The Batman (2022) Movie Review

The Batman (2022) Movie Review

I find it sort of interesting how The Dark Knight is now widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, or at least somewhat up there. Truthfully I’ve never fully bought into that idea; sure, yeah, The Dark Knight is a really good movie, but up there with the best ever made? I’m not quite convinced. People will tak about how Heath Ledger turned in one of the best performances maybe ever as the Joker, and how the film is less rooted in the superhero genre and more rooted in the crime thriller genre. Those things I suppose I can agree with for the most part. So much attention is paid to The Dark Knight that its predecessor, Batman Begins, and its successor, The Dark Knight Rises, seem to be often completely left behind in contemporary conversation. In fact, I think the near-insane level of hype surrounding The Dark Knight that seems to exist even to this day led me to having impossibly high expectations for it that it just… didn’t live up to when I watched it. To be fair, though, I have only seen it once, and I did have a pretty bad headache when I watched it, so maybe I got distracted from how good it was or something. I guess all this to say, I’m not one of these people who feels like Christopher Nolan absolutely perfected the character and onscreen mythos of Batman and to even attempt to try something new with the character would be sacreligious. I think he did a spectacular job making those three movies, and I’m probably making it sound like I’m less impressed by the Nolan trilogy than I actually am, but I’m not approaching the new Batman movie with the preconception that it won’t be able to live up to what Nolan did. That being said, when it was announced that The Batman was gonna be released, I felt skeptical at first. I guess the people in charge of making movies changed their minds pretty fast about Ben Affleck being Batman, and now that I look up the concept of what would have been Affleck’s solo Batman movie, I’m glad that was all scrapped. With time I’ve only become more blockbuster-rehash-weary, and I didn’t immediately jump at the idea of another Batman movie. The trailers made it seem like they’d be doing the whole dark, gloomy, gritty thing that Nolan’s trilogy had already finished doing about a decade ago. It honestly just felt so unnecessary to me. But the reality is I’ll always be interested in popular new movies, especially ones that seem to get positive reactions from audiences, so naturally I felt compelled to go and see The Batman. Not to be dramatic, but it’s possible that I prefer this to The Dark Knight. Well… actually, maybe not. But in some ways I feel like this is the movie that people say The Dark Knight is: the deep, thought-provoking, anti-superhero movie that, ironically, it seems like superhero movie audiences eat up.

The Batman starts a completely fresh slate for the character, this time played by Robert Pattinson. The film opens up with the murder of the mayor of Gotham City, Don Mitchell Jr. (Rupert Penry-Jones). The Gotham police department, led by Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), arrives at the scene to investigate the crime, but so does Batman (Robert Pattinson), the secret vigilante alter ego of billionaire Bruce Wayne. The man who killed Mitchell calls himself the Riddler (Paul Dano), and leaves a clue for Batman specifically at the scene. Not long after, the Riddler kills the police commissioner (Alex Ferns), and leaves a clue for Batman yet again. Batman finds pictures left for him by the Riddler of Mitchell with a woman leaving the Iceberg Lounge, a nightclub in Gotham. He shows up at the club to interrogate the Penguin (Colin Farrell), the owner of the club who is involved in the mob. The Penguin says he knows nothing about the murder of Mitchell, but Batman notices that the roommate of the woman Mitchell was with, Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) works at the club. Kyle agrees to work with Batman when her roommate vanishes. It becomes revealed that the police commissioner worked for the same mobster that the Penguin does, Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), as does the district attorney of Gotham, Gil Colson (Peter Sarsgaard). At Mitchell’s memorial, Colson is killed by the Riddler after he fails to answer a set of riddles correctly, even though Batman tries his hardest to prevent his death. It has become apparent that the Riddler is targeting important figures in Gotham to make a point about the corruption of the politicans and the law enforcement of the city. His next target is Bruce Wayne, but the letter bomb intended for Wayne ends up severely injuring his butler Alfred (Andy Serkis) instead. The Riddler, meanwhile, has exposed the shady secrets and past mob ties of the Wayne family. Batman is led further down a progressively darker spiral into the murders and crimes of the Riddler, the mob’s control over Gotham, and his own family history.

