Review of The Batman (2022) by Edelgardvonhres — 06 Mar 2022

I was incredibly excited for Matt Reeves' take on Batman, being a fan of his work beforehand. Every trailer and photo I would see from set would make me more and more excited and finally the day came and as I sat through the nearly three hour film, I was left.

..disappointed. Not because the movie was bad by any means, but because it didn't feel complete. There was no big resolution, there was no tense final standoff and battle of wits. It just...happened. And before I knew it, the film had ended.

There was so much potential to be touched upon and I really thought we were finally going to have a Batman movie that could explore parts of Batman that had never been explored before on the big screen.

Instead, we were left with an incredibly safe Batman movie that lays down tons of groundwork and definitely sets something up with it's diversity in characters, but other than that really just did not feel like it had a purpose to exist other than to sell merch and keep people interested in the future of DC by saying that SOMETHING may come eventually.

I have to hand it to them, because the casting was wonderfully done and I fully appreciated the performances that Colin Farrell and Paul Dano put in as Penguin and Riddler respectfully, and Robert Pattinson shows promise as Batman.

There was a lot of things to like here and a lot of things to hate, both culminating in a film with notable spectacles and great action scenes that were too few and far between for me to praise them enough.

I really wanted to like this, but there were multiple moments that made me genuinely tired and bored, and even some that irked me, mostly the handling of Catwoman's ambiguous sexuality and her whole character motivation just being downright meaningless.

The Batman could have been so much more than just another safe DC film, and it honestly felt like it was marketed as such. I'm hoping that this is just growing pains for the new DC movie lineup and that by the next entry things will be settled in, but for now I worry for what comes next.