The Batman (2022 - Matt Reeves)

"I'm Vengeance!"

I have seen a lot of Batman films throughout my years, this however stands out as the most beautiful Batman film ever made! The imagery of this film exceeds all expectations, the tone and mood of the film brings action, grit and epic back to DC films. This is Batman at his finest yet and it will be a struggle to make a superhero film look as beautiful as this did.

Since Matt Reeves announced his Batman trilogy starring Robert Pattinson as the lead character, I was sceptical he would pull it off as a success. I was losing hope on DC films and I didn't think Pattinson was best suited to the role of Bruce Wayne, playing an eccentric billionaire reeling from his parents murder at a young age and becoming an angry and determined vigilante to fight crime in Gotham. You have to have aggressive energy to play the character and make a dark and brooding film to suit his character, much like the Dark Knight Trilogy achieved.

I could not have been proven more wrong!

What we have here is a brand new take on the Caped Crusader that we have never seen on the big screen before. It had a roaring aggressive nature to the character and brought Gotham City to life in a dark and depressing way to set the environment our character will explore on his missions. I loved how the film was made and written and the production design behind it. Reeves really did pull the audience into the world of Gotham City and build an authentic Batman story around it to make a gripping film.

Lets delve into the film itself. What makes this film so good is the cinematography behind it and the creative imagery that sets it apart from previous Batman films. if you are going to make a Batman film then you need to have an authentic detail that makes it unique. Burton brought his usual style of imaginary expressionist into his Batman films, Nolan made Batman seem more realistic and grounded and Snyder made him more darker (literally) and made him more powerful than previous versions.

Reeves chose a different approach by making the film dark and gritty and using some neo - noir effects used in the John Wick films to give it more edge. He turned Batman into an aggressive fighting machine rather than the philosophical character we know to add more depth to his character and show him as a man struggling with grief.

Of course, you can't have a Batman film without Gotham City in it and that's an Achilles heel because Gotham is a fictional city, it doesn't exist (thankfully). You can shoot the film in any city in the world but the audience will always recognize what that city is because, its real! You have to create the illusion that Gotham is real in the film without the audience recognizing which city is on screen (I have tried to explain that as best as I could, please bear with me!)

This is where Reeves genius comes into play. What he does is use technology from The Mandalorian TV show on Disney + to create an onstage backdrop on the set where he can play footage, that the crew shot from different cities, to immerse the actors and the onstage design to capture the imagery that will create his Gotham. That's a stroke of genius!

It feels like he built the city from scratch, Reeves was careful in focusing on the cinematography rather than world building to get his version of Gotham captured on camera. The same goes on throughout the film, he creates dark atmospheres for our characters to brood in and uses lighting elements to illuminate his colour palette onto the screen to make it as cinematic as The Dark Knight was.

The film also reintroduces characters that we have not seen on the big screen for a while, such as The Riddler and The Penguin. These two are titular Batman villains and are household names for DC Comics so I was so excited to see them in live action again, this time as different versions than we are used to.

Reeves shows The Riddler (played by Paul Dano) as a sadistic serial killer, loosely based off the real serial killer The Zodiac Killer, whom sets out to kill Gotham's elite officials in an act of rage and revenge and this was a smart move from Reeves. The Riddler is supposed to be a mastermind who plays Batman at every turn with his riddles and puzzles and Dano captured the insanity of the Riddler so well! The Arkham scene between the two characters perfectly shows the parallel between them and sends shivers down my spine as we see The Riddler's insanity in full!

The Penguin (played by Colin Farrel) is shown in this film as a second in command crime boss, under crime lord Carmine Falcone (played by John Turturro), who is extremely ambitious and brings the mob back to Gotham. The design of the character is so immaculate that if I told you who plays The Penguin, you would slap me across the face! He was shown as a mobster in this film and that's who The Penguin is and should always be because that's where his power and influence is.

Then we have Catwoman, (played by Zoe Cravitz) and she gives a wonderful performance of the anti-hero as a struggling woman in Gotham, looking for revenge against Falcone. She is integral to Batman's growth in the film and the two go together so well, she has the ferocity and sternness of Selina Kyle and establishes herself as an essential character to the hero.

Finally we have the man himself, again I was doubtful Pattinson would deliver on the role, but he understood the assignment and stepped up his game. Reeves chose to write Bruce Wayne as a struggling, gothic young man whom has given up on himself and that sets up his arc for the film.

The film is all about Batman finding out who he must become to save his city and that's the main arc for his character. We know who he must become and this film is all about his journey to get there, from The Riddler's sadistic acts of terror to his estranged relationship with Selina Kyle. Bruce Wayne is a very complex character to bring to life and Pattinson delivered in the strongest way he can and brings to life a new version of the character that we feel we can relate more to than we could to previous versions.

The story, however, is where it begins to let it down. When I first watched the trailers, I was expecting an unpredictable, action packed, investigative drama filled with twists and turns that you don't see coming. Instead we got an easily predictable plot that leads to a climax that goes entirely against Riddler's motives. Don't get me wrong, I loved the climax and all of Riddler's antics and Batman's action scenes, but the plot lacked the twist that gets the audience interested.

It was easy to predict who the "rat" was in the film and the writing felt slow and sometimes out of place and too quiet. This is supposed to be an epic film but it felt more of a dramatized version of Batman and that's not appealing to long time Batman fans.

I like the universe that Reeves has created with this film, but I think the writing could be a bit better and more enthusiastic and exciting. It needed more edge to entice the viewers and more action to make it exciting and edge of your seat drama!

Despite the issues with the script and writing, the rest of the film was masterful! The visuals and sound were perfect, the music score was epic and frightening (which you want from a dark Batman film) and the overall design of the film was breathtaking.

Reeves took the very concept of Batman and redefined him in his own image to produce a horrifyingly dark and epic tale of how a vigilante can become a hero, which is what modern day superhero films lack sometimes. The audience want to see what exactly makes a hero (apart from the epic battles and expensive CGI stunts obviously!) and why they should root for a character that saves the day everyday and thats what makes film interesting.

A trilogy has already been announced and, while I have high expectations for the script, I can't wait to see what other stories Reeves has planned for Pattinson's Batman and I can't wait to see what Pattinson can do with the character. I think, if done right, it could be DC's greatest achievement since The Dark Knight Trilogy.

The Batman is available now on Blu ray and on Digital streaming.