Minor spoilers ahead.
"The Batman," directed by Matt Reeves, is a lot. It's three hours long, introduces a new version of Batman (Robert Pattinson) and Gotham City, and juggles a lot of secondary characters and villains. I like that it treads some similar ground to "Batman Beyond," with an inexperienced Batman still in the early days of his career, but also has very specific ideas about the character that undermine parts of the superhero's familiar mythology. Its influences are clear - David Fincher films like "Se7en" and "Zodiac," "The Long Halloween" Batman series, and '90s grunge music. Pattinson's Batman feels more like The Crow at first, a tortured soul who spends a lot of time brooding over his personal traumas. However, this is also a Batman who is still in flux, still building his persona and making a lot of youthful mistakes.
Gotham City is the most impressive part of "The Batman." It looks absolutely terrible, a grim, decaying, urban nightmare, where crime has steadily been on the rise for years. Reeves manages to make it feel both grounded in reality, using the imagery of serial killer media, and also very stylized. Bruce Wayne lives in an ornate Gothic mansion. Criminals in elaborate makeup run rampant. The Riddler (Paul Dano), is a serial killer who appears in a bulky military cold weather mask, and uses some killing contraptions that wouldn't be out of place in the "Saw" franchise. The whole aesthetic leans toward horror and psychological thriller territory, with very rough-hewn imagery. There's a bat signal, but the image hardly looks anything like the Batman symbol. At the same time, this is a film where Batman's reputation is so potent that criminals are spooked by shadows and the mere possibility of his appearance.
Viewer reactions will certainly vary, but I liked having such a long "Batman" movie because it gives Reeves the opportunity to tell a sprawling, complicated detective story from beginning to end, and give his Batman a full and satisfying character arc where he gets to change as a person and as a superhero. I think this is a very good sign for any future sequels, because Reeves can tell a wide variety of Batman stories depending on how the Pattinson Batman develops along the way. In this film, I think Pattinson is a decent Batman, but his Bruce Wayne is an almost comically angst-ridden shut-in. It works for the purposes of "The Batman," but only just barely. The characters around him are more successful - I really like Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, the only cop in a corrupt department who Batman trusts. They partner up to solve the Riddler case, with Gordon getting him access to crime scenes. Zoe Kravitz plays a version of Catwoman who is mostly on the side of angels, waging a personal war against mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and his cronies, including the up-and-coming Penguin (Colin Farrell). Wayne family caretaker Alfred (Andy Serkis) makes a few appearances, but they're pretty much limited to passing along information about Bruce's parents.
All the familiar elements of a Batman story are here. Action fans should be reassured that there are cool fight scenes, motorcycle chases and car chases with a new Batmobile, plenty of gadgets, and a big disaster sequence for the finale. However, they take place in a Gotham where it's frequently raining, the cinematography is chronically dark and murky, and horrible, disturbing murders seem to happen every ten minutes. There are plenty of one-liners, but the delivery is bone dry. This is one of the least child-friendly pieces of "Batman" media that's been made yet, and I suspect that's a major reason why the movie hasn't done as well at the box office as some of the others. Adult Batman fans are going to love this, but it's going to be challenging for more casual viewers and newcomers. Then again, "Joker" made a billion dollars, so I understand why Warners was willing to take a chance with this approach.
Part of me is curious as to what the Ben Affleck version of this movie would have looked like, but I'm very happy with "The Batman." There are things that didn't work, and aspects of this version of the character I wish had been explored more, but overall this is a very mature, very thorough and intelligent reworking of Batman that is perfectly suited for 2022.
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