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.
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