Blog
The Batman
3/20/2022
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Let's just go ahead and get this out of the way; this is the best Batman movie we've ever gotten. I'm sure people have their preferences and I'm sure there are complaints people have about this the same way people have about everything... but we've never gotten a take on Batman that looked this good, that sounded this good, and... this is the part I'm really excited about...
Managed to so perfectly, effortlessly, flawlessly recreate the actual Batman canon in a way that actually satisfied ME. Of course, the movie made tons of it's own stylistic choices that were unique to this property. This Barman looks and moves and works in a way totally unique to any version of Batman we've ever seen, but he does so in a way that fully fulfills every single idea about Batman I've ever had. |
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I'll talk about some of the stuff in this movie I love, but since this website is about comic canon, I really wanted to start out by pointing out some interesting canon choices made here. (Spoilers, obviously, but if you somehow managed to find and read this blog without having already seen this movie... how did you do that?)
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The extremely fascinating choice I wanted to talk about was obvious the moment Alfred walked on camera... walking with a cane, and sporting a goatee. This is Batman: Earth One, a very specific imprint of graphic novels published in 2012, all designed to reimagine DC's core characters for a modern era. The revelation should have been an obvious one... this is where we get the idea of the Riddler being a serial killer.
As the story went on and Martha Wayne's maiden name was revealed to be Arkham instead of Kane, and the plot referenced Thomas Wayne's mayoral run... I don't think I needed a specific reference source material to explain the distinction between this version of Batman and the one allegedly still running around the DCEU proper, but it still blew my mind when I discovered that there WAS one. |
Even with this going on, it's hardly the main appeal of the movie. Every character is being built from the absolute core of who that character SHOULD be... This is the most accurate Catwoman, the most accurate Commissioner Gordon, the most accurate Penguin.... Carmine Falcone is talking about the night that Thomas Wayne took a bullet out of his shoulder on the kitchen table of Wayne Manor, for crying out loud. It's deeply, deeply satisfying in a way that had me continually just shaking my head in amazement.
But it doesn't stop there. I just want to quickly point out a few of my favorite elements of this movie...
But it doesn't stop there. I just want to quickly point out a few of my favorite elements of this movie...
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You read a lot about how they actually show Batman's eye makeup when he takes his mask off, and about how that's an example of this version being incredibly real-world... but I actually think that's way more of an awesome stylistic choice. To me, this is a much better example of an old standard of the Batman mythos being made better by giving it some real-world consideration.
If you're holding a grapple gun, and you use it to swing off a building... that's going to yank your arm out of its socket, and the shock is going to make you lose your grip and fall to your death. In this movie, Batman's grapple launchers are holdouts that pop out of his gauntlets. |
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This means that the technology to support them is actually integrated into his suit. Which means he actually can have structural support built into its framework that allows him to actually USE the thing. I wish I could tell you why I love this so much, but it just fills me with glee that they thought about this.
Remember when the Nolan Batman movies were making a big deal about how realistic they were? Even at the time, I remember thinking... who in their right mind would take a comic book character and want the movie to look realistic? Gotham shouldn't look like the real life streets of Chicago, it needs to feel like something otherworldly... a city that could never exist in the real world, caked in choking, omnipresent STORY. There were moments in this movie where they panned through the city and I just gasped. This isn't a series of real life American cities standing in for Gotham. This is GOTHAM.
Holy. Shit. For a solid five minutes this became a full-on monster movie.
Ultimately, though... The thing that made me really fall in love with this movie was pretty simple. They did exactly what I've always wanted a Batman movie to do. Just take these characters that I love and just do them justice.
Ultimately, though... The thing that made me really fall in love with this movie was pretty simple. They did exactly what I've always wanted a Batman movie to do. Just take these characters that I love and just do them justice.
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At some point, I don't remember specifically when, I realized that the movie had gotten everything so right that I had actually just settled into a warm, comfortable rhythm with it, and was now just enjoying a cool Raymond Chander style murder mystery. The movie was so gorgeous and so competent in the execution of it's particular vision that it wasn't even TRYING to sell me on the concept of Batman anymore. It had NAILED Batman, and now it was just telling me a great story.
Then, you realize that the movie is actually depicting a shift in Batman himself. It's actually giving him a story arc, and you're watching him grow right in front of you... and they're GETTING IT RIGHT. |
I think that, when speaking from the vantage point of this website, I can safely say that I'm among the biggest, hardest to satisfy fans for a superhero movie to try to win over... so for me to say that this movie did absolutely everything right and is now a definitive moviegoing experience for me... That's saying something. Thanks Matt & company.