- You know, I'm a little worried about this Bruce Wayne kid. As portrayed by Robert Pattinson in The Batman, he spends a lot of time brooding in his basement, journaling and listening to Nirvana. He talks back to his butler (Andy Serkis) and doesn't have any real friends. He stays out all night (sometimes in dance clubs), and I think he's even been getting into fights. He has long hair and wears thick eyeliner and heavy boots! Somebody should really tell his parents...ohh, right.
- All kidding aside, the new film by Matt Reeves is the one of the few adaptations to acknowledge that real-life twentysomething Batman would be a total misanthropic creep. He doesn't have a single meaningful interpersonal relationship with anybody (including Alfred, disappointingly) and barely gets along with "work colleagues" James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) and Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz). Mostly, he just goes around beating up equally deranged punks in the name of vengeance. His newest adversary is an anonymous serial killer known as the Riddler (Paul Dano). I guess he's realistic, too, in the sense that people who tell riddles tend to be pretty annoying.
- For reasons driven more by its three-hour runtime than plot necessity, The Batman features plenty of secondary characters, including mobsters Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and "Ozzy" Cobblepot (aka the Penguin, aka Colin Farrell buried in makeup), noble politician Bella Reál (Jayme Lawson), and a bevy of corrupt officials (Peter Saarsgaard, Peter McDonald). Most of the film's acting is fine, especially by Turturro and Pattinson, although Dano goes over the top in a way that would bring a tear to Jim Carrey's eye. Oh, and Barry Keoghan makes a cameo as the Joker, in what I assume is probably that character's first onscreen appearance ever in anything.
- While The Batman's first hour is novel enough in that it actually has live-action Batman act like a detective, the grime-streaked sets and bleak cinematography feel like a weak imitation of 90s melancholy masterworks The Crow and Se7en. The fight sequences resemble those of the Arkham Asylum games, and there is plenty of slow-motion sauntering as enforced by Zack Snyder's Ministry of Sleepy Walks. The third act goes downhill quickly once the Riddler allows himself to be captured, which is a plot device I've seen somewhere before. Riddle me this: would I have been better off just watching Batman: The Animated Series? (Answer: yes.)
