Bat-man as an iconic character has existed for almost a century. We have seen many adaptations of the Dark Knight on the silver screen. From Adam West’s exploding shark filled escapades, to Arnold Schwarzenegger yelling ice puns at George Clooney’s humorless face and finally, the subject of today’s article, The Batman.

The Batman was directed by Matt Reeves, famous for the modern Planet of the Apes, and stars Robert Patterson, famous for the popular young adult romance drama Water for Elephants. My thoughts on the film are highly complicated. I think that while this movie does  many things really well, what bad stuff it did do hold it back from achieving anything amazing. Let’s start with all the good stuff this movie did. I thought that visually, this film looks amazing. It mostly takes place at night, but with the way everything’s lit, you can still see what’s happening on screen. The music was also really good. While, aside from the main theme, nothing is really all too memorable, the songs really help to emphasize each emotion in a scene. I also thought that the casting was great, with standouts being Jeffery White as Commissioner Gordon and Colin Ferral as Penguin. 

The Penguin, however, is the beginning of my problems with the movie. He feels as if he was shoved in at the last minute, like the writers already wrote the movie and only realized that they had the rights to him afterwards. While yes, he is fun to watch whenever he’s on screen, he feels more like some generic mobster wearing makeup. I also feel like that when this is trying to be a detective movie, it’s really good, but when it’s trying to be a superhero film, it’s pretty bad. All the action scenes are cool on their own, if watched in isolation from the rest of the movie, but during the movie just serve as a way to appeal to the people who just want to see Batman beat up random goons. That’s about really all I can get into without going into pure spoiler territory, but just know that this movie might as well have said, “See more in part two,” if it wanted to sequel-bait that bad. At least then it would have been more subtle. 

I really went into this movie wanting to like it, but there was just so much stuff that got on my nerves that I can’t say I enjoyed it. However, from what I’ve seen online, I’m in the minority on this one. So if you decide you want to see this movie, you’ll probably like it far more than I did. Unfortunately, I have to be honest and only give this film a rating of two and a half bat-stars out of five.