Culture Crash: The Darker “Batman”

While it may still be early, one of the most anticipated movies of the year has already hit theaters in Matt Reeves’ new movie The Batman.

It’s a broody, dark movie with an incredible broody, dark score featuring an almost three hour runtime. While that may sound intimidating, I have to say that as a huge Batman fan, I loved it. The movie stars Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader and Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, and it is definitely the Batman film that most reminds me of reading a Batman comic. It’s shadowy and grimy but full of rich characters and a lot of clever turns. Batman has a real emotional arc over the course of the film, and he and Catwoman have a perfectly antagonistic relationship that’s reminiscent of the best Batman stories, where those two are drawn to each other like moths to a flame.

The movie has a very distinct, dark visual style. And while it does take some adjusting to, I found that the film ends up being unique and beautiful to look at and, on the whole, The Batman is a home run of an adaptation. For fans of Batman, this was definitely worth the wait and with more to come from Matt Reeves’ bat-world, which has an HBO Max spin-off series in development and hopefully some sequels in store, this is definitely a movie worth seeking out in theaters. The Batman is now playing.