The Batman review: 2022 movie is The Stylish, The Maximalist, and The Interminable.
SlateThe maximalist approach of Matt Reeves’ The Batman extends to its very title: This three-hour-long epic is a comic-book adaptation with the full menu of extras, right down to that plushy definite article padding out the name of the Caped Crusader. In addition to Dano’s Riddler, Gotham’s complex web of crime and corruption includes menacing mob figures like John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone, cowardly city-government middlemen like Peter Sarsgaard’s compromised district attorney, and a truly unrecognizable Colin Farrell as the Penguin, a portly, insecure crime-boss-in-the-making. Though The Batman’s vision of Gotham as a run-down, amoral dystopia borrows some imagery from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series, Reeves also brings his own visual flair to the material. Still, Reeves’ and Pattinson’s vision of the Batman as a Hamlet-like heir unable to move past the primal shock of his parents’ murder has a certain emotional power. Since then we’ve seen, among others, George Clooney’s Bat-credit-card-carrying comic superhero in Joel Schumacher’s notorious flop Batman and Robin, Christian Bale’s vocally filtered edgelord in Nolan’s grim Dark Knight trilogy, and Ben Affleck’s stolid brooder in Snyder’s multi-superhero vehicles for DC.