I have to admit it: when I see any TV or movies with the DC or Marvel logo slapped on it nowadays, it floats out of my head not 24 hours later, as quickly as it swept in. Even if I enjoyed it. Hell, Spider-Man: No Way Home was my favorite in-theater experience of 2021, but the next morning, I woke up feeling like I just had a fun night out. No Way Home was a hell of a $14 cocktail! Had a good buzz going. Dopamine. I'll feel it again come Doctor Strange o'clock.
But The Batman, which hit theaters this Thursday? Still rattling around my mind. It's a strange—and seemingly simple—thing to write at the given moment, but after Robert Downey Jr. put on a red-and-gold mask, called himself Iron Man, and established 14 years of a house style of filmmaking, it's great to see something so cringingly different. Our hero, played by Robert Pattinson, makes Bruce Wayne weird. Not Christian Bale, I-live-in-a-cave-but-am-also-suave-and-jacked weird. Not Taika Waititi weird, but the kind of cutesy weird that still makes your parents laugh.
It's Battinson putting on tiny, rectangular sunglasses when he gets a whiff of the daylight weird. The guy muttering, absolutely deadpan, you got. a lot. of cats., to Zoë Kravitz's Catwoman, as the furry little things nuzzle his knockoff Doc Martens. He's pale. So damn awkward that he can often only mutter a declarative sentence or two at a time. If "gritty camp" wasn't a searchable subgenre on Netflix before, then it sure as hell should be now. There is not one, but two Nirvana needle drops. If you don't know what to make of the blend—a few people in my theater were cracking up, others seemed riveted by the drama—you're not alone. But it does seem to be what The Batman director Matt Reeves (War of the Planet of the Apes, Cloverfield) was going for. His Bruce Wayne is angry, wistful, oddly romantic, and very, very emo. Wouldn't you expect that a billionaire orphan would be pretty fucked up?
The Batman, beginning to end, is a detective mystery. It's only a superhero story in that there's a dude who wears a costume. We meet up with Bruce Wayne about two years after he became the Batman, when one of Gotham City's mayoral candidates dies at the hands of a Zodiac Killer-esque villain who calls himself the Riddler. Gotham police detective Jim Gordon (played by Jeffery Wright with a confused whimsy that's all too reminiscent of his Westworld alter ego Bernard Lowe) enlists the help of the Batman to track down the Riddler. The setup alone, backed by an appropriately moody soundtrack from Michael Giacchino, is on par with the thrill of The Dark Knight's first 30 minutes. But the twists and turns of the actual mystery propelling The Batman along—which mainly have to do with the tried-and-true criminal underbelly of Gotham—are never quite compelling enough to reach the heights of Nolan's trilogy. (Not to mention, said twists and turns are usually delivered via confounding riddle and/or expositional dialogue.)
That's not to say that Reeves's The Batman doesn't have its moments. Created alongside Dune cinematographer Greig Fraser, this may be the best-looking Gotham City flick of all time. An aerial shot of Batman leading a horde of survivors, emergency flare in hand. A camera strapped to the back wheel of the Batmobile. An upside-down shot of Batman lumbering toward the Penguin, because the guy's overturned in his car. If we can get the damn Snyder Cut, then we can certainly ask for the art house version of The Batman. Plus, Reeves and Fraser actually have the restraint to let us sit with what we're looking at—often waiting a few beats before hurtling onto the next task on the superhero to-do list.
We need to talk about the Riddler, though. Paul Dano's talents are a no-brainer for Reeves's IRL serial-killer-psychology inspiration for the villain. Look no further than the underrated prison-drama Escape at Dannemora if you want to know how the man can bundle anxiety, deviousness, and glee into a hot pile of can't-turn-away energy. That talent is on full display in The Batman. The problem? It's often on the other side of a phone. The Riddler has a Jigsaw-esque presence throughout The Batman, peppering clues, bombs, and greeting cards throughout our hero's periphery, typically only interacting with him over FaceTime. When Pattinson and Dano finally share a room together, their angsty, sad-boy chemistry is so great that you wish it had come during hour one of the nearly three-hour-long movie. And yes, The Batman's story would've benefitted from having a half an hour shaved from it.
That said, you can't understate how much Pattinson had going against him. Every single Bruce Wayne we meet is some sort of an amalgamation of what's come before. Expectations are high. But Pattinson had the guts to play Wayne with an Edward Cullen-esque—damn right, I said it—sense of abandon, with a wanting to love but knowing that he'll likely never be able to do so. For Pattinson and Reeves, it'll likely take a sequel to smooth out what went wrong in The Batman, the runtime and the heavy-handed dialogue especially. But we'll take it all for Pattinson's weird, emo Bruce Wayne. I just hope he branches past Nirvana and discovers different grunge band by The Batman 2. Soundgarden would fit the vibe.
