"The Batman" might just be the darkest big-screen adventure for the Caped Crusader yet, but what
will younger viewers make of it? Keep watching for things only adults notice in "The Batman."
At the onset of "The Batman," we see an armed robbery and an attempted subway mugging on a
rainy Gotham evening. In a voiceover, the Caped Crusader waxes philosophical about his war on
the criminal element, saying, "They think I'm hiding in the shadows ... but I am the shadows."
For some, Batman's brooding tone and delivery may call to mind Rorschach's inner monologue
from the opening of "Watchmen" — the 1986 series by Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons
often credited with paving the way for "grimdark" superhero stories,
which was adapted into a 2009 film by director Zack Snyder.
Moore and Gibbons (or Frank Miller, for that matter) didn't invent hardboiled
detectives who engage in foreboding interior conversations — that trope dates back to
the late 1920s. However, the parallels between Rorschach — or the archetype he
represents — and this Batman don't end with the beginnings of their stories.
Like Batman, Rorschach is a masked vigilante who keeps a journal loaded with phrases like
"This city's afraid of me; I've seen its true face." But unlike
most cinematic iterations of Batman, Rorschach has
zero qualms about murdering criminals, and his sense of morality leaves no room for gray areas.
There's some Rorschach in Batman, but there's also some Rorschach in the Riddler as well.
And in their use of voiceover, they may all owe something to "Double Indemnity".
"It'd begun to rain outside and I watched it get dark and didn't even turn on the light.
That didn't help me either."
According to widely accepted notions about the Motion Picture Association's ratings system,
a PG-13 movie may contain exactly one use of the infamous f-word. Any more f-bombs than that
kick the film up to an R rating, preventing unaccompanied minors from buying tickets and
potentially damaging the box office takeaway,
especially for a major superhero blockbuster like "The Batman."
Generally, superhero movies don't bother cursing at all or dive headfirst into full-blown R-rated
territory, but "The Batman" walks the line. Since the film has a single precious "f---" to give,
you might expect to hear it during an intense emotional moment. That's not what happens.
Early in the movie, Batman and the Gotham City Police Department
investigate the scene surrounding the Riddler's murder of Mayor Don Mitchell,
Jr.. Observing that it happens to be October 31st, Commissioner Pete Savage
turns to the Dark Knight and mockingly wishes him a "Happy F---ing Halloween!"
It's as if "The Batman" picks up its one and only f-bomb and casually tosses it aside,
just to get it out of the way. This film knows it doesn't really need to swear, but
that doesn't mean it will let a perfectly good f-bomb go to waste.
Considering DC has been publishing new Batman stories on a constant basis since the late 1930s,
it's pretty wild how filmmakers keep returning to Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's "Batman:
Year One" from 1987 for inspiration. There are certainly many other Batman comics that
could easily be movies, but Hollywood really loves "Year One," apparently.
The barebones premise of "Year One" — in which Batman gets the hang of being Batman
and befriends detective James Gordon — provides the partial foundation for
2005's "Batman Begins." However, "The Batman" also borrows from Miller and Mazzucchelli,
while managing to avoid retreading director Christopher Nolan's earlier reboot.
Fiercely protective of her friends and more interested in targeting corrupt
elites than thievery for its own sake, Zoë Kravitz's Selina has more in common
with the Catwoman of "Year One" than any prior onscreen take on the character.
"Maybe we're not so different. Who are you under there?"
Meanwhile, the Gotham City of "The Batman" – excluding an abrasive downtown that's
a clear stand-in for Times Square — resembles Mazzucchelli's worn-down,
overdeveloped Gotham that recalls the New York City of the '70s and '80s.
He writes terrible goth poetry; he's mean to his surrogate parent;
he has inherited responsibilities he wants nothing to do with. Does that sound like
the greatest superhero of all time, or a self-involved, privileged teenager?
If Bruce Wayne was real, don't you think he'd come off as an angry, arrogant jerk?
Dismissed as an "emo brat" by a The Times critic who doesn't like this movie, Pattinson's Bruce
Wayne is one of the more explicitly flawed takes on The World's Greatest Detective
we've seen committed to screen. He's dismissive toward the ever-loyal Alfred Pennyworth and
alienates Selina before the end of their first reconnaissance mission.
Batman wants everyone to fear him, but cops and Penguin flunkies alike
all laugh right in his face. At one point, Batman bungles a major clue;
at another, a daring rooftop escape ends in a humiliating crash landing.
"Oh you're really not as smart as I thought you were."
Batman-related media has a habit of telling us Batman is a normal guy with no superpowers,
while showing us a character who via top-tier deductive capacities
and an unlimited supply of gadgetry might as well be considered as omnipotent as his Kryptonian BFF.
Meanwhile, "The Batman" offers us a Dark Knight who actually is a normal guy with
a ton of personality defects, who is also bad at things he tries to do sometimes.
