they still get you hooping and hollering to a degree
what other hand-to-hand fights ever came to the batman warehouse fight in bvs it's not a john wick
movie yeah yeah the hand-to-hand is like harsh and quick and it's there like you could imagine
it being a john wick movie but it's not shot like that but that style and that movie for bbs would
not have worked for this movie no no no it's not the same kind of thing at all yeah it needed to
be what it was here and my only real criticism about any of the action moments is when he's
using the batwing suit i didn't think the visual effects in that moment were particularly good
look very cgi which stands out in a film where everything looks and feels very practical it kind
of had that bobble head effect but it's not that much of the movie i could definitely feel the run
time of this movie i did start becoming like okay yeah this is a little long yeah but nothing felt
like unnecessary per se but it did take me a while to get emotionally invested the movie takes such a
voyeuristic approach in a lot of ways while that actually lends a lot of weight towards the tone
and the style he actually tore the perspective considering who batman is in this movie and who
your protagonists and main antagonists are in the film and the world of gotham i did find myself
more observant and not fully emotionally invested in the character's journey despite
always being incredibly intrigued however and i really mean this i don't think it'll be the
same way for everyone and i don't think it'll be the same way for me on my second go around
with this film because i kept wondering like am i really going to care about the journey but at the
end i was like oh my god i do i really owe myself well yeah because so much of it is about people
writhing in the mud and the muck of the mess that the city has become and all the corruption and all
that and it takes a while to finally establish the hopeful note and and where that comes from and i
think that's kind of a part of it deliberately thrusts you into this cold punishing situation
that is having that kind of effect on pretty much every character i freaking love the movie yeah
yeah i mean like we didn't really talk about it afterwards but no i freaking love it either yeah
to really kind of start to articulate how you feel but one thing is for certain when you see it it's
big and scopic and confident and cinematic it feels planned out to the degree that you know
the the riddler is building plans or whatever the stream is the kind of movie that critics will
definitely love and i i wonder what the divide might be for fans this really big wonder the
only real reason why i say this is because while this movie is fantastic in my opinion it's also
so different than any live-action batman film and it doesn't quite elicit the same emotional
reaction the trailers do it's much more different especially because it's not quite aiming to be a
crowd pleaser but i do hope that majority end up loving it you know i really can't tell if it'll
be divisive or not so yeah guys it's awesome i don't know where i'd rank it yet but right now
it's a high recommendation so it's a solid batman out of batman it's gonna take some processing
for some people i didn't realize i loved it until while talking about it right now yeah
yeah yeah it's not the crowd-pleasing popcorn movie but what's been so satisfying to me in
this discussion has just been like wow how much of yeah this feels like a batman film we get to
talk about it feels like the next progression beyond into just this feels like a full-fledged
cinematic film that could have come out without comic book source material you know all right
guys well that's it keep a lookout for spoiler talk catch you guys soon thanks for being here
you