Batman Movies Need To Go Back To Their Roots
General Reviews
What do you think of this opening for a movie?
A man on the street holds a clown mask. Cut to two guys wearing clown masks ziplining from the window of one skyscraper to the roof of another. The men prepare to rob a bank, but one of them shoots the other and leaves him. Three other robbers storm in and start taking hostages while the guy from the roof drills the safe. One banker rebels and shoots two of the robbers before getting shot himself. The robbers start killing each other as they've been instructed to do by their employer, so they don't have to split the money. There stands one last robber who goes over to the rebellious banker and delivers an iconic line revealing that he is in fact the Joker before leaving a smoke grenade in the banker's mouth and leaving with the bus full of money.
Now compare that to this:
Open on a wide shot of a dark city. The buidings are tall with a modern gothic style. The camera pans to street level where hoards of people are making their way through the streets. Out walks a father with his son and wife dressed very nicely, clearly on the wrong side of town. They're trying to find a cab, but they keep getting scooped up. Their search leads them further and further into dark alleys. Creepy atmospheric music plays as the family treks through the alleys full of haze and distaste. Two men jump out at them, hitting the man over the head and pointing a gun at his wife. The two guys rob the man and run away. The music picks up as we see a cloaked figure on a rooftop. The two men talk about their big score when they see something on the platform above them. It's Batman!! His cape flows with signature style as he jumps down to fight them. He makes quick work of them, but before he goes he makes sure to say "tell your friends about me, I'm Batman". The Batman theme plays as the crooks look around having no clue what to think of this mysterious Batman.
These are the opening scenes to my two favourite Batman movies, The Dark Knight and Batman (1989). Which one did you think sounded more like a Batman movie? In my opinion, it's the latter, being Tim Burton's Batman. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is regarded as one of the best movies of all time, let alone Batman movies, but reading Batman comics my whole life and consuming almost every piece of Batman media available, I can't help but appreciate Burton's take on the character more. Personally, mood and atmosphere are the things that I love the most about him, and they're a crucial step in everyone's portrayal of the character.
Gotham City in 1989 is dark and haunting. It's unlike any city that anyone has actually been to. Steam and smoke bubble out of nowhere and the streets are filthy with trash. The Victorian architecture really stands out, providing a great place for Batman to hang from. I wouldn't say that Nolan's Gotham isn't cool, but it leaves a little to be desired, not distinguishing itself from the cities that we see in real life. Nolan's scripts are masterful and the action is great (of course, it's Christopher Nolan) but Burton put an extra amount of style into his movies that makes them uniquely Batman to me.
Although the start of these movies are very different, I've found that they both have similar plots. Common criminals are afraid of Batman until the Joker comes and starts terrorizing the city in dramatic fashion. No matter what Batman and the police do, the Joker is 10 steps ahead of them. Both movies see the Joker giving up his money, either raining it over the city or burning it, and creating ransom videos for the public to see. There are more examples of similarities that are pretty obvious if you watch the two films close together. When reflecting on the movies, it's clear that the Dark Knight is an homage to Burton's film just spiced up for modern audiences.
There's another common element between Batman 89 and the Dark Knight trilogy. They were both darker takes on the character after the previous releases of Batman. Burton changed the public's view of the character after the campy Adam West films. The Dark Knight re-introduced a dark Batman to audiences after George Clooney's cheesy Batman and Robin. Since Nolan's trilogy, the general consensus of Batman is that he is meant to be a dark character as the dark movies are much better than the cringy light-hearted films. I don't necessarily disagree with this idea. However, I think the big thing that Batman movie fans miss is that there's a difference between darkness and realism.
I do love the Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan has created some of the best Batman media that we've ever seen. His grounded approach to the stories worked great and the realistic villains worked with the aesthetic he was going for. Even though almost everyone loves these movies, their mainstream success has created a false perception of what a good Batman movie should be. I think that the trilogy has had too much of an influence on Batman content and traps creators in a box when trying to write a new Batman screenplay.
In 2022, I was very excited to watch The Batman. I had read Batman comics and watched the older movies my whole life, and I was now old enough to watch my first Batman movie in theatres. It was also going to be my first date with my would-be girlfriend of four years. She knew nothing about Batman and I promised her that she was gonna love it. Sadly, I found that The Batman was not the greatest interpretation of the character, especially for new viewers.
There's very few movies that I hate. I am usually able to pick out elements that I like in subpar movies and have a general appreciation for them. However, the more you care about a certain movie or intellectual property, the more chance there is for you to hate it when it takes a different direction. I know that the general consensus is that The Batman is a good movie, but in all honesty, I hate it. It had the potential to be my favourite Batman of all time and the fact that it fell so flat on such a good foundation is frustrating. The movie makes some questionable creative decisions that I feel like no one talks about. I think that's why it's stuck with me for so long... Oh what could have been.
