‘The Batman’ is brooding and bleak, yet surprisingly entertaining (2024)

Many readers will have been introduced to Batman through that incredibly camp afternoon TV program of the late 1960s in which Adam West played Bruce Wayne (Batman), with Burt Ward as his ward, Dick Grayson (Robin). Has anybody ever heard of these two actors since?

The supporting cast was more high-profile: Cesar Romero as the Joker, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, and an unforgettable Eartha Kitt as a purring Catwoman. Lesser villains were played by Vincent Price, Milton Berle, George Sanders, Anne Baxter and even Otto Preminger.

Of course, the word “camp” was not part of my pre-pubescent vocabulary. Neither did I notice anything ridiculous in Batman and Robin’s outfits, or their conspicuous lack of muscle tone. I never entertained any suspicions thought about the nature of Bruce and Dick’s relationship.

How far we have travelled to arrive at Matt Reeves’ The Batman – the latest in a long line of dark, apocalyptic reimaginings of the legendary superhero. Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992) started the trend, which was brought to a fine pitch by Christopher Nolan in his Batman trilogy, from 2005 to 2012. In the ham-fisted clutches of Zack Snyder, in Batman V. Superman (2016), the tortured and troubled hero of the Nolan movies became a sad*stic thug.

Matt Reeves has taken the character down another dark alley, with a Batman played by Robert Pattinson, an actor with a woefully restricted emotional range. In this film it hardly matters. The masked crusader we watch in the action scenes is almost certainly not Pattinson, and when he reverts back to Bruce Wayne, all that’s required is a brooding demeanour. As this is virtually the only style Pattinson has perfected, he’s a neat fit. Having begun his career as a teenage vampire, he’s progressed to being a middle-aged vampire.

There’s nothing really new about this melancholy Batman or the vision of a sprawling, garbage-strewn, crime-riddled Gotham City, in which corruption festers at the highest levels. Reeves has simply taken these tropes and pushed them a little further. It may sound like a recipe for mediocrity, but for a movie that lasts almost three hours, I never found myself getting bored or restless. This is a testament to Reeves’ superior skills as a storyteller, and perhaps to Greig Fraser’s atmospheric cinematography.

No matter who is directing, Gotham City always looks like a dump, but never has it been this shabby. It’s just as gloomy day or night, as if the city were wreathed in a cloud of morbid despair that has infected everyone.

Bruce Wayne is no exception. We know Bruce is forever reflecting on the murder of his parents by hoodlums – the incident that set him on the path to crime-fighting. But in most films he manages to at least pretend to be a normal person. He has been a socialite, a philanthropist, even a playboy. But this Bruce never wants to do anything but mope around the Batcave fiddling with his gadgets. He has huge dark rings under his eyes. He hates going out or meeting people. He talks in gruff, mumbled sentences.