When it had been announced that DC were going to reboot the Batman films (again) and basically throw away Ben Affleck's Batman under a bus, the fan reaction was mixed. After all, DC hasn't enjoyed the success as Marvel has with their Marvel Cinematic Universe with DC's own DC Extended Universe which in itself has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs.
After all, we'd barely gotten to know Ben's Batman and the Zack Snyder cut of the 'Justice League' film was met with very positive reviews. You would've thought that Warner Bros would've been smart to carry on in the darker, grittier universe in comparison to Disney's very light hearted family friendly MCU films. However, 'The Batman' ended up being a standalone trilogy from the rest of the DCEU much to everyone's relief.
However, everyone got hesitant again. After a series of suggested actors (ranging from Tom Felton, Richard Madden and Nicholas Hault to name a few), former 'Twilight' heartthrob and actor Robert Pattinson landed the title role. Everyone got understandably worried but there were a few people like myself who had faith in him. After all, Robert is a good actor outside those God-awful 'Twilight' films and I'm very familiar with him as Cedric on the fourth Harry Potter film 'Goblet of Fire'.
Unlike a lot of people I had complete faith in Robert's acting abilities outside 'Twilight'. Two years later, I was right to have a lot of faith in him and the film.
The story starts off when The Riddler (Paul Dano) murders Gotham's Mayor on Halloween. Batman is called into the Mayor's mansion that night by Lieutenant Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) to help with the case. Gordon has trusted Batman for two years now but it's clear that most of the GCPD don't.
Commissioner Pete Savage berates Gordon for allowing a vigilante to enter a crime scene and storms off. It isn't before long when Savage's body turns up and with yet another note from The Riddler for Batman to solve. This time, it's on a thumb drive which contains photos of him hanging out with a girl at the Iceberg Lounge; a nightclub operated by the Penguin.
Batman goes to the Iceberg Lounge and basically intimidates the Penguin (Collin Farrell) into pleading innocence knowing about the girl, Annika. He notices her friend Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz) who is a waitress at the bar watching them. It later turns out that Annika is Selina's friend and roommate and she's worried about her.
What follows is a very unusual Batman film that focuses more on Batman's detective ability rather than how many bad guys he can put in a hospital.
When it was released, 'The Batman' was met with mostly positive reviews, most of them praising Pattinson's performance. Personally I really enjoyed it aside from a few things.
The three hour running time might be tedious for some people who aren't used to long films. Another thing that I didn't like was Catwoman's speech about "white privilege" which I managed to shrug off as it was just words. However, considering how woke everything seems to be going in these days, I guess even 'The Batman' couldn't escape having something like that being thrown in just to keep Twitter (who won't even watch the film anyway) happy.
Michael Giacchino's score is just as worthy as previous composers to Batman films such as Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and former DJ turned film composer Junkie XL. Especially on the scene in which Batman is chasing down The Penguin on the track 'Highway To The Anger Zone' (clearly a take on a lyric from 'Danger Zone' from 'Top Gun').
I just hope that on the sequel we get any other villain other than The Joker. As much as I like the character, I think we need a break from him and let other Batman villains have the chance to shine. Would love to see The Scarecrow on a similar sort of film but sadly I don't think we'll be seeing Cillian Murphy's excellent take on the character from Christopher Nolan's Batman films on this version of Batman.
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