The Batman branded ‘self-important’ and ‘tiresome’ in first reviews

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Rather than being an origin story, the film begins with Batman having been in the job for just over a year.  

Batman and Commissioner Gordon hunt for a Zodiac-like killer who leaves riddles addressed to Batman at the crime scenes around Gotham.  

The release, based on the DC Comics superhero sees Batman pursue The Riddler in his second year of crime fighting, uncovering corruption that is connected to his own family in the investigation, forcing him to make new allies to bring the supervillain to justice.

An all-star cast sees Robert Pattinson star as Batman while Zoe Kravitz appears as Selina Kyle, or Catwoman.

Also appearing is Paul Dano as Edward Nashton / Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, John Turturro as Gotham City crimelord Carmine Falcone, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth and Colin Farrell as Penguin.

However, while the film was criticized for its ‘overlong’ runtime of nearly three hours and its characters ‘bland’ performances, others were somewhat impressed, simply describing it as a ‘good film’. 

The New York Post‘s Johnny Oleksinski questioned why the film was even being made at all.

‘There’s an unshakable feeling here of “What’s the point?” 

‘Director Matt Reeves’ downer movie embraces the realism of The Dark Knight — the opposite of Tim Burton’s purple-hazed funhouse — only without the payoff of excellent writing and acting. 

‘Whereas previous iterations hid their crimefighting alter ego by being charming, tuxedo-clad socialites at parties, Pattinson’s billionaire Bruce is a brooding recluse who stays home all the time and whom many residents haven’t seen since he was a little boy. 

Oleksinski describes the film as an ‘old-school mystery’ which takes views through a ‘banal story’. 

‘With not much to sink his fangs into, Pattinson is wasted here. Normally, he’s an electric, funny and unpredictable actor — but that’s the opposite of Batman, who hides by necessity. He doesn’t act conflicted, determined or scared — he just seems bored.’ 

Roger Friedman of Showbiz411 says the film ‘brings David Fincher-Like darkness to a young, goth Bruce Wayne and a woke Catwoman.’  

Pattinson’s Batman ‘does more for Bruce Wayne than it has in the past. And he needs it: Reeves imagines Bruce as a disaffected Kurt Cobain with dark circles under his eyes and nary a comb in sight. 

Kravitz’s Catwoman ‘gets the most interaction with Batman’ and ‘has a woke moment describing Gotham society as ‘rich, privileged white people.’ 

‘It is tremendously designed, visually spectacular with great set pieces and juddering, sternum-shivering impacts coming at you out of the darkness.’ 

Writing for the Associated Press, Jake Coyle sees The Batman film as having found its dark tone and then wallowing in it. 

‘There is surprisingly little suspense because the film struggles to find more than one note (powerful though it is) to strike. Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is just as downbeat and grave as his Batman … He has abandoned nearly all social engagement, instead tortuously writing a diary to document the horrors he witnesses nightly. Pretty much since Adam West put on the cape and cowl, Batman has steadily grown darker. But Pattinson´s despondent Dark Knight takes the cake.’ 

‘OK, but does Batman, like, kick some butt, too? What about the Batmobile? It´s not all just a seedy slog through the Gotham sewer, is it? Well, almost,’ Coyle adds noting that the plot is  structured as a detective story and makes for a ‘distinctive work separate from previous movie iterations of the character.’ 

‘The Batman is dark, no doubt about it. Even darker than the already dark Christopher Nolan–directed trilogy,’ writes Bilge Ebiri at Vulture. ‘You might have thought Batman couldn’t get any darker, but you’d be wrong.

‘This is a Batman movie reimagined as a grisly serial-killer film, only this time it’s not just the serial killer who looms in the shadows, watching his prey and waiting to pounce; the hero does, too.

Ebiri highlights some positives including car chases and fight scenes. 

‘Reeves sustains the tense mood throughout, and the procedural elements are mostly absorbing. The action keeps with the austere, grim mood. One nighttime car chase, shot through the blur of heavy rainfall and the delirious dance of car lights reflected in windows, takes your breath away. The fights are often shot in long takes that emphasize both the impressive stunt work and the sheer difficulty of being Batman. And as with the Nolan films, the directorial sensibility matches the form.’

