The Batman, My Rambling Review

This one is definitely okay

(Spoilers, kind of. I didn’t understand the central conflict, so I’m not sure how much I could tell you that would over inform you.)

I like the way in which Batman movies get reinvented every few years. It’s a little different from how other stories get redone now and again in the medium of film.

Putting aside capitalism and the drive for profit, a core motivation that seems to go into redoing a lot of movies is to do it “right” or “better” this time. From adaptations of Shakespeare to Dune, when a new version comes out, there’s usually a sense of, “for real this time.”

The way Batman movies are being reinvented every few years, though, seems at this point to have lost the pretense of trying to improve on previous versions. Or even really reference them or bother to take them into account. We get a trilogy or so of some version of Batman, and that ends or fizzles out, and then we get another trilogy of another version of Batman. One creative team had a go at it, and now another one is.

It’s not totally consistent or any kind of rule or anything, but we can talk about Tim Burton’s Batman as opposed to Christopher Nolan’s Batman, and we don’t have to wonder what their relationship is. It’s just like how we’ve always had different versions of myths from different authors, like there are versions of tales about Hercules by Euripides, Ovid, and others.

I think this is a good approach for stories that revolve around iconic characters that mean different things to different people. It’s a way better approach than trying to tie everything into a “multiverse”… But don’t get me started on that.

In any case, with this latest version of Batman, I think because of this commitment to regular reinvention, it’s pointless to ask if it’s better or worse than any previous version we’ve seen. It’s better to ask what does it do to evolve the mythology of Batman in general. Does it just rehash tropes, or does it innovate?

Batman in his early days… sort of

It’s mentioned a number of times throughout the film that Batman has been active for about two years before the events of this movie. I was never clear, though, on why this was important to mention. He doesn’t seem to be less capable or anything, so it doesn’t feel like we’re seeing Batman in the early stages of his crime fighting career, when he might be still learning the ropes.

That would be an interesting take, seeing Batman fail sometimes in order to learn lessons that force him to hone his craft. But that’s not what we’re getting here. All those mentions of two years of active duty so far are just for… texture, I guess?

In his two years, Batman seems to have earned an exceptional level of trust with Gordon, who in most tellings of Batman is chief of police, or commissioner. In this movie, as we’re told over and over, it’s early days, so Gordon is still a detective working cases, and is totally fine with Batman coming to crime scenes to help investigate things.

Most of the police seem to be a little uneasy with that arrangement, and for good reason. At one point Batman picks up something off a table, and an officer objects, stating that this violates “chain of evidence.” Evidence, I’ve come to learn from police procedural dramas, needs to have everyone who handles it clearly documented, so that there’s no chance of tampering. Gordon dismisses the officer’s concerns by saying that Batman is wearing gloves, to which the officer doesn’t say, “what the fuck has that got to do with anything?”

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems pretty obvious that having some anonymous vigilante loitering around active crime scenes manhandling evidence would be something any public defender on their first day could use to completely invalidate just about any case against anyone.

At best, for the purpose of justifying any liaison between Batman and the police, he could be looked at as some kind of consultant or confidential informant. But his anonymity and lack of credentials make him an outright liability when involved directly in investigative procedures. So, Batman’s regular mingling with the police was all just kind of silly. Batman should be more on the down low.

Batman Vs Inevitability

There’s two main conflicts. One is that there’s some kind of corruption problem, where most of the city’s politicians and ruling elite are connected to organized crime and… uh… doing bad stuff? Taking drugs in a club or something? I don’t know. There’s mention of a drug called “drops,” but, are the politicians facilitating its supply or something like that?

Maybe I missed something, but it seemed to me that all the actual crime we’re told about happened off screen, and often with characters we may not have even met. So nothing really made an impression. All I was clear on was that the politicians were snorting “drops” off of the chests of sex workers in club basements, something that I don’t think merits the need to fire up the Bat Signal.

What was clear is that it gets mentioned a few times that if the good people of Gotham found out about what was really going on, it would “tear the city apart.” This is the most outrageously fictitious part of the movie, where suspension of disbelief breaks, the idea that anyone anywhere would be shocked to find out politicians are corrupt.

The Riddler is fine too

The other big conflict has to do with The Riddler. In this version, he’s depicted with a distinct serial killer vibe, something akin to the Zodiac Killer, who taunts police with coded messages, mixed with a kind of Ted Kaczynski style ego that’s desperate to be acknowledged. Very different from the more playful and cartoonish depictions in just about every other Batman universe. I’m not sure it was a better or worse decision, but definitely different.

I thought The Riddler’s riddles and clues were all pretty good. I bet it took the writers of the movie forever to dial in the right level of puns and obscurity so that the riddles were just right for Batman to look smart by solving them.

The only problem was that I never fully understood what The Riddler was ultimately after. It seemed he had a grudge against a bunch of people from his childhood that he was jealous of, maybe? But somehow instead of just killing those people, he wanted to kill them one by one, and then destroy the whole city anyway? He was operating alone for the whole movie, and then suddenly in the later stages of the third act he has a whole army of wanna-bes to call upon?

It was all kind of anticlimactic anyway, because the Riddler’s army attacked some political convention or something armed with rifles, but we had established very clearly that Batman’s suit makes him entirely bullet proof, so in the final battles it never felt like Batman was really in danger at all. And even though some bombs went off and caused flooding in the city, Batman didn’t seem to do anything to really mitigate the water destroying stuff. He more or less just let the destruction play out, and then pulled the mayor elect out of some debris when everything was more or less settled.

Oh, by the way… didn’t the mayor elect get straight up shot with a rifle? She went down like a bag of wet cement so I thought she was dead on the spot. But then five minutes later she’s running around like nothing happened.

Maybe I missed something because this movie seemed to have reached an ending about eight different times, and I was getting tired and unfocused by around ending number four.

Also, the movie is a bit long in general. They make the mistake of thinking that just because things happen slowly then that makes it more dramatic. It doesn’t, it’s just slow.

Oh, and there’s a guy dressed like a bat

Batman himself was overall pretty cool. The fight scenes were decent enough, the muscle car version of the Batmobile was pretty satisfying to watch, and I liked the slightly more hand crafted bat suit.

You could see, for instance, the hem of his pants, as opposed to a lot of recent Batman designs where his suit looks like a wholly integrated high tech shell that would require a team of engineers with the most sophisticated equipment to build. Here, everything the Batman had looked like it could have been put together by one man. I mean, obviously some of the technologies and capabilities were complete fantasy, but, just in terms of ambience, I could suspend my disbelief to suppose that this one obsessive rich dude had lone wolfed all his Bat Gear.

The one area where Batman fell down for me was as his alter ego Bruce Wayne. I’m not the first to point out that it’s less contrastive and interesting if Bruce Wayne is just as mopey and dark as Batman. But on top of that, as a secret identity, it seems pretty weak if you are frequently in the public eye acting like an outcast loner, wear black all the time, and show up to events in a muscle car not too different from the one Batman drives.

I feel like Bruce Wayne works best when he’s depicted as a deliberate act put on by Batman to be a frivolous rich playboy who is too concerned with having a good time to care about crime or politics. The whole point of a secret identity is to throw people off, not just be what you happen to look like when you dress more casually in your off hours.

Catwoman is also in this movie. She’s all sexy and shit. She’s fine.

This whole movie is fine. If you’re looking for a Batman story, this is one of those.