‘We wanted to make him someone whose real superpower is that he will endure anything to do what he has to do’
It has been a recurring joke among superhero movie fans how dark DC films are, both visually and on the text. It even made “Deadpool 2” where Wade Wilson told one character, “You'’re so dark. Are you sure you're not from the DC Universe?” To which DC’s “Titans” had a hilarious response. But in the case of the highly anticipated 2022 movie “The Batman,” going even darker has given the Caped Crusader a fresher story.
Director, writer, and producer Matt Reeves brought to the screen beloved characters from the “Dark Knight” comics and past movies and presented them in a new light, including protagonist Bruce Wayne. The film centers its plot on young Bruce, who for the past two years, has been roaming the streets of Gotham at night to fight crime whenever that iconic bat signal on the sky appears.
What’s remarkable about this new Batman movie is how Reeves created the Dark Knight’s origin story, not in a way that Bruce’s past is depicted through lengthy monologues (image that in a three-hour movie) or seeing the usual formula where his parents die at gunpoint. In this movie, Batman is a detective—an often forgotten aspect of the caped crusader. And as he connects the dots and the schemes of social media-adept, terrorist-like villain, The Riddler, his tragic past also comes to the surface. As a viewer, it is nice to play an invisible Nancy Drew with him as the film goes on.
“I wanted to start not with an origin story, but with a young Batman—to see the arc of him pushing to become better,” Reeves says. “So, we’ve taken that Batman and are having him solve a mystery in such a way that is not an origin tale, but refers to his origins, shaking him to his core.”
“He connects to people because of the suit, the car, the gadgets, he’s super cool... But he’s not really a superhero,” the director adds. “Under all of it, he’s a human being and he’s driven to try and make sense of that human side of him. That he has that heroic drive to make the world better—but face it, he doesn’t do that in a purely altruistic sense—makes the character approachable.”
Robert Pattinson’s performance as the titular role also adds a layer of humanity to the Batman character. Unlike other DC heroes, he doesn’t have superhuman powers, only a lot of money as Ben Affleck’s Bruce said. In the movie, Pattinson’s Batman is raw, traumatized yet kind and concerned.
“The Bruce characterization felt different as well,” Pattinson says. “He’s alone and isolated, as well as compelled to do this thing. There’s even a kind of hopeless desperation, and that was an interesting interpretation.”
Apart from Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman is also captivating on the screen. Her Selina Kyle is enigmatic and at the same time reckless. Colin Farrell is unidentifiable as crime figure Oz before he fully embraces his better-known alias, The Penguin, and offers something to laugh at in the moody film. John Turturro as crime lord Carmine Falcone presents our wicked real-world dilemma. While Paul Dano’s performance as The Riddler has a disturbing intensity, far different from eccentric Jim Carrey character in the 1995 “Batman Forever” movie.
There are a lot of things Filipinos will love and find totally relatable in “The Batman” movie. There’s the election, the power of social media, and, in a weird way, that crazy flooding toward the end. After sitting in the theater for three hours, viewers will definitely see a superhero, not as a symbol of power, but of true hope that could help save people and place as gritty as Gotham City, making it the perfect beginning to whatever is in store for this Pattinson-headlined “Dark Knight” installment.
“I always find that, with genre work, the important thing for me is to find a personal avenue in, and Batman stories allow that,” Reeves says. “We wanted to make him someone whose real superpower is that he will endure anything to do what he has to do.”
“The Batman” is now showing in Philippine cinemas. What its trailer below.
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