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THE BATMAN (2022) - Spoiler/Reaction Thread


Dolfan in NYC

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One major note on the second viewing that I didn't really notice or rather give much thought to...

Bruce tells Alfred,  "I mastered [my fear]".  But there are at least three major moments when he's really scared. It was a very nice humanizing touch to the character that Pattinson did. 

And with that in mind, I think this is the most "human" Batman has ever been on screen. Certainly the most empathetic.

 

 

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Caught this earlier with my dad, brother, and our nephew. We all all came out enjoying it a good deal.

For me its definitely in the upper echelon of live action Batman movies and Batman movies in general. I thought most everyone delivered good-great performances and the story was solid all around. It was nice seeing the Detective side of Batman really play out on film. I appreciated that they managed to use elements of Hush and Long Halloween without feeling like rehash of what Nolan's Dark Knight did. Patterson's Batman was interesting. I like that idea that he is still early in and driven mostly by grief and rage and how that has shaped Gotham to some extent the past two years. The story did a good job of driving this point home and showing him the need to change both in his role as Batman, his role as Bruce Wayne, and even in his personal life to a degree. Zoe Kravitz was wonderful as Selina and managed some good chemistry with Patterson. That was kind of impressive considering the aspects Patterson was focused on. It will be a shame if we don't see the two together again after some time when Bruce has lightened up to some degree. This was not the version of Riddler I prefer, but I can't argue it wasn't well done. I dug Wright's Gordon. They captured the relationship between him and Bats kind of perfectly. I could go on and on about positives, but I got other stuff I want to do.

Only thing I probably outright was disliked changing Martha to an Arkham. That was a whole other bag of crazy I would have preferred not attached to Bruce. Besides that I will say you definitely feel the time. It didn't really bother me, but I can't help but wonder if there bits somewhere that could have been cut to shave off 15 minutes or so.

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It didn't feel like three hours but at the same time, I'd glance at my watch and think "Wow, a lot has happened and they are still a ways off from the ending." The result is that I felt like this would have been an awesome TV show.

 

Also, the over-repetition of Bats theme/motif had me imagining all the things he does while an ominous "dun dundun dun" played in the background. Walking to the bathroom. Going to get a drink from the fridge. Going through a store looking for his particular brand of eye black.

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I liked it a lot. I didn’t realize how much I missed real art direction in these movies. Batman is put in situations we haven’t really seen him in before onscreen where it feels like he’s actually sharing space with a tangible world populated by real people. I like how he gets around the city inconspicuously on the bike between Batmaning. 

The Bruce/Batman coalescing arcs are neat here because it’s explicitly the vengeance vs hope story, but there’s also the internal class war he’s experiencing. There are a lot of parity scenes where the same people who are disgusted by Batman are delighted to meet Bruce. It’s like Batman is partially a way for Bruce to experience being marginalized, but he doesn’t realize his single-minded lifelong Gotham project has isolated him from the people he’s trying to help more than even his wealth and privilege has. 

The first draft of Batman 89 had Bruce as a sullen, awkward orphan man-child and Batman as his more charming and compassionate counterpart. They’ve almost arrived there with this take and Pattinson’s aura. If Bruce is the cover and Batman is who he really is then it would stand to reason he’d be more comfortable in his own skin under the cowl. It’s an electric performance. 

Serkis is good as Alfred, but his thread is just Bruce shitting down his throat in several scenes so that they can have an emotional beat in the last act. I also wish they’d fleshed out Gordon’s background with Batman a bit more since he goes out on the most treacherous of limbs for him in nearly every scene.

I liked some of the score (the piano coda, the Elfmanesque funeral piece) but it is all over the place. 

It’s a “Batman Movie” in a way we haven’t gotten in a long, long time. I’m glad we finally got a movie about him earning the city’s trust. This is pretty much the movie I wanted when I was 14, so I wish I loved it instead of just liking it a good deal. Its biggest issue is that at the end of the day even well-made Batman adapted media is entering an absurdly oversaturated market. 

Edited by (BP)
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On 3/14/2022 at 3:18 AM, Dolfan in NYC said:

One major note on the second viewing that I didn't really notice or rather give much thought to...

Bruce tells Alfred,  "I mastered [my fear]".  But there are at least three major moments when he's really scared. It was a very nice humanizing touch to the character that Pattinson did. 

And with that in mind, I think this is the most "human" Batman has ever been on screen. Certainly the most empathetic.

 

 

The tweet you posted is one of the most moving Batman moments ever in any medium.

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I hate the idea of that scene in the movie and the Joker character design is Gotham tv show quality, but it’s cool to see them having a low key conversation.

I like the idea of a sequel where Batman is like, “I’m not Mr. Vengeance anymore I’m Mr. Hope. But this guy I maimed and disfigured a couple of years will Not. Let It. Go!”

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FOohRJvUYBg_0vM?format=jpg&name=medium

Liking the look of The Joker and performance by Barry Keoghan. I thought they'd go this route than a Joker who paints his face as seen with Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight with and Joaquin Phoenix's Joker in the film of the same name. This amount of disfigurement differentiates him from previous Jokers. The Joker is a big role, a coveted part and rightly so. Be interesting to see how Keoghan's take turns out but least he'll know he'll never be the worst Joker ever both in live action and animation also. Looking at you, Jared Leto!

Edited by The Natural
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Someone out there has combined the top half with the bottom half so we get more of an idea of the whole face:

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Composition:

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I'm all for the Reevesverse with how The Batman turned out and the iterations of Batman, Catwoman, Riddler, Penguin, James Gordon, Alfred and now the Joker.

Edited by The Natural
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