"The Batman" is a complicated film with several narrative threads unraveling at the same time.
Some of the story revelations go by so quickly, they can leave audiences wondering about their
meaning.
Keep watching to see the most confusing moments in "The Batman" explained.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
In interviews promoting the film, star Robert Pattinson talked about how different Reeves'
vision for the source material was.
"I just knew there was something radically different from anything we'd seen in Batman
movies before."
He felt that this new direction was something viewers would find evident from the film's
shocking opening moments.
He wasn't wrong, either.
The movie opens with a POV shot someone of peering through a window of a large home,
where a small child is playing with his father.
But it's initially unclear what we're looking at.
It's a jarring but appropriate way for a film like this to open.
It almost looks as if we're seeing is a young Bruce Wayne before that fateful night that
his parents were killed, which dovetails nicely with this child's grief mirroring Bruce's.
Instead, it's the Riddler stalking his prey, Gotham's corrupt Mayor, before going in for
the kill.
The patience to let the scene linger for as long as it does really sets up the tone and
pace of the film.
The first time we see mob boss Carmine Falcone, it's through Selena's eyes as Bruce monitors
her infiltration of 44 Below.
However, the first time he and Bruce meet face to face, it's at the mayor's funeral,
where Falcone remarks that Bruce is the only person in the city more reclusive than he
is.
Falcone tells a brief story about how Thomas Wayne once saved his life after the mobster
was shot.
He showed up on Wayne's doorstep, with Bruce's father operating on Falcone on the dining
room table, while Bruce watched from afar.
"You don't think that means something?"
Falcone asks Bruce.
Bruce says it means his father took the Hippocratic Oath.
When Falcone laughs at this, Bruce doesn't understand what's so funny.
"Hippocratic" sounds to Falcone like "hypocrite."
Even though Bruce thinks his father was a good man, Falcone remembers the day Thomas
Wayne asked him to handle a problem for him.
It resulted in a murder, so he finds it hilarious that Bruce doesn't know the full scope of
his own father's complex morality.
The revelation that Falcone murdered Selina's mother that is one of the film's more nuanced
reveals.
When Selina tells her tragic origin story to Bruce, she mentions that after her mother
was murdered, Falcone let Selina get swallowed up by Gotham's awful social services system.
It's not until Annika's message is discovered on Selina's voicemail that we're able to put
the rest of the pieces together.
On the recording, we can hear that Falcone is the rat they've been searching for and
that he's the one who personally killed Annika.
Even worse, he did it with his bare hands around her neck.
Falcone's penchant for strangling the women who get in his way is confirmed even further
when he tries to kill Selina, trying to choke her, just like he did to her mother.
Once The Riddler has been caught, he is revealed to be forensic accountant Edward Nashton,
a traumatized orphan who uncovered the rot at the core of the Gotham Renewal Fund.
It was the corruption of the city that turned him into a vengeful killer.
When rooting through his apartment for more clues about his motivations, Batman sees that
he has one last password-protected video to unlock.
Based on Nashton's news clippings, Bruce is concerned that the Riddler has figured out
who The Batman really is.
"I think I'm his last target."
When Batman arrives at Arkham, Nashton tells a long story about how he hated Bruce Wayne
while growing up in an orphanage.
To Nashton, it seemed that the only sympathy Gotham had for lost children was given to
a billionaire kid who lived in a mansion.
It feels like Nashton is ramping up to reveal the truth, but it becomes clear that he's
not taunting Bruce about knowing his true identity.
Rather, the Riddler is lamenting the fact that together, the two of them took down every
one of his targets except Wayne.
Nashton isn't talking to Batman as an adversary but as a partner.
After all, they're both vengeful, angry men who suffered in their youth and want to root
out corruption and see justice served.
This moment and its implications are the beginning of the end for Bruce relying entirely on fear
and violence.
He sees the limits of what he has done, and worse sees the evil his war on crime has inadvertently
inspired.
Another revelation takes place within Arkham's walls before the final credits begin to roll.
As Nashton has a meltdown in his cell knowing that Batman has thwarted his plans, a friendly
cell neighbor comforts him.
Through their interaction, it becomes pretty clear that the individual Nashton is befriending
is supposed to be the Joker.
However, what's confusing is Barry Keoghan's casting.
Fans assumed that he'd be playing the Joker in some kind of post-credits scene.
This scene taking place before the film's actual closing moments is a bit of a shock,
but largely because it begs the question of how the Joker ended up in Arkham.
Is he already the Joker?
Did Batman catch him in a previous adventure?
Do we really need another live-action Joker so soon after Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar-winning
turn with the character?
Only time will tell if he shows up in a potential sequel.
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