We are planning his first murder, one of several that take place between October 31 and November 6. It is the POV of the Riddler, a simultaneously horrifying and pitiful Paul Dano. These justifications are not wholly satisfying, or novel (see: Batman Begins or Arrow) but it provides audiences a narrative they can hold on to and allow them to make jokes about how “clearly” Batman has issues.Īudiences are implicated in the first shots of the film lifted from Halloween (1978), in case it being set on October 31 was too obvious for you. Trapped by this knowledge of Batman’s corrosive qualities, The Batman searches for a means to justify its violence, the reasons we justify violence and allow ourselves to become incorporated into the myth of Batman. The Batman is acutely aware that Batman bludgeoning people is bad, and asks the audience: why do you keep coming back to this figure? What is so broken that you turn to themed vigilantism for narrative justice? In this film Robert Pattinson’s Batman isn’t far removed his nemesis the Riddler, or Captain Carnage and Rorschach. It reframes the normative question of cinematic violence.
With a post-cinema scopophilia Matt Reeves, cinematographer Greg Fraiser, the host of VFX teams, and editors William Hoy and Tyler Nelson, reflect the terminal broken qualities of Batman, Riddler, and all of Gotham City back on to the viewer. As a sequence it captures the strange cocktail of dread, veneration, and wonder contained in the word awe that is beginning to develop around the Batman two years into his war.Īwe is a spectatorial, audience, position and that is what Reeves turns the above back on the viewer. What stands out is the sound design, the hits land harder than Sal Maroni’s compounding ankles in The Dark Knight. The choreography and its editing aren’t overly stylized. This violence isn’t new, it’s not that far removed from the start of Batman (1989).
The sequence as a whole carries on a long tradition of racial coding and criminality. It slowly walks out of the shadows in the opening sequence of the film as Batman demolishes a gang of skeleton themed people. There is something off about the Batman, a recognition of something darker that underlies the self-deprecating jab in Batman Begins about how “a guy who dresses up like a bat clearly has issues.” That gnawing tension runs through Matt Reeves’s new film, aptly titled, The Batman.
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