I have seen this movie twice now, and I might need to give it a little more thought, but right now I am going to say that The Batman is my favorite Batman movie. I think that Matt Reeves and crew did an amazing job with this movie. I have very little complaints with this movie as a whole. This blog will probably be longer because I want to summarize the movie while also pointing out the things I liked. So I'm assuming that this blog will be more disorganized than past reviews. Also who knows how long this blog will be. SPOILER WARNING
I think that this movie has a very interesting start. It actually almost has two beginnings. There is the beginning of the Riddler and the beginning of Batman. The Riddler's beginning is well done in my opinion because it starts off with his POV and his breathing overlayed with Ave Maria is both disturbing, but interesting. The song Ave Maria fits well because The Riddler's character Edward Nashton was in the choir of his orphanage. On my first viewing I almost thought that the kid we see inside the building was Bruce Wayne, not the mayor's kid. The way that the Riddler kills the mayor is both cinematic and terrifying. On first viewing you don't even notice him until they show him there, but on the second watch you can actually see his shadow just barely peeking out from behind the mayor. Then there is the shot where the tucker tool falls on the floor out of the Riddler's hand and hits the floor. In an average movie the camera would have cut to something different, but the movie keeps the shot close on the tucker and we see the Riddler walk from out of focus to in focus and back to finish the job. This sets up Nashton/Riddler quickly as brutal and not mentally right in the head. The movie wants to make it clear that the Riddler is the bad guy, no matter what he says. I'll get back to the Riddler's philosophy later. After this scene we get introduced to Robert Pattinson as BATMAN. Pattinson did such a great job of portraying both Batman and Bruce Wayne. While narration isn't my favorite way of giving exposition, the exposition that is given speeds us up in the origin of Batman. We know that he is still relatively new to the vigilante thing and that he also is already in his nocturnal animal stage of things and completely obsessed with being the Batman. He's already assimilated as the Batman as his normal identity and Bruce Wayne as his second identity. Batman also talks about how he brings fear with the sign in the sky. The movie tells us that Batman is not to be messed with because it shows us people that are afraid that Batman is in the shadows ready to get them. We then get Batman's target for the evening, the skeleton gang assaulting the man. With this we get an awesome intro to the Batman suit. Everything looks so awesome with this suit, the armor and cape look awesome, the cowl's ears don't look stupidly long or too short. The bat symbol also being the batarang was a cool touch because we get a bunch of looks at the batarang before it's actually used. After we get one of the coolest slow walk reveals ever we then get to see Batman doing what Batman does. Beating people up and looking super badass doing it. I think that the "I'm Vengeance." line was also really well used. Yeah, it might be a little corny, but it would have been more corny if he said "I'm Batman." This scene really gets us into the mindset of both the Batman and the Gothamists. We know that Batman is Batman already, but also feared by everyone. Holy crap 10 minutes into the movie and I already have this much written. I'm excited to continue. We are then introduced to both the detective side of this story as well as Jim Gordon whose actor did an amazing job. We now get to see how Batman is still in his early phases because from all of the other cops reactions. Every cop besides Gordon dislikes him at first both showing that Batman is still viewed as a vigilante, but also who knows how many were on payroll from Falcone and the Penguin. Batman's walk around the room observing different things and already knowing certain things shows that Batman does have some of his detective skills. I like when he looks at the bloody mark on the floor and when he walks away the person photographing the crime scene takes a picture because if the Batman looks at something it must be important. After this we get to the end of the Batman's night and we see some really cool tech. The contact lens that records things is pretty cool. The fact that Batman's narration was his notes in a book threw me off for a second because I thought it was funny and fit the young emo phase that Pattinson appears to be in this movie as Bruce Wayne. Another funny thing is just after this scene where Wayne eats blueberries while Alfred is cracking the cypher and Wayne puts sunglasses on and he just looks funny to me. The cracking of the cypher onto the next clue was nice because we get one of the best jokes in the movie. Bruce and Alfred crack the cypher and reveal DRIVE which takes Batman and Gordon into the mayor's garage and they find a pair of shears in one of the wheels of a car. When they open the car Batman finds a USB drive and guess what... the mayors thumb is attached to the USB. Being in the car this makes it a pun as a thumb drive. This then really gets the story kicking. The USB reveals that the mayor wasn't always honest and there are pictures of him with a girl leaving the Iceberg Lounge. We then get to see Batman go to the Iceberg Lounge and start to beat up on some guys in some more creative ways. We also get to see the Penguin and he's played by Colin Farrell. I had no idea Farrell played Penguin in this, and I don't know Farrell a lot from the movies, but his costume and makeup are well done so he is hidden very well. During this scene we also meet Selina Kyle/??? (we'll learn about this later). Selina is a part of this crime because a girl that the mayor was with is Selina's roommate and friend. Batman notices this and follows Selina to the mayors house because the mayor stole Selina's friend's passport. I will take this time to appreciate Zoe Kravitz's performance in this movie. Among the stellar acting performances in this film, she also did a very nice job in this movie. The only complaint I have about Catwoman is that her costume is perfect except for her mask. It's a nice detail that her burglar mask looks like it has cat ears, but her eye holes and mouth holes look not great. I want to talk more about the Riddler, because he was actually awesome in this movie. Now, by him being awesome I don't agree with what he says. I don't want to put duct tape and wrap on my head and go shoot anyone that has money, but I think that the Riddler was an awesome character that rivals Heath Ledger's Joker in my opinion. He challenges the Batman and its awesome that the Riddler thinks that the Batman and the Riddler are working together. Later in the movie they capture the Riddler and Batman talks to him at Arkham Asylum and while Batman is talking to Riddler its one of the coolest performances. Batman yells at the Riddler what he did, and Riddler just starts singing Ave Maria and I can't really explain it, but that moment was really cool in my eyes. The movie was really well done all the way through. The only real complaint I had with the movie was the music played a little too often to my liking, but other than that I thought lots of things were done very well. The cinematography was incredible, there are plenty of really well made and meaningful shots and its really cool to see them and their implementation into the story. We see a few of these really good shots in the trailers, but I don't think that really changes how cool some of them are. I wanted to do the summarize thing, but I think that I've talked about most of what I want to talk about. It's hard to give any movie this, but this movie for me is an easy 10/10
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