Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Batman’ on HBO Max, Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s Vital Franchise Reinvigoration

This is not just a Batman movie – it’s THE Batman movie. Why else would it be titled The Batman (now streaming on HBO Max)? Audacious. But – here’s the thing. It backs up that assertion. Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, the last two Planet of the Apes films) and star Robert Pattinson prove to be quite a, dare I say, dynamic duo, revitalizing a done-to-death character/franchise with a fresh aesthetic and ruminative depth that translated to more than $750 million in worldwide box office sales. Hey, The Dark Knight – you just might be on notice. Gotham City might not be big enough for two GOAT Batman films.

THE BATMAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The mayor. He’s being murdered right in front of us. With a carpetlayer’s tool, by a wailing lunatic in a mouth-muffling green mask that looks like the unsettling collaborative product of an s&m house and a military-surplus outlet. Wump. Wump. Wump. Clang. The tool hits the floor. Elsewhere in Gotham City, it’s damp. Mist. Fog. It’s precisely the type of place that can be described with one-word sentences. You know: Grim. Bleak. Gothic. Lubricious. The Batman (Pattinson) speaks in voiceover narration taken from his sadboy psycho journaling: “Fear. Is a tool.” “I am the shadows.” Halting stuff like that. A man gets off at a subway stop and is hassled, cornered, threatened by a group of facepainted goons. Are they Jokerites? Hmm. Then: Clump. Clump. Clump. Boots on the pavement. The score drones – two notes. The Batman only needs two notes. DUM. DUM DUM. DUMMM. Repeat. And again. He emerges from the darkness and makes the creeps curse their own mothers for ever birthing them. Thwapp. Bofff. Zzzzzap. Uhh uhh UHH. Those still conscious whimper and writhe quietly. One scrambles off into the night; maybe he’ll change his ways? The original victim begs The Batman, please don’t hurt me. Please. The Batman just stares.

This is the way it’s going to be, isn’t it? Yes, my friends. It is. This is the way it is in Gotham City. We’re at the mayor’s house now. In walks Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). The Batman follows him. They trust each other. Gordon flies the bat signal among the clouds and The Batman gets to work. Whoever isn’t being put in traction by this crazed vigilante is now scared of the dark. He is the shadows, remember. Gordon and The Batman, they walk into a dangerous locale and The Batman says, “No guns,” and Gordon replies, “Yeah man, that’s your thing.” This is their thing. This is the way they do things. Anyway. The mayor crime scene. The other cops, they look at the guy with the pointy-eared mask with concern and hostility. They don’t want him there because he’s “a freak,” and maybe they don’t want to admit that he’s smarter than they are. He makes observations like a detective. What kind of a detective? A true one? Sure. The killer leaves behind puzzles and clues for Gordon and The Batman to solve and follow. Calls himself The Riddler (Paul Dano). He’s tired of guys like the mayor, the police commissioner, the D.A. They’re corrupt, hypocrites, liars. Why else has chaos reigned in Gotham? And for that, The Riddler insists, they gotta die.

A Nirvana song. No, not one of the uptempo ones. The most desolate one in their catalog: “Something in the Way.” The Batman is out of costume and tearing through the streets on a motorcycle, back to his Batcave beneath the skyscraper atop of which lies Wayne Manor, a dwelling so exuberantly goth you wonder if this iteration of Bruce Wayne is secretly a Transylvanian count. Strum. Strum. “The animals I’ve trapped,” Kurt Cobain mutters. Bats flutter and squawk as the cycle cuts through the cavern. Strum. “Have all become my pets.” Bruce’s bangs hang in his face a lot. He scrawls in a notebook. Two years into The Batman. A project. The smeary black eye makeup that we always knew past Batmen had to be wearing beneath that cowl, but never got to see? There it is. Like he just got home from crying for two hours at a Cure concert. I think he’s addicted. To being The Batman. This is not your father’s The Batman.

