The Bat­man

It’s the two-let­ter word on the lips of every high-pow­ered exec­u­tive in Hol­ly­wood. The first thing Kevin Feige thinks about in the morn­ing and the last thing Kath­leen Kennedy thinks about at night. I’m talk­ing, of course, about IP. In an era of seem­ing­ly end­less reboots, remakes, pre­quels, requels, she­quels and spin-offs, IP has become the movie industry’s north star – the shin­ing bea­con every big stu­dio guides itself by. As a result, and due in no small part to the high­ly lucra­tive, pre­ci­sion-tooled homo­gene­ity of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Indus­tri­al Com­plex, diverse, orig­i­nal sto­ry­telling is increas­ing­ly hard to come by at the multiplex.

Crit­ics and film­mak­ers who per­haps think them­selves more dis­cern­ing than John­ny Pop­corn™ fre­quent­ly give films based on exist­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty a bad rap; dri­ven by a pur­er artis­tic call­ing and a gen­uine con­cern for the future of the medi­um. But IP is not, as some would have it, a ter­mi­nal blight on film cul­ture. Or rather, it doesn’t have to be. Because just as Bruce Wayne uses his trust fund bil­lions to finance a secret life of vig­i­lan­tism, so too can cater­ing specif­i­cal­ly to a built-in fan­base be a wor­thy endeav­our. IP in and of itself is not the prob­lem. It’s what you do with it that counts. Which brings us to Matt Reeves’ The Batman.

The lat­est DC-Warn­er Bros co-pro­duc­tion may trade on 80 plus years of sweet, sweet brand recog­ni­tion, but it makes a con­cert­ed effort to recal­i­brate Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s cre­ation for a new audi­ence, dis­tanc­ing itself from oth­er cin­e­mat­ic iter­a­tions both tonal­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly. It draws more from the character’s com­ic book roots and recent video game exploits than any pre­vi­ous Bat­man film, owing lit­tle to Tim Bur­ton, Christo­pher Nolan or Zack Sny­der. Cru­cial­ly, it explores the Dark Knight’s che­quered past from a stand­alone per­spec­tive, large­ly unen­cum­bered by the rigid fran­chise mechan­ics to which so many con­tem­po­rary block­busters are bound.

Sev­er­al years after the biggest drugs bust in Gotham’s his­to­ry, the city is still a cesspit of sleaze and cor­rup­tion. At the end of a long Hal­loween, a promi­nent politi­cian turns up dead, lead­ing Robert Pattinson’s grunge prince to a series of ciphers which he must decode in order to appre­hend the man respon­si­ble, an enig­mat­ic edgelord who calls him­self The Rid­dler (Paul Dano). These cryp­tic clues also lead to a nest of lies that will impli­cate some of Gotham’s most senior pub­lic offi­cials, as well as a Pen­guin (Col­in Far­rell), a Fal­cone (John Tur­tur­ro), var­i­ous vul­tures and stool pigeons (the place is a reg­u­lar aviary, but alas, not a Robin in sight).

Putting the prover­bial cat amongst them is, well, Cat­woman (Zoë Kravitz), who agrees to help Bat­man pro­vid­ed he doesn’t inter­fere with her own pur­suit of vengeance. Seli­na Kyle, it turns out, has seri­ous dad­dy issues – and she’s not the only one who’s forced to reck­on with trau­mat­ic events from their child­hood. ​“Are you scarred under there?” teas­es Kyle when Bat­man refus­es to take off his mask dur­ing a twi­light meet-cute. He may not be phys­i­cal­ly dis­fig­ured, but the painful mem­o­ry of his par­ents’ untime­ly demise is etched across his face. Indeed, every char­ac­ter in this film is wound­ed in their own way.

With his crosshair motif, homi­ci­dal ten­den­cies and pas­sion for puz­zles, Dano’s Rid­dler instant­ly evokes the Zodi­ac Killer; his hood­ed mil­i­tary sur­plus cos­tume close­ly resem­bles Robert Graysmith’s famous sketch of the uniden­ti­fied ser­i­al killer. An elu­sive psy­chopath with pre­ten­sions of mar­tyr­dom and a poet­ic (albeit deranged) sense of jus­tice, he’s also an orphan with a per­son­al, not entire­ly unfound­ed, vendet­ta against the Wayne fam­i­ly. In a chill­ing echo of numer­ous real-life cas­es of domes­tic ter­ror­ism, he uses the dark web to incite a vio­lent upris­ing against the wealthy elites who have exploit­ed and oppressed Gotham’s most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens. If Bat­man and The Rid­dler are ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­sites, how­ev­er, it’s telling that both are essen­tial­ly work­ing for the same cause: to rid the city of those who have rigged the sys­tem to serve their own interests.

Crooked cops, a dirty DA, a Machi­avel­lian may­or. It’s not just a few bad apples – Gotham is rot­ten to the core. To that end, Reeves has point­ed to a num­ber of Amer­i­can crime movies from the 1970s as inspi­ra­tions for his noir-tinged detec­tive thriller. Chi­na­town and Taxi Dri­ver are the most obvi­ous touch­stones, but there are fur­ther nods to Klute, Ser­pi­co and The French Con­nec­tion. (Clos­er in the rearview, the film’s pro­ce­dur­al plot and rain-lashed cin­e­matog­ra­phy call to mind David Fincher’s Sev­en, with Pattinson’s ide­al­is­tic rook­ie team­ing up with Jef­frey Wright’s weary gumshoe, Jim Gor­don, to solve a string of elab­o­rate and gris­ly mur­ders.) Much like Jake Gittes, Frank Ser­pi­co and ​“Pop­eye” Doyle, here our angst-rid­den anti­hero ulti­mate­ly learns the truth that fear and pow­er are two sides of the same coin.

The Bat­man takes far too long to arrive at this con­clu­sion (at just under three hours it is the longest Bat­man film to date), and yet the slow­ly dawn­ing real­i­sa­tion that his con­sid­er­able priv­i­lege and sta­tus are symp­to­matic of the bro­ken soci­ety he is com­mit­ted to fix­ing is apro­pos for this less sea­soned, more impetu­ous caped cru­sad­er. Maybe he doesn’t have the cun­ning of Keaton or the brawn of Bale, but in his own unique way Pattinson’s Bat­man feels per­fect­ly adapt­ed for the uncer­tain and unjust times we are liv­ing in, where greed and impuni­ty are the order of the day. And if the film itself isn’t total­ly orig­i­nal, it at least spreads its latex wings in some fun and sur­pris­ing ways.

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