It’s a view echoed by Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian who gave the film three stars a wrote the ‘gloomy reboot’ was ‘overly’ and felt ‘like a serial killer chiller such as Saw.’   

He said the start was ‘intriguing’, comparing it to a serial killer chiller such as Saw that promises a mystery plot ‘for a time’.

‘For a time it promises a mystery plot relating to the theme of municipal corruption which is so important to the Batman franchise, and holds out hope of an unmasking with a satisfying narrative resolution. But not really.

‘The film is overlong; the Riddler’s puzzles aren’t particularly ingenious or even important to the story and there’s a pretty feeble non-ending. The ending is tiresome and shark-jumping in the extreme, with faux-apocalyptic scenes which work better in less solemn superhero adventures.’

Bradshaw praised Zoë Kravitz in the role of Selina Kyle, or Catwoman, writing that her ‘superpower is charisma’ and said that Jeffrey Wright and John Turturro both put in good performances.

He wrote: ‘The ending is tiresome and shark-jumping in the extreme, with faux-apocalyptic scenes which work better in less solemn superhero adventures, and an exasperating non-revelation whose significance is teased for the next film. 

‘Inevitably, night falls on the latest Batman iteration with the cloudy sense that – of course – nothing has really been at stake. A classy turn from Pattinson, however, as the crime fighter with an injured soul.’

Bradshaw does reserve some praise for the overall look of the production.  

Empire‘s John Nugent gave the movie four stars and wrote: ‘Matt Reeves’ arrival in the Bat-verse is a gripping, beautifully shot, neo-noir take on an age-old character. 

‘Though not a totally radical refit of the Nolan/Snyder era, it establishes a Gotham City we would keenly want a return visit to.’

He said the director’s approach was ‘evolution rather than revolution’ and so Pattison’s Bruce Wayne was very different from previous portrayals.

‘Where Christian Bale and Ben Affleck embraced the macho side of the character, Pattinson looks like a boyish vampire, his skin tone only a shade warmer than in Twilight,’ he wrote

‘His is the first screen Batman to be fully seen wearing the eyeshadow… In the suit he’s methodical and muscular; out of it, he’s racked with insecurity and self-doubt. A repeated needle drop of Nirvana’s Something In The Way confirms it: this is emo-Bats.’

The Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin gave the flick a full five stars, saying Pattinson and Kravitz ‘generate an astonishing sensual charge in a brilliant addition to the Batman canon that refuses to behave like a blockbuster’.

While he claims the film has no ‘star turn’ as ‘the film doesn’t have room for one’, telling movie fans to ‘dispel all thoughts of Jim Carrey’s Lycra-sheathed flamboyance (as the Riddler) in Batman Forever’, he insists the set up brings ‘a deep bench of tremendous character performances that add enthralling colour and intrigue to the winding underworld mystery plot’.

He added that ‘Pattinson and Kravitz together generate more sensual charge than entire franchises have been known to muster’.

Kevin Maher of The Times gave the film two stars, lamenting it for its near three-hour length and ‘moody self-importance’ that ‘tries to bludgeon the audience into submission and to distract them from how derivative nearly everything on screen is’.

He seemed equally unimpressed with the star performances, writing that ‘Pattinson, who has delivered so many thrilling turns recently, struggles to elevate his antihero beyond a pouty emo brat’.

However, he praised Colin Farrell in the ‘underused’ role of the Penguin for ‘having a blast throughout’.

The Independent‘s Clarisse Loughrey gave the movie four stars and wrote: ‘The Batman is a very good Batman film. To think of it as anything more only leads to delusion or disappointment’. 

She pitched the flick between Christopher Nolan’s and Tim Burton’s, saying Reeves’ version has ‘one foot in our reality, and the other planted in a Gothic noir aesthetic and comics’.

Clarisse stated that the film seems more ‘intimate’ than other Batman films but insisted it did not need nearly three hours to tell the story of a ‘relatively simple story of its hero’s moral awakening’.

She concluded: ‘The Batman has risen – but it might be pushing its luck if it decides to return.’ 

