Maybe I’m getting super-heroed out but this newish iteration of the Batman story left me cold. I finally watched it on HBO Max but the Blu-ray/DVD is on sale for those who crave “Additional Content.”
It seems like each Batman movie tries to be darker than the film that preceded it. In The Batman, a sadistic serial killer murders key political figures in Gotham. Batman investigates the city’s hidden corruption. And, of course, questions about his family’s involvement arise.
Yes, there’s plenty of action. Yes, there’s plenty of violence. Explosions…check. Cool gadgets…check. Loud music..check. Even though The Batman checks all the boxes, I had that deja vu feeling that I’ve seen all this before. Are you a Batman fan? GRADE: C
I like most of the Batman movies especially the Dark Knight trilogy.. This one though I found overly dark. Often I couldn’t figure out what was going on since the cinematography was so dark.
Steve, Patti Abbott would have a lot of darkness to decipher in THE BATMAN. Like you, I found the film murky.
I am really tired of Batman and all superhero movies.
Patti, DC doesn’t seem to have the movie success that MARVEL does. The MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE appeals to millions of fans…but do causal movie goers want to see more superhero movies. I think not.
Nope. Particularly not uninspired ones. DC is still ahead with tv series I end up seeing.
Todd, the CW network is canceling most of the DC TV series. They will have to find another home. And, the cancelation of the BAT-GIRL movie sent shockwaves through the industry.
I have no interest in comic book movies and wouldn’t mind them if they represented only a small portion of the cultural landscape but they now not only dominate it they overwhelm even much of the conversation about it. It baffles me, makes me sad and has largely killed my interest in going to the movies.
The growing trend of making comic book movies look and feel as if Martin Scorsese had filmed them in the seventies is especially annoying.
Byron, MARVEL and DC tend to aim their superhero movies at younger audiences who tend to watch some of these movies multiple times. I was always surprised when one of my students would tell me something like, “Dr. Kelley, I just saw DOCTOR STRANGE for the 12th time!” The $3 DOLLAR MOVIE DAY brought a lot of people who had stayed away from AMC and Regal Theaters because of the Pandemic.
I’d give it a B- . . . it was better than I expected, and Pattinson was a decent Batman/Bruce Wayne. I decided the best way to watch these superhero movies approaching or surpassing the three-hour mark is to approach them like the old-time serials, just watch a half hour at a time. I wonder if Hollywood will ever recover from Covid’s economic devastation. In the old days, the studios would roll out 10-12 “big” films in the summer, many of them competing for the Memorial Day and July 4th weekends. This summer, aside from the Thor and Top Gun sequels . . .?
Fred, I totally agree with you on the paucity of good movies this summer. TOP GUN, the best of the bunch, pretty much had no competition. THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER underperformed. I’ll have to try your 30-minute watching of 3+ hour movies!
Never been a huge Batman fan, but the recent ones have been way too dark and angst-y for me. Hard pass.
Jeff, for some reason DC execs decided to darken Batman’s already dark world, where MARVEL execs decided to inject more humor in their superhero movies. The Box Office tells the tale…
I don’t mind a good “dark” Batman film. But letting a relative airhead such as Zack Snyder, or the horribly ponderous Christopher Nolan, make them is a Really Bad idea DC keeps repeating. The new one. I’ve watched about a half-hour of it twice, haven’t gotten any further. Not much interest in doing so.
But PENNYWORTH, in contrast, is quite good. TV series on Epix.
Todd, I’ve heard good things about PENNYWORTH. I’ll check it out.
When I saw the first Superman/Batman/ … comics more than 60 years ago I went: WTF???
Never read them nor watched the movies – I always wanted a certain connection to reality like in SF.
Btw that might be the reason why I ignore Fantasy too.
I only had some stories from the Greek and Norse mythology as a teenager – that was it.
Wolf, I got hooked on comic books at an early age–5 or 6–and mostly focused DC comic like The Flash, Green Lantern, and Adam Strange. But, I also read Batman and Superman comics in the 1950s and early 1960s. Then, I discovered The Fantastic Four and Iron Man with MARVEL comics.
I read quite a lot of comics in my childhood. But by my teen years I had put them aside. They did not have enough romance to keep me interested. Or any really.
I knew no girls who even read them as a kid.
Probably why the romance comics faded by the early ’70s. The few romantic//gothic comics amused me at the time.