By 
One thing quite a few of us all have in common around here is that we have mostly seen 2022’s The Batman just once. A combination of the near 3-hour run time, and the fact it can be quite a challenging movie to love, has put many of us off.
I know, I have felt a need to revisit it, having only seen it once on release. I remember liking it OK, not loving it. Mostly my feeling was a sense of gratitude that they had even allowed a Batman movie like this to be made.
And yet… whenever I got ready to cue it up for a second viewing I would think of the 3 hours stretching out ahead of me, sigh, and select something that involves Jason Statham punching people for 100 tight minutes instead.
Given the news that the sequel is coming into land, and with a generally positive reception (from myself included) to The Penguin and the expansion of this version of Gotham, I decided it was time to get my game face on. So I poured an extra large gin and tonic, settled down free of distractions, and got this done. It was time to revisit The Batman.
A number of things stood out. Upon completing it, 24 hours after watching The Penguin episode 1, my overriding sense is that this world is deep, rich, potentially very interesting, and all fits together well. Does the potential of The Penguin make this world retrospectively more interesting? Perhaps, perhaps not, as I noted quite a lot more along the way in my rewatch.
Starting Not Quite At The Beginning
The opening scene is a brutal murder, and it is brutal. It skirts just along the right side of the line to retain a PG-13. On reflection, it is easy to see how this movie could have been R-rated. It sets its stool out hard, and early.
Between the murder and the next opening scene, I was struck this time around by how much it manages to deliver in terms of scene setting in such a short period, especially considering the run time ahead of us. The Riddler is established as a psychopathic threat capable of real violence even in the heart of the Mayor’s mansion. This carries on into a film noir voiceover that tells us just what we need to know.
“I wish I could say I am making a difference. The city is eating itself…”
The rain, the constant low-level threat of violence, and criminals becoming genuinely scared of what might now be lurking in the shadows waiting for them, it all works rather well and establishes things as if already in flight. No need for yet another origin story.
The detective side of the Dark Knight was always talked about as being in the fore in the version, and we also get that straight away. The next scene establishes Gordon and Batman are working together, and the police barely tolerate the existence of this vigilante. It’s here that I pick up one of the little things I had somehow completely missed on my first viewing.
Batman stares for a little bit longer than is comfortable at the Mayor’s son, another child of Gotham losing a parent in unimaginable violence. The look he gives the boy is a tiny moment of humanity, but also obsessive, fixated.
There are lots of things I start to notice, as the movie goes on, all outlining that there being very little of Bruce Wayne left in there at this point. This is all Batman.
There Are Bats In His Belfry
This is something I really notice in this movie as it plays out. This version of Bruce Wayne simply is Batman. He is obsessed with being Batman, and cares not for his own background. In fact, he very rarely actually appears as Bruce Wayne in the entire three hours, and when he is, he’s in this universes version of the Batcave. The only other time he is really “Bruce” is when at the mayor’s funeral, at the hospital, and when he uses “Bruce” as a face to get him into the Iceberg Lounge.
He hasn’t yet developed the Bruce Wayne persona and that seems completely deliberate here. One of the common complaints is that he was whiny-Emo Bruce as opposed to his playboy cover. This is something else I kinda failed to pick up on the first time around. There are lots of little moments around this, too.
Alfred warns him about having nothing left if he completely neglects Wayne Enterprises and what is required of Bruce Wayne. Indeed, the accountants from Wayne Enterprises are mentioned as being inbound for a meeting to outline exactly that. What about his Wayne legacy? An angry Bruce responds:
“This is my families legacy”
He’s not over THAT side (the Wayne side) of his personality yet. He’s obsessed with being Batman. He talks about pushing himself even further, testing himself. He wants to expand Batman, but doesn’t seem to care at this point that it is eroding Bruce Wayne, as he has no need for him.
Alfred gets it, and tries to coach him, but Bruce storms out with a stinging rebuke to Alfred that he’s not his father.
Another little moment, a little touch, here is that Alfred then sees that Bruce was reviewing his recorded footage of the investigation and has again fixated on the Mayor’s grieving son.
I am going to keep mentioning these themes of little touches and moments because, for some reason I cannot fathom, I seemed to have completely failed to register most of them the first time around. There is a lot more grown-up stuff here than I appreciated.
Riddle Me This
The riddles are nicely twisted and challenging. One of the fun things with any Riddler story is playing along at home. “Thumb Drive” is a particular favorite here. The Riddler is playing with Batman, with everyone, and really is a dark reflection of Batman who wants to punish all of Gotham instead of save it, and Bruce Wayne of the Wayne family is on the list.
His inventive deaths for people he has deemed corrupt and in need of punishment are nicely dark, growing more ostentatious as he gets more confidence. The police chief is offed with a cage of hungry rats around his face. This is not Joel Schumacher stuff.
