The Batman Tries to Be Different By Making Batman a Vampire
The Batman. Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
The bat is not only the enduring symbol of Gotham’s Caped Crusader, but also of his erstwhile cousin, Count Dracula, a subtext that the new Batman film, directed by King of the Apes Matt Reeves, makes text for the audience. He casts one of the most famous vampires of all time, Robert Pattinson, to mope around in literal bat-like fashion in a darkened lair, complete with teen goth angst and smeared eyeliner. And yet, many viewers of this film have come together and said that it is not only good, but a fresh take on the done-to-death Batman story.
The primary evidence supporting this thesis is that The Batman assumes the audience is familiar with the Batman mythology and dispenses with the Bruce Wayne origin story. Pretty much every critic noted this was a smart omission that made the film better, while failing to mention that this choice was an obvious one because the movie is already 3 hours long. In fact, there comes a point when you think the movie is coming to a sort of natural conclusion, but actually there is an ENTIRE HOUR LEFT.
The other thing people say they liked is that this Batman is dark, and gritty, a more realistic portrayal of a rich sociopath dressing up like a bat and fighting crime in the night. Yet, Christopher Nolan’s Batmans were dark, so this is hardly revelatory. Plus, the entire concept of Batman benefits from some levity since, if you stop and think about it for 30 seconds, it is kind of ridiculous. But Warner Bros seems unable to even consider such an approach. Basically, the praise for this film boils down to: it’s dark and gritty, and it doesn’t add another 30 minutes to an already interminably bloated 3-hour run time by dumping useless backstory on us. This is such a low bar to set for a Batman movie. Or any movie.
There were certainly parts of the film that looked great, but the way they went with Batman (stripping any sort of charisma or fun out of Bruce Wayne and going for the depressed, damaged side of the Batman persona) was not a direction I would have gone in. But OK, Pattinson is a good actor so if you can adjust to that choice he does a good job with. The real Achilles Heel of this movie, if you can call the entire movie an Achilles Heel, is the story. There’s too much of it. Too many characters, doing too many things, for too long.
You should never reach the 2-hour mark of a film and only then have the audience meet your main villain and have him get himself captured to kick off an impossibly stupid and complex bad guy plot. Even Christopher Nolan, not known for making his plots linear or comprehensible, had the good sense to make the Joker get himself captured somewhere around the mid-point of the film. By the time you get to the end of The Batman, you are just praying that no more plot threads are going to be dropped into the thing.
The Batman is a film in which the Riddler, Penguin, 2 mob bosses (one off-screen), Cat Woman, a corrupt municipal administration and Batman all jostle for screen time in a jumble of plots including an illegitimate love-child murder revenge arc. One thing this movie does not have is time to spare, and certainly not for that nonsense. Alfred is also in this film, apparently by contractual obligation.
He has only two or three scenes one of which involves him explaining to Bruce that (spoiler warning) yes Thomas Wayne had the mob kill a man, but he was still a good guy and stuff at heart. People make mistakes, Alfred says, like accidentally having reporters murdered. Who amongst us, cast the first stone and all that, right guys? This line is delivered in a way that is meant to be weighty and filled with emotion but of course it comes off as a joke because it’s absurd.
People have also been praising this version of The Batman because it showcases Batman’s detective side. He is, allegedly, the World’s Greatest Detective and here he shows us that, by solving riddles left by a madman, often with an assist from techno-babble. However, when a MAFIA BOSS tells Batman a crucial piece of information, he simply accepts it as the truth with little to no corroborating evidence. The world’s greatest detective - until the plot needs him to be the world’s worst detective.
The over-stuffed plot, too many characters, odd choices and the lean-in on the vampire stuff, as well as the unforgivably super long run-time simply, in the end, make The Batman an irredeemable slog. I was checking my watch constantly wondering when it was going to end, something I never did with another very long, epic movie that was sucked you into a complex, dreary world and made every second you spent there a mesmeric experience.
