The Batman review By Barry Dutter

My first reaction to the Batman movie was that you could cut Batman out of the movie and it wouldn’t change the movie much at all. He’s completely inconsequential to his own movie!

In the course of the movie, the Riddler kills every person that he wants to kill (except Bruce Wayne), succeeds in flooding Gotham city, and then turns himself in at the end. I feel like this exact same chain of events would’ve occurred whether Batman was there or not.

That’s some really bad storytelling you’ve got there when you could pull the hero out of the movie and you still get the same basic story.

Batman really accomplishes nothing in the movie other than beating up some henchmen and solving some riddles. The dramatic peak of the movie comes when Batman realizes that his job is not just about scaring criminals; it's also about helping people. So we're supposed to feel he's had a major breakthrough when he lights a flare and helps some civilians  move from a flooded part of a building to a slightly less flooded part. That's a hell of a hero's journey there! 

The movie is three hours long, and I suppose the nicest thing I can say about it is that I didn’t fall asleep in it. I did fall asleep during BLACK WIDOW and SHANG CHI, so I guess it’s got that going for it.

I don’t know why they stole Darth Vader‘s theme as the new Batman theme.

My biggest take away from the movie I've always liked the Nirvana song, “Something in the Way,“ and it is used twice in the movie. So I give that song a nine out of 10. A very moody, evocative song that’s different from your typical Nirvana song. The movie is a four out of 10. 

One thing that becomes clear when you watch this movie is that Marvel definitely made the right choice by going with no secret identities in the MCU. In the MCU, everybody knows that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Everybody knows that Steve Rogers is Captain America. Etc. etc.  Other than Spider-Man, who is a borderline MCU character at best, no one in the MCU has a secret identity. 

When you watch the Batman, can you see Bruce Wayne putting on a mask that shows his Bruce Wayne eyes and his Bruce Wayne nose and his Bruce Wayne mouth, and no one makes the connection that this wealthy, famous philanthropist is the Batman. It does push disbelief a little bit. As much as secret identities are a treasured part of comic book lore, it might be that in 2022, audiences are too sophisticated to buy that premise anymore.

Or it may be that once you get past the age of 50, some of the tropes in comic books start to seem a little silly.

Robert Pattinson is fine as Batman, for the most part. His Bruce Wayne seems a little too emo for my tastes. And I definitely didn’t like some of the goofy facial expressions Batman makes in the final battle. It was almost like he was thinking, “I got through the whole movie without any memes! I need to make some goofy facial expressions at the end, just to really generate some great new memes!“

I didn’t like what they did with the Riddler at all. Didn’t like his costume or his "Zodiac/Jigsaw/Kevin Spacey in Se7en" persona. This movie wanted so bad to be SE7EN with Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington, I’m surprised they didn’t have BATMAN find CATWOMAN‘s severed head in a box at the end.

And now for the stuff I did like: the car chase was cool, easily the best part of the movie. You can see why that’s the highlight of the trailer. Colin Farrell did a great job as the Penguin. He’s so good in the part, you kind of wish the movie had been about him instead of the Riddler. By the end of the movie, Paul Dano goes so over the top with his portrayal of the Riddler that it makes one miss the subtlety of Jim Carrey. (Sarcasm alert!)

I’ve never been a big fan of Matt Reeves. His best movie was the CLOVERFIELD, and that wasn't that great. Then he did the last two films in the recent PLANET OF THE APES trilogy. Those were just okay.

So I don’t know that he was the best choice to be the new voice of the Batman franchise. I don't see that THE BATMAN was any better or worse than Zach Snyder's BATMAN V. SUPERMAN. If you take out the Martha incident, (and his insane desire to kill Superman), Snyder’s take on BATMAN wasn’t that bad and honestly really not that different from what Reeves gives us here.

Throughout the movie, bad guys are constantly shooting at Batman, but bullets just bounce right off of his bulletproof suit. But his eyes and mouth are exposed, so that raises the question: why doesn't anyone shoot at his eyes and mouth? 

If you want to watch a three-hour movie about a hero who accomplishes nothing, then THE BATMAN is the film for you. I just wish it hadn't taken him three hours to do so little. Doesn't Batman have some movie-editing software in the Bat-Computer?