‘The Batman’ Plays Detective in Refreshing Reboot

The Gotham City of The Batman is on fire. Not literally perhaps, but certainly metaphorically; the city’s skyline is frequently rendered in burnt oranges and fire engine reds. The blaze only seems to subside when it rains—which it does, often. It’s in this cleansing rain where audiences first meet the Batman (Robert Pattinson) of writer/director Matt Reeves’ The Batman, emerging out of the shadows to deliver a beatdown to a group of thugs under the self-professed idea of “vengeance.” How Bruce externalizes his modus operandi is typically rendered in platitudes such as this, but The Batman immediately offers a more internalized rationale; before Bruce is seen, he’s heard—with a narration, pulled from the journals he’s keeping—giving context to the latest crusade of the famous Caped Crusader.

The Batman begins with this psychological dive, setting the tone appropriately for what’s to come over its nearly three-hour run time where it functions as a loose adaptation of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s seminal Batman comic, The Long Halloween. Batman soon appears at the lavish home of Gotham’s mayor to assist Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) on a case. Former mayor may be the better term, as he’s the latest murder in a string of killings by an assailant known as The Riddler (Paul Dano). Riddler’s identity is obscured through a Zodiac Killer-like getup, but there’s no mystery to the fact he’s the one picking off notable members of Gotham’s social and political elite, leaving behind notes and streaming video to social media detailing his desire to unveil a twisted web of secrets and lies—some of which are related directly to the deceased Waynes.

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This setup allows The Batman to bypass a traditional origin story and, instead, play with the investigative elements of the hero’s history. Batman notably made his first appearance in 1939’s Detective Comics #27—the very title from which DC Comics draws its namesake—but previous cinematic versions of the character only scratched the surface of his detective roots. This is where Reeves’ take on material shines. The running time allows for the script (credited to Reeves and co-writer Peter Craig) to unspool its knotty conspiracy, one which aspires to the legacy of beloved noir flicks like Chinatown and The French Connection. While The Batman doesn’t quite reach the heights of those beloved genre favorites, it does wholeheartedly—and refreshingly—commit to the trappings of those stories. How the central plot unfolds won’t shock astute viewers but is inspired in how it reshapes the established Wayne family canon. Reeves is also determined in his desire to show Bruce doing the procedural legwork; Batman spends far more time chasing down leads than he does getting into fistfights, but when it is time for a fight, there’s gravity to the vengeance Batman dispenses—each punch thunderously echoes with a definitive tacticity.

From a visual perspective, Reeves is worthy of inclusion alongside Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan in creating iconic Bat imagery. Those who watched Reeves’ respective Planet of the Apes prequels or even saw the scale of what he did with Cloverfield knew his skill, but The Batman is awash with striking iconography. The film’s late 2021 trailer already caused a stir by concluding with the “upside-down” shot, but Reeves isn’t content to rest on one good moment alone; He dots the landscape with a handful of other masterful moments—including a static hallway gunfight where the only source of light is that of flashing, firing gun muzzles. These striking moments are bolstered by a career-best score from Michael Giacchino, who forgoes the thumping strings of Hans Zimmer for stagey sounds in the lineage of Danny Elfman and John Williams.