He's still got a lot of money, but there's nothing godlike about this Bat.
Sometimes in superhero movie discourse, folks will use the terms "dark"
and "realistic" interchangeably. This is wrong, and "The Batman" demonstrates why.
Compared to Frank Gorshin's definitive performance in the 1966 "Batman" TV series and Jim Carrey's
bonkers take in 1995's "Batman Forever," the Riddler from "The Batman" is far, far darker.
Aside from the traditional practice of dispensing riddles to Batman and the GCPD to make his crime
sprees more interesting, he has little in common with his predecessors. This Riddler is much more
murderous than the Riddlers of yore, to the great misfortune of several Gotham City public servants.
Paul Dano's Riddler demonstrates tendencies likely meant as homages to
other films — his executions of Commissioner Savage and District Attorney Gil Colson
instantly call to mind "Saw" and its affiliated series of torture romps.
When Batman and the GCPD raid Riddler's apartment, his piles of journals promptly harken to John
Doe's apartment in "Seven." Riddler even turns himself over to the authorities,
just like Doe in David Fincher's 1995 crime-horror masterpiece.
This Riddler is darker, but he is not more realistic. We know this because
John Doe and Jigsaw from "Saw" are also imaginary characters. They are just as
unlikely to exist in the real world as a bank robber who taunts authorities with gimmicky,
silly clues and dresses up in a green tuxedo covered in question marks.
It's probably not realistic to expect the main character in a major studio blockbuster to express
what socially liberal folks would consider an enlightened attitude about sex work. Still,
Batman doesn't think twice about grilling Selina — a woman he barely knows — about the possibility
that she might have done some escort gigs while employed at the Iceberg Lounge. At one point,
Selina reluctantly reveals that Carmine Falcone is her father,
not her customer, because it's the only way to get Batman off her freakin' back about it.
But let's consider the counterfactual scenario.
What if Carmine was Selina's client? What if Selina had a whole bunch of former johns? Does
Batman bring her to jail at that point? Is it any of Batman's business at all?
There's definitely a chauvinistic and judgmental component to Bruce's initial attitude towards
Selina, which is to be expected — this is a more immature Batman than we're used to; he's
been sheltered and insulated by insane amounts of wealth his whole life. Still, you'd think a guy
who runs around in a form-fitting animal-themed outfit wouldn't be this close-minded.
At this moment in superhero movie history,
we just saw three versions of Spider-Man from different eras join forces in 2021's "Spider-Man:
No Way Home," we might be on the cusp of Professor Charles Xavier joining the MCU
after decades as the licensed property of a different movie studio, and Michael Keaton
is returning to fold his decades-old Batman movies into the DCEU in 2022's "The Flash."
As seemingly all the other superhero franchises lean into the science
fiction aspects of their source materials to cultivate fan service and corporate synergy,
this version of Gotham City feels way too grounded for any of that wacky nonsense.
"Whoa! Take it easy, sweetheart."
Not only are there no references to other DC superheroes,
"The Batman" doesn't even have quasi-fantastic elements like the high-speed military tank
Batmobile or the League of Shadows from the Christopher Nolan trilogy — the previous
standard setter for "gritty realism" in Batman movies. In fact, Matt Reeves told Esquire,
"I respect that the DC Universe has become an extended universe and
all the movies were kind of connected. But another Batman film, it shouldn’t have to carry the weight
of connecting the characters from all those other movies. I didn’t want them in there."
Who the heck knows what DC has planned, but if ninjas are too magic-adjacent for this Batman,
don't expect to see him hanging out with Kryptonians, Amazon Princesses,
intergalactic peacekeepers, or folks who can run through time.
To some extent since 2008's "Iron Man," and to a much greater extent since 2012's "The
Avengers," basically every superhero movie is either on the trajectory toward a big team-up,
about a big team-up, or dealing with the aftermath of a big team-up.
Almost all of these films take place in a shared universe that includes
a bunch of other films. Many superheroes talk as if they're being written by someone hired to mimic
Joss Whedon's style circa the early 2010s; even the ones who don't — and that includes
denizens of the "adult" and "serious" comic book movies — tell tons of jokes.
"You're gonna do that thing where you open up a weird-ass case of torture
devices while inexplicably detailing your master plan and how I don't fit into it."
"The Batman," however, is not funny. The only other movie it indirectly advertises
is its own yet-to-be-officially greenlit sequel. "The Batman" only introduces one
surprise character from the comics who isn't in the trailers. There's not even
much in the way of obvious potential for toy licensing in this movie.
Despite its arguably messy execution of too much story, "The Batman" feels like
an emphatic step away from the MCU paradigm. Assuming it's the first movie in a series,
hopefully it carries on in that direction. The MCU's good and fine,
but we already have one of those. We also already have a DC cinematic universe that
very much wishes it was the MCU. Maybe "The Batman" will be the start of a third thing.
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