08/03/2022
A totally fair review from a good friend.
Ok, I finally got around to seeing BATMAN and I just don’t get all the gushing for this flick?
I’ll start with a short list of “pros” before exhausting you with longer list of “cons”.
Pros:
I liked the muscle car version of the Batmobile, although 1 scene wasn’t enough footage.
Batman’s suit design was great!
Its seemed like Batman knew how to fight, but considering he wasn’t fighting any serious villains, it was hard to say?
The movie leans on Batman, the Detective, which is equally as important to the character as his fighting prowess!!
The Penguin was just about perfect!
Jeffery Wright was a solid Gordon, although I rarely care who plays Gordon.
Now for the bad:
Slowwww & boring
Zoe Kravitz is simply stunning but the only thing I liked about this Catwoman was her fighting, other than that this version is barely recognizable as Catwoman? Furthermore, the Cat/Bat chemistry was dull and there’s no sexual tension built through flirty fun fight scenes, so the “relationship” seemed forced and weird?
Why must every main villain be a knockoff of the Joker?! This Riddler was garbage and although Dano is usually great, he must have just finished watching a Nick Cage film marathon because he was channeling Cage’s performance in FaceOff in a shockingly similar fashion, dare I say, completely ripping it off?
Alfred is way too smart for what occurred in this movie, so what happened was dumb! If you can’t tell, I’m being cryptic to avoid spoilers!
Like I said, the Batmobile was cool, but Batman sure was responsible for killing a dozen or so people while chasing down the Penguin? I can get behind the theory that Batman doesn’t worry about collateral damage affecting the criminal types, but Batman doesn’t EVER just throw caution to the wind and endanger innocent civilians, EVER!!! So even though the car is cool, that s**t was stupid!
So Batman/Bruce is smart, right? When bombs countdown don’t we usually run from them? Dumb scene followed by another dumb scene.
I don’t usually notice the score of a film but when I do, it’s usually for bad reasons, and this might be one of the worst scores I’ve ever heard! From so many scenes with sappy sad “love song” music, to a big fight scene at the end with music that sounded just like the theme that always accompanies Darth Vader in Star Wars?
Considering that I hate Christian Bale’s fake Batman voice, so much so, that he’s my least favorite Batman, something was “off” with the way Pattinson sounded in the Bat suit? Pattinson is a perfectly fine Batman and a bit weird as Bruce Wayne but his voice is just maybe too soft or too meek and it just didn’t sound right to me, but obviously I’m particular about a few things, maybe?
Almost done here, but I do need to say that I have zero issue with Batman being dark and heavy, but if the movie wasn’t fun, you made it wrong, and sorry but this movie wasn’t fun, it was dour, like the even less fun, Batman Begins. The car, the gadgets, the over-the-top villains can all be fun to watch while Batman is as serious as a heart attack, except here in Matt Reeves’ Batman, the entire film is overly serious and not a lot of fun.
“It can’t rain all the time”, except in Gotham, where it rains every single day?