When you stretch a narrative arc you end up with a flat line, but there’s still plenty to relish: BRIAN VINER reviews The Batman for the Daily Mail

Rating:

Those of us old enough to remember Adam West’s Batman in the Sixties TV series, complete with pop-art ‘Pow!’ and ‘Thwack!’ graphics, have since seen the Caped Crusader fly a long way – although not necessarily in the right direction.

George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck are among the stars who have subsequently played the scourge of the Gotham City underworld, and now, in the latest big-budget reboot of the DC Comics franchise, The Batman, it’s the turn of British actor Robert Pattinson.

He’s perfectly fine both as billionaire Bruce Wayne and his crime-busting alter ego, although the extravagant length of this movie, at just a Zzzzz! under three hours, made me decidedly nostalgic for the caped capers of Batman and his sidekick Robin in the long-ago telly version. 

Just when you think the story’s all done there’s an unwanted added 20 per cent, almost as if The Batman had been crossed with the VAT man.

Director Matt Reeves, who took a whole 36 minutes less to resolve The War for The Planet of the Apes (2017), evidently decided that this time he needed to stretch his narrative arc. 

After all, the illustrious likes of Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton have already made widely-acclaimed Batman films, so how better to create an even bigger impact – Ker-pow! – than with one that cinema audiences might remember for a nasty onset of cramp?

The shame of it is that there’s a cracking movie of little more than two hours fighting – biff! – to get out of the near three-hour running-time. Unfortunately, when you stretch a narrative arc, or indeed any arc, you end up with a flat line. So it is here. 

I enjoyed the film’s two parallel stories – one in which Batman tangles with the Gotham City mob led by Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), and another in which he tries to identify a serial killer known only as the Riddler (Paul Dano) – but they both end up flat-lining long before the 176 minutes are up.

Pattinson plays Bruce as a dour, tormented young man, still uncomfortably in thrall to his spiky mentor and father-substitute Alfred (Andy Serkis), and basically too floppy-haired and miserable for anyone to put two and two together and connect him with the masked vigilante who keeps swooping down every time a bat motif appears, illuminated in the night sky.

The basic premise of this doggedly cheerless film is that Batman isn’t yet a fully-fledged crime-fighter. He’s still finding his feet – not easy in that beefy tunic – and so falls into an alliance with a sexy but embittered waitress, Selina (Zoe Kravitz). She works at the sleazy nightclub run by a scarred mobster called Oswald Cobblepot (an unrecognisable Colin Farrell), and although all comic-book enthusiasts know him better as The Penguin and her as Catwoman, the implication is that those nicknames, even more than Batman, have yet to be earned. 

There’s a striking dearth of humour throughout but a pleasing wink to the audience when Oswald, his feet bound together, is forced to waddle like a certain flightless aquatic bird.

Meanwhile, a sadistic psycho is brutally knocking off the high and mighty but irredeemably corrupt of Gotham City, starting with the mayor (Rupert Penry-Jones). He leaves a creepy riddle at every murder scene, one of many reasons why The Batman feels more like a psychological film noir than a superhero movie, borrowing almost as conspicuously from the likes of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Seven (1995) as it does from its most obvious influence, Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.

But where The Dark Knight (2008) had an unsurpassable baddie in Heath Ledger’s Joker, this film creates a problem for itself by keeping its principal fiend from us (brilliant as Dano is) almost until the end. Another self-inflicted issue is Batman’s voice, a kind of monotone whisper. When he says of the crime-ridden metropolis that ‘maybe it’s beyond saving’, I heard it as ‘maybe it’s Beyonce,’ which seemed like a truly startling guess as to the identity of the killer.

Still, once your ears get attuned, and your eyes too, for that matter, since daylight hardly ever encroaches, there is plenty to relish in The Batman. There’s oodles of atmosphere, and for those familiar with the great city of Liverpool, the bonus of realising that it is Gotham’s stunt double. But none of that can mitigate the challenge to the bladder when – eeek! – you realise that you’ve been in there over two and a half hours, with 25 minutes still to go.

The Batman opens in cinemas on Friday