The Batman

I didn't mind it. I thought the subdued tone ramped up enough by the end -- enough to get by, though there's nothing earth-shaking here. It feels unnecessary, but valiant. It trades glamor for subtlety (as subtle as Batman can be, which is not subtle at all), and I always like subtlety. It can't ditch glamor entirely without losing lots of money, but I like that it's toned down. Again, this is all relative to previous iterations, especially the Nolans, which are really glamorous (Batmobile is a tank, Bruce is charming...). Relative to those, The Batman is almost underground. Most severe is Pattinson who doesn't smile once. What's all this for, for his depressive Bruce? The movie didn't give me any sense of his motivations, so I assume they don't exist, which is a big blow to empathetic investment. He doesn't feel human. It feels like he could slip into death at any point without making a sound. His one supposedly human moment with Alfred felt very forced to me. There were some loose threads -- another that comes to mind is the Riddler's bit about being orphan kin with Bruce. That felt underdeveloped or forced. I'm sure it's hard to craft epic Batman villains AND explain their motivations (The Dark Knight just says "some men just want to watch the world burn). I didn't buy the Riddler's motivations. But in a franchise rethinking one can forgive a couple loose threads. Not that a franchise rethinking was necessary in the first place.

I guess I'm fairly sympathetic here, especially given how stupid I find the idea of all these reboots. I didn't mind it. It wasn't great or thrilling or awesome, but I wasn't repulsed, and I think that says a lot. I didn't think it was as cheesy as the Nolans, nor nearly as repulsive as the other DC and Marvel stuff that's going on. Again, more subdued.

I'm ambivalent on Paul Dano's performance. It was one of the least subtle and most epic components. I've written on the progression of Oscar-royal Bond villains -- I resent the perceived need for increasingly alien villains (Skyfall...Spectre...No Time to Die). They're abstract and unrelatable. This trend transcends Bond though. Superhero movies also seem caught in a futile game of one-upping that pulls the ground out from beneath the villains. I understand the principle: the foreign terror is real; meeting these villains is akin to meeting the black hole in Interstellar. But it's getting too obvious and silly, especially for movies trying to be grounded. The Bond franchise has always been hyperbolic, of course, but their attempts to ground it in real human drama have largely failed thanks to ungrounded villains. The Batman is also going for something more subtle and underground than recent superhero movies, including the Nolan iteration -- yet simultaneously participating in the silly villain one-upping. By the end, Dano unhinges whatever subtlety persisted. His talk with Batman in the cell did it for me -- and that was his big moment. It felt like acting. It felt like There Will Be Blood. How do cerebral serial killers speak in reality? I don't know, but I'm guessing it's nothing like this. Hopefully Dano did some research, if not actually spoke to some. It felt ridiculous. Here's Robert Pattinson with his little bat ears, and Eli Sunday Paul Dano shouting pulp poetry at him... don't the actors feel dumb? Dano's performance was arresting, but excessive.

I'd be more qualified to write about all these superhero movies if I read the comics. But I like movies, and I'm interested in movies, and all these superhero movies are pretty questionable, even when fun.

One of my biggest problems here was not understanding Bruce's motivations. It didn't feel like he had anything to fight for, so any failures would feel inconsequential. At least Christian Bale had Rachel and other normal human instincts. Pattinson was a bat cave himself -- cold and empty. I think we need some reason to care about Batman's life and fate. I didn't sense much here. He felt like a martyr just waiting to be martyred for a city probably doomed anyway.