The Batman sure packs a vengeful punch with a whopping 2 hour and 56-minute runtime. The star-studded cast was beautifully focused on their respective roles and led by director Matt Reeves into a dark, gritty, and enthralling story. The Batman premiered worldwide on March 4, 2022, and boasted $128 million at the box office on opening weekend.
The movie
skips the usual start of showing poor little Bruce losing his parents and finding
the role of the bat – a happy plus in my opinion. Getting right into the grit of
the story after many reboots felt right and left little to be desired.
Throughout the movie, we learn little tidbits of information about the parents
we do not get to see murdered and it helped the story flow without it being
drawn out as it would have been if the movie centered around the orphaning in
the beginning. The plot sets up a little slowly and I do feel like I got a little
lost or maybe even distracted from it about halfway through. There were two
major plot points and, I guess you could say two major villains. I completely
forgot about the one even though they directly influenced each other. I am not
saying that is necessarily bad, but it did leave me feeling a little stupid
when I realized there was still most of the movie left to unfold. One interesting
aspect of that is it leaves you feeling like the movie could have ended
multiple times with a cliffhanger ending, but then BONUS MOVIE. Even with the
long runtime, the movie never seems to drag. There is consistent action and a
compelling enough storyline to keep my attention throughout.
Pattinson
really brings this role his all from the fight scenes to the more emotion-forward
scenes. I know his casting was contested by a lot of people, but he brought the
role into his own. I feel like he took aspects of other actors in that role and
morphed them into a new type of Batman. The campy feeling of a Keaton and Clooney
Batman and the grit of Bale came into this vengeful yet almost friendly hero of
the neighborhood. Careful wording because this is a different universe. I like
it and I am excited to see where he can take this Batman.
Unfortunately
for Pattinson, he was well overshadowed by the magnificent Paul Dano as The
Riddler and the very unrecognizable Colin Farrell as The Penguin. These two
dominated the screen anytime they were on. Dano is spectacular in every single
second of screentime. Pumpkin pie anyone? There was a scene during a car chase,
which made me feel like I was screwing around on the video game GTA, that Farrell
was so into the character it made me wish there was more of him in the story. I
think the ending may have set up a deeper storyline for him, but it is very
open-ended. Let us not forget the other important characters in the movie: the ever-loyal
James Gordon, played by the wonderful Jeffery Wright, continues to be the OG. The
new Alfred, played by masterful actor Andy Serkis, did not get much screentime
and that felt like a negative even though it did not hurt the overall plot. I
will always want more Andy Serkis.
Can we
talk about the music? The perfect score by one of the greats (in my opinion),
Michael Giacchino, delivered on every turn. It leads you in and out of every
scene and brings tension or, no matter how dumb this may sound, JUSTICE to the
forefront. He killed it yet again, but I never doubted him. I did NOT enjoy the
multiple scenes where a dang headlight was turned right into the camera. I do
not need to be blinded to enjoy this movie and my sensitive retinas do not
thank you. One other thing I did not enjoy was the forced loved story. There
does not need to be a love story in every movie, I do not know how many times
people have to say it. There can be a movie with a male and female lead where
they do not fall in love! GEEZ!
At this point, I feel weird not
having mentioned Zoe Cravitz. It is nothing against her, she played the role
wonderfully, but her character was just eh throughout the movie. I wish they
made her more compelling or gave her more to do. I do want to know how she
afforded all those nice wigs though. Get me on that cat woman wig budget,
please.
In the end, The Batman came
to play! Dano gave us the villain we deserve and pushed it to the limits with
his performance. Pattinson did not let us down and I am so ready to see his
Batman grow. The cast played together perfectly to give us a quality movie. I
highly recommend seeing it!