Batman is trying to stop the Riddler, and the corruption that drives the Riddler’s obsession doesn’t dawn on Batman until he gets much closer. The failing Gotham “Renewal” project. Thomas Wayne’s involvement in saving Falcone’s life, the fact the biggest bust in GCPD history that put Maroni behind bars might just be a massive put-up job, with half the city elite in on it. There is good stuff here… but you have to watch The Batman, I mean really watch it, to get to some of it.
Maybe last time around I wasn’t leaning into it and engaging, because I am leaning into it this time and I am finding much more to like, a lot of it very understated and subtle.
Switching Pace
That is not to say it doesn’t have action among the little touches and all that detectoring. It flowed and moved better than I remembered,like a great big… well… detective story. If Hercule Poirot was replaced by a man dressed as a Bat who beats up the bad guys.
Shortly after picking up the trail, Batman just walks up to the door of the Iceberg Lounge – “I want to see the Penguin” – bludgeons his way in with brute force and proceeds to smash the place up until he gets to Oz.
Maybe I was struggling to reconcile things the first time around? This time around, I like the switches in pace.
After some more mystery unraveling, we get to meet Catwoman, and very soon she’s in a fistfight with Batman. Refreshingly there is no waif-like woman taking down a man here, after an initial moment of surprise from Bats that this girl has some skills, bang, bang, bang, she’s floored and pinned in three moves from Batman.
There are a number of complaints I could reel off that I hear a lot, and shared, about the movie that seemed to evaporate on this viewing.
Batman and Catwoman spend a lot of time flirt-bickering, which is directly out of a lot of comics. Her chiding him for assuming the worst in all people, and seeing it hit home, was nice.
Alfred is as useful as Batman here, hinting at his past service and with his side of desk homework being as useful as Batman’s own efforts to solve the mystery of what is happening, and why. He also keeps pushing a resistant Batman to unlock the Bruce side of his life, for his own good. As he tells him:
“You have to keep up appearances- you are still a Wayne.”
Indeed, the first dawning realization that Batman needs Bruce Wayne, and the importance of the mask, comes when Alfred is hospitalized and a nurse asks Bruce if there is any next of kin to notify. A moment of genuine regret passes over his face as he replies:
“No… there is just me…”
The realization of the mask and the need for it starts to bite.
Another common complaint is how Batman just stares at a bomb. That is not quite what happens. The phone has been ringing endlessly for hours when Batman re-emerges at the cathedral. He is there working with the victim to solve the riddles and disarm the bomb. It is the actions of the victim that cause the countdown to not be halted, something that looks a real possibility until the victim does what he does.
When Batman tracks down Oz as they suspect he is the informant who opened the door to the Maroni bust, he is himself at a drug deal and responds to the appearance of Batman and Gordon by starting a firefight, that is what triggers the car chase. It is the interrogation by them both, Oz’s comments on capture, after Gordon loses his temper and screams at Oz, that sets up the final twist regarding the identity of the Maroni informant.
Another complaint was the constant return to the Iceberg Lounge. I remember thinking “Not that fucking nightclub again!” when watching it the first time. Here I realise that Batman visits the club on three distinct occasions with three totally different personalities.
First, he is Batman. The second time he is using Wayne and appearing like a drugged-up rich kid, third time around he’s in full stealth mode. Being more invested in the story I found it less annoying, and appreciated those three different personalities for three different purposes.
Renewal Is A Lie
The 3-hour runtime starts to become more absorbing when you revel in some of the detail. The deep corruption of Gotham is interesting, and obviously they have just scratched the surface.
The Wayne family and the Arkham family being the Gotham equivalent of the Kennedy’s and the Roosevelt’s, complete with some deep secrets, obviously have huge potential as this starts to be uncovered in a sequel. As Carmine tells Bruce – “You thought your father was a boy scout!”. It is also obvious that Alfred holds a family secret about the night Bruce’s parents were killed.
The scene with Batman and the now captured Riddler in Arkham has a lot of levels, with the Riddler revealing his link to the Wayne’s that strikes at Batman’s core, and maybe manages to touch something he had buried.
Indeed, as Batman’s last line in the movie says:
“I am starting to see now… vengeance won’t change the past… I have to become more…”
So this is the theme. The first time I saw The Batman, did I somehow fail to actually watch it? There is nothing worse in the world of movie fans than somebody telling you that you need to “watch a movie properly” to “get it”, or saying you didn’t like a movie because it was too subtle and clever for you… but that is almost what I ended up accusing myself of here.
How the hell was this such a different movie for me the second time around? What did I do differently? This feels like a confession could be buried in here somewhere.
Is it that I simply didn’t “get” this movie first time I watched it? Or am I guilty of confirmation bias this time around? Am I going to have to watch it again? Do I even have time?
Oh… FFS!
The post THE BATMAN Revisited appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
