Director Matt Reeves
Starring Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz & Jeffrey Wright
Rated M
Score 5/6
When the Riddler, a sadistic serial killer, begins murdering key political figures in Gotham, Batman is forced to investigate the city’s hidden corruption and question his family’s involvement.
The production and release of any superhero movie without any degree of controversy to my knowledge hardly ever happens (I guess we can say it is part of the marketing). For those of you playing along at home I have vague memories during production there where articles about questioning how diligent Robert Pattinson was with his training during lockdown and of course there are the more recent articles regarding Lisa Kravitz missing out on a role in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.
It’s been a while since I last watched a superhero movie, and this version of Batman was very different most of the other interpretations of Batman. It was a welcome change to a comic book movie to be more of a detective movie. The three-hour runtime did seem to be slightly excessive, and I felt that the first act of the movie did seem to plod a little in the first act while the dark and grimy colour palate made some of the fight scenes more interesting to watch. To me Pattinson came across as being different physically compared to Christian Bale. I assumed that the physical difference was because Matt Reeves has said that one of the Batman comics that influenced the movie was “Batman: Year One” the others being “Batman: Ego” and “Batman: The Long Halloween”. There was also a couple of fleeting moments where I wondered if Pattinson’s voice while in the suit was influenced by Bale. One last thing while I am comparing Batmen, I prefer Pattinson’s Batmobile to Bale’s. I loved the chase scene between Batman and Oz. It was great to see that Catwoman was central to the plot and how that related to Bruce Wayne. There were also a couple of surprise casting choices John Turturro and Paul Dano (it is going to be interesting to see the direction go with his character The Riddler with this incarnation of Batman).