People and their opinions can be typed in many ways: do you prefer meat or vegetables?  Ginger or Mary Ann?  Republican or Democrat?  Batman or Superman?  For me, it has always been Superman.  As a kid I think I liked the bold colors, and the fact that he could fly.  Plus, it’s always been easy to know where he stands, and there is nothing nobler than to be Defender of the Planet.  Batman, always in black, is a much more ambivalent hero, and that has only increased since 1989 when the big screen blockbusters about him began to appear.  To be perfectly honest, I still prefer the 1960s television version of the Caped Crusader.  Maybe because it boasted bold colors, and was funny.  I’ll take Adam West as Batman over Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, Will Arnett or Robert Pattinson.  Sacrilege?  Maybe, but it’s how I feel.

Matt Reeves’ take on the Batman urban legend furthers all the dark themes that I have never much appreciated.  His Bruce Wayne / Batman (Robert Pattinson) is so full of anger and thirsting for vengeance that he could be a villain himself.  And that single statement summarizes why I prefer Superman.  The Man of Steel could never be a villain, despite some tendencies in that direction in recent movies, made (I think) because younger filmmakers want to see their superheroes compromised and flawed.  While otherworldly Superman has acclimatization to accomplish and a weird family history to overcome, he is, has and always be a good guy.  Batman is far different; nothing comes easy to him and his past is so full of tragedy and darkness that his journey toward the light is always a struggle.  That’s fine, it certainly makes him more interesting as a character, but it gets old.  And Matt Reeves’ version of the tale wallows in its darkness.

We barely see Bruce Wayne; Batman is almost always front and center, and his Clint Eastwoodesque monologues only make him seem psychotically introspective and probably dangerous to everyone around him.  He is often monolithic; so is the movie.  The few genuine action scenes are underwhelming and don’t seem to make much sense.  Batman looks like he drives a turbocharged dune buggy when he isn’t motorcycling around Gotham City.  Easily the brightest spot in this dark morass of a movie is Zoë Kravitz’s turn as Selina Kyle, a sort of Catwoman lite.  Running nearly three hours this movie doesn’t move at all for long stretches, all the more time for Bruce to brood and The Riddler (Paul Dano, unrecognizable until the last half hour) to create criminal mayhem because he was an orphan.  For a movie that takes so long and looks so expensive to make, this thing has the weakest story to tell of any Batman movie I’ve ever seen.  The mob, really?  Murder because of misspent Renewal money?  What a disappointment.

Viewers seem to love these psychologically stunted superheroes and villains of the Batman oeuvre.  Two actors have won Academy Awards for portraying the Joker!  Long ago Tim Burton’s films made this universe seem attractive and special.  Then came Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, which is absolutely revered, mainly it seems for being darker and more troubling.  Since then things have turned even darker, especially Joker, which is essentially like watching someone lose their mind.  I’m not a fan.  I don’t really get what this movie was trying to do, since it does so little and takes so long to do so little.  Every one of these films has (it seems) made the point that Batman is so troubled that he is almost a villain himself, and I’m tired of it.  Sure, there’s drama in that premise, but there is almost no drama or action in this movie, which looks like it belongs in the 1940s era of film noir.  I found it to be dull and pointless, though it is occasionally amusing.  But I’ll stick with the ancient TV series.  ☆.  29 November 2022.