The Batman
The Batman (2022)
Director: Matt Reeves
Actors: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano
Synopsis: The Batman (Robert Pattinson) is forced to deal with a serial killer, The Riddler (Paul Dano), who is terrorising Gotham City and targeting high-ranking officials.
Review: It must be so hard to do something genuinely new with the Batman saga (and arguably a sizeable portion of fans and casual punters aren’t that fussed about the necessity for it being original anyway), and although Matt Reeves does make attempts to inflect the tired subject matter with some virtuosity, the universe’s over-familiarity and essential stodginess overrides any novelty – to my mind, at least.
Reeves makes many sage choices though: we’re thrown straight into the narrative, there’s no origin story, and Batman is imagined as a fairly realistic character – there’s certainly none of the militaristic-tech fetish of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. It’s also the most fully realised version of Gotham City I’ve seen on screen, and Reeves does make some novel cinematographic decisions (Batman has a voiceover – at least in the first half of the film, and POV is used intelligently to reflect the genuine danger and peril of Batman’s attempts to defy gravity).
Stylistically and in terms of narrative though, The Batman feels just so, so familiar. The neo-noir aesthetic owes more than a little debt to Blade Runner, and the labyrinthine machinations of a criminal mastermind nod explicitly and diminishingly to works such as Seven and even to Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
And reference to Nolan’s Dark Knight films further pinpoints an issue I have with The Batman. Although Nolan’s trilogy was unquestionably earnest and explicit with its thematics, they were operatic, dynamic and sure-footed dramatically. The Batman just doesn’t have the same swoon, if it is a little cooler and a touch more goth emo in aesthetic. (March 2022)
Patrick Nabarro 
Most of the more negative reviews I have read including yours, make it very apparent you do not understand what Batman is. His world is dark, his motives will never change. Batman is a character defined by his trauma and desperation for Justice. Batman lives deeply inside his own mind (justifying the voiceover narrations you actually liked) The familiarity is that you can’t change these characteristics without destroying the point of Batman. Christopher Nolan’s trilogy gave us an origin already. The focus of this film is to show Batman is a detective. A very good detective in a dark chaotic city.
absolutely, you cant have “your own interpretation” of a well know character . movie was absolutely terrible .. thankfully they deleted the silence of the lambs scene when batman the greatest detective in the world and one of the smartest characters goes to consult the joker??
The movie sucked