No spoilers below, not that you should care because the movie sucks.
Watched the new Batman movie. Was so bad I walked out 2/3rds of the way through. Would have done so earlier if I wasn't with someone who wanted to stay longer.
It's like they found a list of tips on how to make a movie interesting and suspenseful and decided to specifically not do any of that. There are no establishing shots or scenes, half of the plot points are advanced by a character telling Batman something happened offscreen, all the fight scenes are boring because it's too dark to see much of it, there is almost no forshadowing or hints that anything might happen, everything just happens out of nowhere.
All the acting is terrible, like every character is trying to be an edgelord that doesn't care about anything. There is not a single scene in the entire movie where anyone seems to care about another onscreen character and displays genuine affection or comradery or anything. Nobody is friendly with anyone, they are all cold and aloof dicks. Every single character.
Every scene in the movie being insanely dark didn't detract from it as much as you would think. Some of the character designs looked cool and I wish I could have gotten a better look at them. There are also no establishing shots of things with more light on them so you have a better idea of what you are looking at, making it worse than it should have been. When the Batmobile showed up it was hard to tell what it even was for a painfully long amount of time.
Potentially a movie could be shot that way and it could be interesting and good, but this movie blew the opportunity. Tons of wasted opportunities, like showing Catwoman and Batman riding their motorcycles together. There were only a few very short scenes of that, they could have made it more of a thing and it would have been cool as hell. Also would have liked to see more of Batman in anonymous civilian mode.
To add to this, I think the central conceit, leading to the villain's actions, is absolutely insane:
spoiler
So the entire city's institutions are completely corrupted and mobbed up - the mayor, the DA, the police commissioner, members of the police, basically everyone with any power and influence is on a mobster's payroll. It's so dirty that the DA is openly doing drugs in a club filled with important people and staffed by off duty cops. Even so, this is apparently such a well kept secret that Batman - who has the ability to go anywhere in the city and command the attention of people at the highest levels - has to uncover this throughout the movie. And not through an actual investigation, but just by stumbling into the information piece by piece while following the Riddler's seriously surface level clues.
The Riddler, meanwhile, is appalled by the corruption he uncovers and recognizes that the approved approach to punish these people wouldn't make a difference. So he assassinates the top level people (which largely wouldn't change much in a corrupted system since they'd just be replaced by another stooge and is of course a level of violence I condemn). But punishing corrupt officials doesn't quite make him a villain, so in the third act he initiates his plan to cause a devastating city-wide flood that undoubtedly kills hundreds of innocent civilians. So the guy who previously focused on directed force against a handful of people he had evidence of being full on criminals suddenly heel-turns into mass murder. Just complete dumbshit writing.
And what does The Batman learn from this? Nothing about taking on corruption head on and rebuilding institutions to fix the actual needs of people in the community. No, he learns that he must "become a symbol for hope" in defending the status quo, as opposed to the fear he imposed on petty criminals in the beginning. I already detested Batman as a character, but sitting through three hours of this shit reminded me that the entire genre is poisoned by liberal brainworms to the point of being unwatchable.
cause a devastating city-wide flood
when did Gotham become New Orleans anyway? has it ever been portrayed as below sea level in any medium before
That's another part of what I mean by there being no establishing of the setting it forshadowing. If they had played with the idea, mentioned that the city was below/at sea level and made it a theme or even just had some scenes showing the seawalls before they got exploded, it would have been a lot more satisfying. But no, just out of nowhere they are like "btw the city is vulnerable to flooding and we are bombing the things that are stopping it."
Most of the plot was advanced in that out-of-nowhere, deeply unsatisfying way.
I was curious and searched for it and some nerds pointed out that this is inspired from a flood storyline in 2013's Zero Year comics. Gotham being a fictional city has given writers the ability to take liberties with its exact layout, as opposed to Marvel comics largely having to use real locations.
yeah, I'm aware Gotham's geography varies largely on whatever the writer needs it to be, but wasn't familiar with any similar storylines. I was no longer reading comics by then so that explains it
I wouldn't have watched it anyway but I'm glad you confirmed my suspicion of it sucking.
I posted this here a while ago: the original Donner Superman is the prototype for all modern cape movies, and it's still the best of the genre. Which isn't saying much.
nah it shat all over anything marvel's released in a decade
Decent analysis of it here TL;DR: It's a liberal power fantasy deconstruction of a fascist power fantasy
The relentless grimdark is a problem for sure, even Dune had more relief from it than Batman
I wonder how you would do a more to the left of liberal power fantasy, not socialist necessarily - could you imagine Eisenstein's Batman, lol. You could have Wayne be a modern Kropotkin, a princeling from a wealthy family only with hegemonic liberal ideology preventing him from becoming an anarchist/socialist and his choice to be a recluse and not visit the modern version of Siberian peasants. He could start being a more apolitical more conservative reactionary that does the individualist beating up poor people, he could be as uninterested in his family's wealth and high level systemic corruption as Pattinson's batman (which ended up biting him in the ass and was actively helping his enemies). But by the end of the movie he'd have to give up being a vigilante and embrace collective action, you couldn't make this thing a franchise lol because by the end he wouldn't be batman anymore. Because Batman IS a right wing power fantasy at its core of cores and if you don't tear that down ruthlessly within the movie, it will always be at odds with itself or become the Dark Knight Returns with some libertarian thug as batman.
