DC has been on a string of flops, but The Batman is one of the best movies in recent history and deserves to be celebrated amid the hardships DC has faced.
As a Marvel fangirl, I never quite paid attention to the DC universe, except for Batman. I grew up watching the Batman movies and cartoons, and continued to watch all the Batman movies as they came out, until The Dark Knight Rises.
The death of Heath Ledger also symbolized the death of the Batman movies for me, and I just didn’t find any other DC movies or characters interesting or relatable. That is, until two things happened: I became a staff writer for this amazing website you’re visiting right now, and I happened to watch the preview for The Flash and was immediately hooked and left wanting more.
So I did what anyone in my situation would do – I watched all of the DCEU and Elsewhere movies I had ignored over the years over the course of a weekend. I have things to say about those as well, but I am not here to talk about those movies.
This is about The Batman.
The Batman is a solid and near-perfect 10/10
The Batman is honestly one of the best movies in recent history. Not just because it’s a Batman movie, but because of the way it was shot.
Nowadays, if you notice, shots take about three seconds before switching to the next one, at most. For the majority of the time, you go from one scene to another really fast, back and forth. The camera never holds still, you’re never waiting for anything in the movie. This movie turns that on its head.
In the course of its three-hour run time, it makes you actually wait for things. The freshest shot in my mind is when everything goes to hell before the stadium explodes, and all the snipers are getting on the beams. Batman fights this guy and he’s clearly losing, the guy’s about to shoot him Then it shows him from Batman’s point of view. It builds up the suspense with the camera fixated on him and not shaking while he slowly loads his gun before Batman is saved. That was refreshing to see in a world obsessed with instant gratification.
I also appreciated that nothing felt forced. The relationship between Selena and Bruce was not forced at all, it was perfectly done. Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz’s chemistry was beyond anything I expected. Their attraction towards each other was immediately apparent, there was a game of seduction going on there. She’s clearly forthright and goes after what she wants, and he’s reserved and mysterious, showing interest in subtle ways. This was very true to the source material, and their chemistry was on point. It was the best Batman-Catwoman pairing I could have ever expected.