After Ben Affleck delivered the characterization of a Batman superiorly stocky, almost faithful to the one presented by the bulk of the ‘Batman’ comics, and long after Christopher Nolan recreated what many consider to be the best saga of the Dark Knight (with Christian Bale at the helm), the critics wondered what remains to be shown of the black-cloaked superhero?
The answer is simple: recreate a much darker character than his predecessors.
Toby Emmerichpresident of Warner Bros. Picture Group, said the difficulty any filmmaker faces is “create a Batman that is attractive, dynamic and excitingbut unlike anything we’ve seen before. Who can reinvent it? Who can find a sensibility that has not already been explored?
That feat led the studio to Matt Reeves (director of cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and war for the planet of the apes). “He is a world builder,” Emmerich said. “His films have a weight and a darkness to them, but there is still a popular sensibility”.
Director Reeves’ take on the DC Comics hero, delivered by the star of Twilight Robert Pattinsonis brutal, says Peter Debruge, critic of Variety.
“It was not at all what I expected, I mean that in the best possible way. It’s not just a new story, but an extensive crime saga in the style of film noirthree hours long, which delves even deeper into the psychology and sociology of the superhero than into dark knight (2008)”, explains Debruge, who is editor-in-chief of film criticism in the mentioned publication.
In his words, “what makes the movie so great is his willingness to dismantle and interrogate the very concept of superheroes”. For Debruge, Reeves strips the genre of the supernatural elements of it (even more than the Nolan trilogy, he says) and introduces a more complex version of a hero. pulp classic that, morally speaking, is a minimum distance from the bad guy in the story.
“While these movies are generally defined by their villains, batman gets under the skin by asking: What if the good guys aren’t really the good guys? What if the person we were counting on to protect us could be making the situation worse?”
the dark in batman is pervasive and literal, agrees AO Scott, of New York Times. From the setting (the film starts the week after Halloween) to the personality of the nocturnal masked man. “The on-screen incarnations of the character have been purged of any trace of playfulness or mischief. We know him as a brooding avenger”, points out the expert cinephile and literary critic.
Similar to Debruge, Scott believes that Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne will subject the audience to scrutiny by wondering if we’re actually wrong about Batman, or if he’s wrong about himself. “Can’t say I had a good time, but I ended up somewhere I didn’t expect to be: elooking forward to the next chapterScott points out.
“It often seems to have more in common with serial killer sagas like Se7en and Zodiac that with anything in the snyderverse or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The future of Batman has arrived with a shocking forceto, for better or for worse”, complements David Ehrlich, of Indie Wire.
In Ehrlich’s words, the best part of this Batman belongs in another genre entirely, as Reeves stubbornly avoids the usual plot in favor of a hard-nosed murder mystery in which the world’s greatest detective turns out to be a heavily tortured billionaire. with an inexplicable phobia of bats.
“It is those brief (and very rare) action scenes that best illustrate the defiant anti-block buster of the movieas Reeves designs them with much more emphasis on the thrill of close-ups than on the big-screen end result.”
A similar idea is shared by David Rooney, chief film critic of The Hollywood Reporter. “Reeves’s film emphasizes the realization that at some point, someone (probably Christopher Nolan) decided that Batman movies should no longer have flashes of humor. But at no point during the considerable three-hour runtime did my attention wander.”
For the veteran, the fun comes from the thrill and thrill of shots like the electrifying chase on a bridge in which the Batmobile endures explosions and a wall of fire like a performance car. Also because of the sexual tension, in the dangerous charm between Pattinson’s Batman and Selina Kyle’s Zoe Kravitz“an elusive creature of the night with a rubber fetish wardrobe, formidable movements of kick boxing and an agenda of revenge that sets her on the path to becoming Catwoman.”
Reeves delivers a great movie, says Rooney. Does it extend the definition of escapism into immersing us in a fiction that reflects the toxic cynicism that pervades our 21st century reality? Maybe. “But this grim study of crime and punishment is meticulously crafted, a narrative vividly inhabited with a cohesive and thoughtful vision, and that makes it a muscle entertainment”.
Until a day ago, the site Rotten Tomatoes, review and reviews for film and television, rated the film with 91% positive votes, considering it to be a “supernoir gloomy and exciting batman It ranks among the Dark Knight’s darkest, and most thrillingly ambitious, live-action outings.”
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
