I was watching Matt Reeves' The Batman again last night, the first time I've seen it since seeing it in the theatre. My initial impression of it being the most vanilla Batman movie remains. The Tim Burton ones, the Christopher Nolan ones, even the Joel Schumacher ones, always felt like they were trying to do something radical. Reeves' movie takes the radical aspects of those films--Burton's gothic aesthetic and Nolan's grittiness--and deploys them as standard issue. The actual plot is mostly procedural and reminds me more of the animated series than of any of the comics. I'm still puzzled that some called it the darkest Batman movie. None of the main characters die and Paul Dano's performance as the Riddler is about as zany as Jim Carrey's, albeit with Zodiac killer dressing. The ending is certainly more softball than one of Burton's or Nolan's.
I guess the only aspect I really think pushed the envelope was the score by Michael Giacchino which is mostly low key and seems to be built entirely around Nirvana's "Something In the Way". I suspect a lot of the praise for the film was politically motivated as the plot deals with class resentment and touches on privilege, not only financial but also racial. These aspects are dealt with at about the same level of sophistication as an episode of Columbo. Bruce Wayne is shown to be flawed, almost childlike, for his low capacity for empathy. The line "I am vengeance," always seemed like it was meant to be powerful in previous incarnations of Batman; here he's openly mocked for it.
But I find these political elements mostly unobtrusive in the film which is more concerned with how point A connects with point B, with how one clue leads to another, with how one character's connexion to another is relevant to motivation. It has some of the fetishistic qualities of the Burton and Schumacher films as Reeves doesn't feel Nolan's need to maintain a sense of realism at all times. It's fun.
The Batman is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.
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