Left of liberal Batman film? Easy:
You put a focus on the actual causes on the collapse of Gotham at the level of the people actually living through it, any Batman stuff is the backdrop to the people of Gotham not the other way around. Instead of showing a Gotham that has always been at the bottom, whose only chance at redemption was blown when great man Thomas Wayne got denied his philanthropy arc; show things while they're still getting worse and make it clear how and why. Show how even limited welfare programs were helping people to cope until austerity policies rip that away, then show the ramifications of that first for the people who'd depended on them directly then the follow on conseqeuences for society at large. The goal here being to break down the idea of 'criminality' as an outcropping of fascist removed propaganda that pervades the Batman mythos.
It's the batverse so you can't be too on the nose with the symbolism, have stuff like a garbage collector strike causing a literal overflow of the filth of the city that could easily have been avoided by a system that had any ability to at least either behave rationally or to treat humans with basic respect. Then when the movie has Gotham's regular descent into anarchy, have the hope-for-the-future ending come as part of that breakdown of the corrupt order, rather than it come from Batman setting things back on course to the status quo.
The focus shouldn't be on Batman at all, in fact he doesn't really even need to be there; just shove in a cameo of him as a kid so the studio will greenlight the project in Hollywood's cinematic universe era.
the politics were terribly grating, but i quite liked the performances, and i have a good appetite for grimdarkness. it was going for much more of a neo-noir thing than any recent super hero movie and i think it mostly hit that mark. it was struggling to find an identity despite being like the 5th movie adaptation of the character in 25 years, and it did a much better job than the nolan movies of convincing me that Bats is deeply fucked up weirdo.
also catwoman was cool. she gets some really great moments.
Damn you just summed up everything that has been simmering in my brain since I saw it.
Emo half-crazed batman was a good idea, I stand by that. It just... makes so much more sense than Dark Knight style batman to me. Like, that's the kind of guy that would be an edgelord and learn martial arts and use his vast wealth to beat up criminals. Doubt the rest needed to be edgelords, but it does make sense for batman. It would almost be better if the movie itself kind of made fun of batman for being that way, which this kinda did. If you can't just be 90s Keaton Batman in a silly universe that is just a comic movie, if you have to be a serious movie for serious cinephiles, emo Nirvana listening Batman is better.
It was way too long, no one can really disagree, they did hold on a lot of shots - I dunno, maybe the director or DP or editor thought it was more artistic?? So it isn't all strictly necessary time, could cut it by half an hour pretty easily. The darkness and colour scheme seemed deliberate, I don't agree with how far they went with it but at least seemed to be a conscious aesthetic choice. The red and black scheme was actually quite striking, I did think that monochromatic deal worked in a lot of scenes.
batmobile thing
The batmobile being a souped up dodge charger was actually cool, lol. It just fit the character too, of course it would be that instead of the more industrial military raytheon complex of Dark Knight - and it can't be just the long black Impala like the 90s because it's GrItTieR and DaRkER. I think they might've had problems with the car on set or they were trying to ape the Jaws style, "show don't tell" but from the penguins POV of batman stalking him in his insane charger?
The political themes were interesting to see mentioned, but it was almost like a gloss or just a sop on a checklist. Him having rich boy privilege came up a few times, him learning from it did too. The inequality in Gotham was very obvious.
Oh yeah and the archietecture and set design of Gotham was actually dope. It wasn't just Chicago or New York, it was like in its own weird Art Deco crossed with Neogothic but in 2022 like a different world. They didn't make a big deal of it, but I noticed.
I think I liked the direction of making it a mystery or detective movie instead of just action or military worship. Did kind of feel like an ultimately missed opportunity, can't put my finger on why exactly.
In the end it is capeshit and we are doomed to have only this in theatres for the rest of time until the revolution comes.
My first watch attempt i fell asleep and half-woke up during the penguin chase scene... it really scratched a particular itch in my brain. The music hit the spot
I liked the noir batman with the mystery thriller vibes, even though a lot of the riddles were dumb, and none of the batman catwoman relationship and how it developed made much sense to me, but I was ready for it to end when they finally caught the Riddler... and then it goes on for another hour and the Riddler goes full on terrorist with his own project mayhem and none of it made any sense for the Riddler's character, his goals, or the story, really, they just wanted a twist and a spectacle to go out on.
It could have been an interesting story about batmans role in being a pawn used by a corrupt city and/or ruthless vigilante genius, but nah, nothing interesting to say on the matter. Just :vote: and let the masked wholesome vigilante do his thing, and it's just a few bad apples. Meh.
well shot(but yeah too dark),mediocrily acted, too long, badly paced, weak third act, bad politics . So like a 6/10, better than most capeshit,worse than thousands of movies
the movie made me very nostalgic for sodium vapor lights; garish cool-temperature LED lighting at night is THE WORST
The more gritty and grounded they try to make it, the more you realize how silly the idea of Batman is.