I really like the design of Gotham in The Batman. Being dark, rainy and crime driven, it's similar to Burton's. Gotham really feels like a place that needs Batman. I love Batman's suit so much. It looks like an armoured version of the Arkham video game suit. It's actually perfect.
Now to the things that irk me about The Batman. I hate the Riddler in this movie and being the main villain makes his presence impossible to look past. His costume design sucks. The Riddler is one of Batman's most compelling villains, with an eye for theatrics and pride for being the smartest. I don't know why they chose to have him wear a gimp and a boring trenchcoat. The Riddler is supposed to be an attention diva who wants to be recognized for his intellect. The Batman makes him seem like a common psychopath that could oppose any hero. Matt Reeves just took this character in the wrong direction. The Riddler has his signature threats to Batman throughout the movie saying "This is the Riddler speaking". These are a reference to the Zodiac Killer, which is who it feels like we're watching, not the classic Batman villain Riddler. I just don't understand why they would pull inspiration from a real life serial killer when there's years worth of comics to draw inspiration from.
He's not the only one with a bad costume. What is up with Catwoman's mask??? Why is it just a small piece of fabric covering her nose?? It looks really strange in my opinion.
It's not just the strange costume designs that have me so riled up. Overall, the story is confusing and slow. The detective-style movie seems to pull characters from nowhere, which diminishes their value, and it all comes down to an anticlimactic finale. I think that if the Riddler was the same character he was in the comics, the movie could have followed a more cohesive plot instead of the slow burn of discovering a case that the audience has no interest in finding out in the first place. Maybe it would work if this was the tenth movie in the series and the mystery flipped everything that we knew on its head, sort of like Captain America Winter Soldier, but we have no idea what mystery they're trying to uncover here. It's the first movie!!!!
I think that the creative team behind this movie got too caught up in being "realistic". Instead of making a comic book accurate villain gleeming with life and personality, they decided to strip away all of his features to preserve realism for the audience. In my opinion, this is simply boring.
I blame Nolan for making Batman too realistic. I think the general audiences get confused on why they like his movies. I also like a dark Batman, but people think that a dark Batman means a realistic Batman, which I disagree with. I love Nolan's trilogy and he decided to go with realistic villains (without super powers) as it works well with the setting. One of my favourite Batman villains is Bane. For the Dark Knight Rises, Nolan decided not to use the supersoldier who can grow three times his size with a special venom like in the comics. Instead, he chose to just make him a very strong man with expert planning skills. A decision that fits the movie but doesn't make Bane any more memorable than the countless supersoldiers we've seen in superhero movies. I think that's why it's not as talked about as the Dark Knight.
Modern takes on Batman suffer from this way of thinking. I think that Matt Reeves's film with that much style and creative art design should have played into the more fantastical elements of Batman. I'm not saying that Bruce Wayne should be fighting aliens on Mars. I just think that it would be nice to see some more traditional takes on Batman characters. Burton pulled off his villains perfectly with the Joker going crazy after falling into a pool of acid, and, in his second film, the Penguin trying to take over Gotham with an army of penguins. I don't see anyone complaining about realism in these movies. I think The Batman would have been a lot better if they weren't afraid to play into the quirkiness of the story.
I know that some people like the realism in Batman films and that superpowered villains might take the immersion out of it. Personally, a man dressed up like a bat, jumping from rooftops fighting crime is already enough to break the realism for me. I didn't fall in love with Batman for realism. I prefer to watch for the unique style and compelling characters. I doubt that it will happen, but for The Batman II coming out in the future, I would love to see darker versions of villains like Mr. Freeze or Solomon Grundy, both villains with supernatural abilities. In my opinion, this would embrace the stylistic choice that they are going for and still tell a dark story that doesn't take itself too seriously (it is a superhero movie after all).
With the DCU's Brave and the Bold film being announced, I have hope that Batman will get another fantastical story. I hope that the movie is able to switch some things up for the character. Considering he will be in the same universe as Superman, there should be some room to get creative. There's so many more ways to explore the character if the creators are not grounded in realism. We could get to see a Killer Croc or maybe a Poison Ivy. Maybe someone could return from the dead in Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus pit. As a Batman fan, these ideas make me way more excited than just Batman fighting a weird looking gangster or a boring psychopath.
Although I have a strong distaste for The Batman, I can't help but to feel excited to see where they take the character next. Both with James Gunn's DCU Batman and Matt Reeves's The Batman II. I hope the creators are thinking about the same things I am and portray the characters in a more interesting fashion. I think they will find that if they tell compelling stories, audiences will forget about realism all together.
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