The Batman (2022) [Movie review]

What can be said about Bruce Wayne that hasn’t been exploited 17 times in the last 33 years? The Batman takes the world back down the path of what happens when you expose a rich kid to murder at a young age. Why is everyone fascinated with this vigilante, but I have yet to get the Bernie Goetz movie I deserve. Oh well, give your adult sized Underoos a tug and endure Warner Brothers’ latest attempt to stay relevant in a Feige world.

Batman Begins Again

If you feel like you’ve already seen The Batman before, you’re not going crazy. Whether it’s Spider-Man, Wolverine, Jesus or Batman; the world loves an origin story. For the non-comic fan normies, this is what we call Year Two. You get a little more dirt than the standard origin story, but the main character is still fresh enough to be accessible to Uncle Lou from Toledo.

What happens that hasn’t been told before? Alfred worries for Bruce, Gotham needs a hero and Catwoman continues to serve as a bisexual girl icon for a new decade. New layers of gritty realism are accepted for a movie about a man that would’ve been caught in a standard FBI sting. But, that’s far from the only problem with Batman. After all, it’s never great to be so less interesting than your villains.

It Looks Like Joker 2049

When returning to Gotham City, it’s easy to fall into the traps that other filmmakers tried to get right. Tim Burton let Anton Furst build his Goth fantasy all over the place. Joel Schumacher tried to bring his spin via a bastardization of the 60s show. Then, Chris Nolan showed up and demanded that everyone be super serious. Zach Snyder showed up and had a wonderful run on films that were before their time and spawned the best Director’s Cut on HBO MAX.

Reeves’ The Batman looks like it’s the logical follow-up to Phillips’ Joker, but it strays far enough away from it. At points, The Batman hits like The Animated Series directed by fill-in-the-blank action director. That’s not meant to be a slight, but a comment on how disposable large chunks of the movie feel. You can see shades of better things in The Batman, but then your mind ventures to other things.

Emo Bruce Wayne

In The Batman, director Matt Reeves dares us to go into a Gotham that looked like it once housed Joaquin Phoenix. But, now it also bares echoes of the work of Miller, Snyder, Capullo and many more Bat creators. The streets are dirty, crime is rampant and the business of politics has to keep flowing. It’s a Batman movie with Gotham City. All notes are hit with the grace of Robert Loggia left unattended in FAO Schwartz.

Why does Robert Pattinson look sick whenever he’s not fighting crime? I get that it was popular back when he was a sparkly vampire in Twilight, but he’s Batman now. Bruce Wayne is supposed to be a playboy millionaire as a cover. The cover doesn’t work if everybody thinks Bruce has anemia. But, I can already hear the fanboys screaming.

Bruce is downtrodden because he enjoys being Batman too much! Well, that’s the nature of the dual identity. You have to feed both sides or it doesn’t work. Clark Kent is the anchor persona to his parents’ world. Diana Prince is a tourist trying to make sense of Man’s World. Bruce Wayne is meant to be the overpowered distraction, so that Batman can do his work.

What I’m saying is that Batman doesn’t work without the cover. Sure, you got him being a real Detective and doing actual work in those Gotham streets, but The Batman doesn’t much else.

Riddler looks like he’s named Doug

What Paul Dano does as The Riddler is borderline genius. But, he also looks like a guy named Doug. Doug loves riddles, hangs out with too many young kids and has a fun riddle for you at every mandatory meeting. Just looking at the guy, you know he’s on some dark sites doing nerd thug shit in the middle of the night. It’s way too easy to call him an Incel, but what else does the Online Left have to say about a single white male they disagree with in 2022?

You can’t call everyone Russian, so we’ll call him the Riddler. His plot doesn’t make a ton of sense, as it feels like he was meant to be the puppet of something larger. Plus, his bonus scene at the end of the movie doesn’t make sense in this cut. The Batman work in spite of all of this. That’s because Colin Farrell is way better as The Penguin.

I miss Adam West

Ultimately, your enjoyment with The Batman will stem from where you are in life in relation to a 83 year old comic character.

I make no secret of my love for Batman (1966) and the classic TV series. For so long, people treated it like this black mark on the unsullied record of Batman. To those people, I suggest picking up any Batman comic from 1952 to right before Neal Adams got onboard. That’s almost 20 years of comics so bad, Grant Morrison could only redeem two of the issues.

What I’m trying to say about The Batman is what you take away from the film comes down to where you are with the material. There’s not enough to keep kids entertained, edgelords will dig the car chase sequence and casuals will just want something to get them out of the house.

The Batman has enough moments to keep you entertained, but is it good? It’s OK. So many people have a problem with The Batman just being OK, so they get into a never-ending hype arms race where every superhero iteration has to be better than the last.

When it’s not, they can’t process. If that sounds off-putting to you, then The Batman will be on HBO MAX towards the end of April.

The Batman opens everywhere on March 4th, 2022

Post Credits Review Scene!

If you want to play around with some Batman stuff, visit this GitHub page that has been entertaining Batman fans all week.