For starters, this is an extremely long and somewhat complicated movie that is hard to even sum up in just one paragraph. In full disclosure, I had to reread the plot of this movie to write my little summary, and in doing so, I read things that honestly I hardly remembered. This movie is about three hours long and definitely feels that long. By the time it was almost over, I was definitely ready for it to end. It feels like if you blink, you’ll miss key details of one of the countless subplots entirely. There is so much happening in The Batman, which is mostly a good thing I would say, but if you’re not someone who likes movies where you really have to sit down and pay close attention (for a long time in this instance), maybe this isn’t for you. While the intensely long runtime does drag down this movie in my opinion, it leaves plenty of room for the very well-written script to shine. The Batman is a very busy and packed movie, but it never really feels confused about the points that it’s trying to get across. Pretty much every aspect of this movie is effective; the dialogue in particular is almost fully well-done. Every Batman movie has some lines from when the titular character is dramaticizing himself that feel corny to me, like in this film when he’s doing voice-over narration and says stuff like “They think I’m hiding in the shadows, waiting to strike… but I am the shadows.” Or like how instead of calling him “Batman,” everyone calls him “Vengeance.” I don’t know, maybe it’s just me who thinks that kind of faux-intimidating stuff is corny, but oh well, it doesn’t really bother me that much. Generally, Robert Pattinson does a good job playing the Batman/Bruce Wayne role, but I do wish the character itself had been fleshed out a little more. The only real explanation provided as to why Wayne chooses to dress up in the costume every night and fight crime is that in doing so he’s carrying on some sort of vague family legacy, but as far as I can tell that has nothing to do with what his family represented at all. I understand the idea that because his parents were killed by a criminal, Wayne grows up wanting to stop that sort of thing from happening to other people, but that idea is never really presented in this film. Wayne himself I also found to be frustratingly undercooked; it’s as if he has zero real personality. His inner psyche is never really explored in the way that I feel like it should have been. It just seems to me like the filmmakers never really bothered to explain why Wayne was motivated to be Batman at all. That being said, it is clear that Pattinson put a lot of effort into his performance as Batman, and the rest of the cast was pretty much stellar as well. Kravitz is perfect for her role, and Colin Farrell is completely unrecognizable as the Penguin but does a great job with what he’s given. I did like Paul Dano as the Riddler, who at times does cross the surprisingly thin line between genuinely somewhat intimidating and noticeably over-the-top. There is a lot of screaming and wailing that comes with the Riddler role in this movie and I’d say about half of it sticks the landing that it’s supposed to. Overall, however, I do think the Riddler is a solid antagonist and really brings home the gruesome, shocking thriller vibe that the film seems to kinda be going for. At times his character reminded me more of a villain from a horror movie, specifically Jigsaw with the whole riddle thing, than a villain from a superhero movie. Speaking of the riddle aspect of the film, I felt like it was a nice touch, but some of Batman’s guesses about the answers to the riddles definitely jump the shark in terms of how smart he could possibly be about these impossibly vague clues. Also, I still have zero idea why the Riddler cares so much about Batman in particular finding the answers to the riddles; it’s not as if the two have any history or anything. 

I feel like so far I’ve made it sound like I didn’t enjoy The Batman as much as I did. I definitely think it’s a flawed movie, possibly more than other people seem to, but I had a great time watching it and there are a ton of fantastic things this film has going for it. I love how noticeable it is that so much effort was put into making this. You can tell the filmmakers really went all out and had a specific vision that they went for. They wanted a nocturnal neo-noir detective thriller featuring the Batman character and that’s pretty much exactly what they succeeded in making. Like I said earlier, this is sort of an “anti-blockbuster.” This isn’t Batman v Superman. Sure, there are big explosions and action scenes and it is a “thrill ride” like a bunch of other reviews probably say, but The Batman maintains a certain artiness that the best Batman movies historically have. Burton and Nolan specifically both brought unique artistic visions to their films (and… I suppose Joel Schumacher did as well), and Matt Reeves did the same with this movie. In general, I really like what the filmmakers did with this, and I’m glad they didn’t make another origin story film. There’s a lot of notably good camerawork and cinematography in this film as well; there’s one shot from the point of view of a crashed car where Batman is upside down walking towards the camera that stuck with me, as well as a shot of him carrying a torch through dark water leading a group of civilians. I also like how the movie opens up immediately with a large title card that fills up the whole screen; it really sets the tone.

All in all, The Batman is a more than satisfying experience as a fan of the character’s movies and as a fan of film. If you’re looking for a moody, atmospheric, thematically dense murder mystery served as a superhero movie, it’s arrived. I don’t wanna compare this to The Dark Knight too much, but if you’re a fan of that movie, this should be up your alley as well. The scope and scale of The Batman is so large and grand that I’m not even sure how the supposedly planned sequels are gonna live up to it… how do you follow up a three-hour epic like that? I’m just glad we got the movie we did, when we did. The Batman also manages to be timely in its semi-political themes and in a way that mostly manages to not be too heavy-handed. It’s possible that this movie could have used a little more humor, or a shorter runtime, or maybe even a slightly smaller web of subplots, but pretty much everything about The Batman hits. I’d probably give it an A- as a grade. This is one of the best new movies I’ve seen in theaters in a hot minute and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of film.