I saw the newest Batman reboot, The Batman. It was pretty good, earning a solid rating of 4/5 on my Letterboxd. I think this movie lived up to the hype and brought exactly what I was expecting. The Batman stars Robert Pattinson, infamous for his role as Edward Cullen of the Twilight Saga, as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Alongside him is Zoë Kravitz as Selena Kyle/Catwoman. Two things that initially shocked fans about this movie were its tame PG-13 rating and nearly 3 hour run time. I didn’t think the rating actually impacted the movie at all, as it didn’t rely on violent shock-factors as much as its predecessors from Christopher Nolan did. The run time, however, did have a bit of an effect on me, as I admittedly nodded off for during the Riddler’s backstory. Despite this, I still found the movie to be understandable and entertaining.

My first impression of Pattinson’s portrayal of Batman was his emo inner monologue. If you follow Pattinson like I do, you may be familiar with a certain GQ video called “Robert Pattinson Desperately Needs a New York City Hot Dog.” In this video, Pattinson plays himself, telling his intense and manic search for a hot dog through his unique point of view and stylized inner monologue. It is my favorite piece of media ever and also exactly how the opening minutes of The Batman play out. Pattinson’s Batman is also much more of an introvert than Christian Bale’s, which I found to suit the actor more. I liked Pattinson’s damaged-recluse-goth take on the character. The monologued introduction was the basic seriously-toned vague statement of duty that is crucial to many superhero stories, but didn’t deliver too much insight on the new Batman. Gotham surely didn’t know what Bruce Wayne was thinking, and honestly, neither did the audience!

In addition to the portrayal of Batman, I really liked the direction this movie took. Firstly, there was no origin story aside from the typical orphan explanation, we just kind of jumped into Wayne’s second year as Gotham’s Batman. The movie was also more of a noir mystery than a superhero film, which was likely due to the choice of the Riddler as the main villain. This also meant there were few true fight scenes, but a lot of times where Batman just punches someone! The Riddler was arguably just a BatFAN, leaving the vigilante notes and FaceTiming him during climactic plot events. So much of the plot tension was through FaceTime, which though artfully done, may not age well in my opinion…

All thus far has been spoiler-free, but from here on I will be addressing specific and major details so read on with caution!

Something this movie definitely tries to tackle are the shades of the morally gray, leaving very little black-and-white. Like every other Batman movie, The Batman tells the tale of the decrepit and corrupt Gotham, now attributed to corrupt political figures who become mixed in with mobsters and commit a large-scale coverup. The Riddler then targets these “liars” in elaborate murder schemes, though not the criminals who they acted with. We get that the Riddler just wanted to weed out the liars and the corrupt of Gotham, but this still leaves the city broken. Ultimately, the Riddler’s plan is to cleanse Gotham in a biblical fashion, bringing forth a devastating flood.

As these politicians fail in their promise to save Gotham, I questioned how the audience was meant to feel. The movie established that Batman was against the Ridder and the Riddler was against the corrupt government. Clearly, we were not meant to side with a madman such as the Riddler, but wouldn’t Batman also want his city rid of any corruption? Maybe this will be addressed in future films, as I find this concept interesting, but I don’t think this movie had any more space in its run time to flesh all of this out fully.