Alfred (Andy Serkis), his butler and caretaker, gets to cracking a cypher The Riddler left specifically for The Batman. Bruce, meanwhile, broods. Brooooooooods. And follows the trail as The Riddler claims another victim. And another. The trail gives him frequent audience with Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), who wears a leather catsuit and a hat with seams that make her head look like it has pointy little ears under there. We’ve also got a scarred mobster, Oz (Colin Farrell), AKA The Penguin, and a reclusive mob boss, Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), snaking through the plot. The D.A., Gil Colson (Peter Sarsgaard), is a drophead, a select group of sorry Gothamites addicted to a drug administered via eyedropper, into the eyes. Bella Real (Jayme Lawson) is running for mayor against a recently dead incumbent. The TV news has a text crawl at the bottom of the screen that reads, “Tuesday/51/rainy, Wednesday/54/drizzle, Thursday/50/foggy,” etc. I think you’re getting it: This is the type of insane f—ing place that breeds The Riddler. And The Batman. And gloom. So much gloom.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Seven, Sin City, Blade Runner, The Silence of the Lambs, Heat, Thief. Hitchcock, e.g., Vertigo and Shadow of a Doubt. Detective noir like The Big Sleep and The Big Heat. Bullitt. Mad Max: Fury Road. And The Lego Batman Movie. Very much The Lego Batman Movie.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s an unrecognizable Farrell, who channels classic De Niro into his Penguin and is so vivid and colorful as the film’s ominous comic relief, we’ll soon be rewarded with a Penguin HBO Max series. And then there’s Kravitz, whose take on Selina/Catwoman brings newfound soul and intelligence to the characgter. Who’s better? Flip a coin.

Memorable Dialogue: Bats and Cats:

The Batman: You’ve got a lot of cats.

Selina: I have a thing for strays.

Sex and Skin: None, but if you don’t want to see The Batman and Catwoman f—, you’ve likely lost your mind.

Our Take: So. When The Batman fires up the Batmobile – you’ll lose your mind. The engine ROARS and lights up like fire and although the film was previously quite great, at that point, you’ll be ready to die historic on a fury road for it. What follows is a lava-hot car chase that’s not only thrilling, with flames and wrecks and wipers furiously clearing frigid droplets hammering down from pissing Gotham skies, but has the gall to employ numerous close-ups, and stall it in the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic. These are Reeves’ action credentials at work – The Batman dropping from the top of an elevator car, The Batman swinging into action on grappling hooks, The Batman pummeling his way through a cadre of goons with machine guns in a darkened hallway, bursts of muzzle fire illuminating the outright fist-misery he’s unleashing upon faceless hapless hopeless criminal minions.

Hair-raising action is just one component of this inarguably great Batman movie. The Batman nails the other stuff, too: Farrell, Kravitz, Turturro and a wonderfully disturbing Dano as a rogue’s gallery with personality and vigor. Pattinson as a psychologically damaged weirdo protagonist whose classic orphan issues dovetail nicely with Serkis’ take on Alfred as a father figure. A sure-to-be-underappreciated comedic sensibility subtly threaded through its otherwise foreboding tone. And Gotham City itself, here rendered the mother of all moody movie metro areas, perpetually rain-spattered, looming tall among angry clouds, an early-stage apocalypse in motion. The place moans a minor-key tenor that entices us to get lost in its atmospherics, to truly believe that it’s a place where people can embrace bigger-than-life personalities, and exist so ecstatically on the edge of comic-book craziness. Few films merge realism and fantasy so effectively.

All this is material previously explored by Batman films, but Reeves hones and focuses it, adopting vintage noir sensibilities and culling the looming menace of evil from serial killer films for his aesthetic – a near-perfect blend of fresh and familiar. His decision to tell an early-career Batman story was wise; he shrewdly integrates contemporary politics, class hierarchy and the internet-age social milieu into the rigorous psychology of a vigilante-to-hero arc, with meditation. Those seeking a grim reflection of our times, will find it; those seeking an escape likely will not. And yet, depressive as it is, the film is electrifying, potent, fun. This is a Batman in medias res, and a true character like no movie Batman before him, not doomed to second-fiddle to OTT villains. This is Batman becoming THE Batman, perhaps in every sense of the definite article.

Our Call: The Batman may just be a masterpiece. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.