Kritiken

[The film's main problem] is the ponderous seriousness that hangs over [it] like last week’s weather — the fog of white-savior grievance that has shrouded Gotham and the Batman for as long as many of us can remember... I can’t say I had a good time, but I did end up somewhere I didn’t expect to be: looking forward to the next chapter.

They say no movie is too long if it holds your attention. "The Batman" is a mesmerizing mind-bender that grabs you hard and never lets go as visceral pow gives way to startling emotion.

Unfortunately, Reeves’ new take has a lot in common with the old takes... The Batman is frustratingly safe, a movie full of potential for more and settling for less. It preaches to the choir, reinforcing the same ideas trodden over and over again across five movies, multiple video games, and every comic book in the mold of Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli’s Batman: Year One

The Batman is ambitious and dedicated to its vision, but despite some rather obvious clues, it can’t crack how to make the World’s Greatest Detective seem like one at all. Rather, we just have another passable Batman, not different enough to outrun his legacy’s ever-growing shadow.

“The Batman,” having found its tone and immersive atmosphere, wallows in it. There is surprisingly little suspense because the film struggles to find more than one note (powerful though it is) to strike.

[Pattinson] is solid enough, but the role seems to neutralise his greatest strengths, stifling his edgy, eccentric charisma under a morose, dutiful shell.

At a time when the standard superhero blockbuster features omnipotent aliens threatening the Earth, the Universe, and even the multiverse with obliteration, it's a relief to immerse yourself in a noirish pulp fantasy that's closer in scale and tone to an episode of a prestigious TV cop show.

[The Batman] is tremendously designed, visually spectacular with great set pieces and juddering, sternum-shivering impacts coming at you out of the darkness... But the film is overlong; the Riddler’s puzzles aren’t particularly ingenious or even important to the story and there’s a pretty feeble non-ending which sheepishly sidesteps The Batman’s existential crisis.

Depressing, dark and endless... Your mileage may vary, but for me — who loved both the Tim Burton and the Christopher Nolan “Batman” universes — this one feels like an earnest but bloated misfire.

Reeves builds The Batman’s crackerjack momentum around Bruce’s keen deciphering of his nemesis’s riddles and ability to piece together leads. This gives the 176-minute film a refreshingly grounded approach that even Christopher Nolan’s ostensibly realistic trilogy of movies lacked.

The Batman could stand to lose a half-hour of running time and at least three of its apparent endings, but I left it still humming that Nirvana song and wondering what this messed-up new Bruce Wayne, cape streaming moodily behind him as he rode away on his bat-motorcycle, would get up to next.

Maybe he doesn’t have the cunning of Keaton or the brawn of Bale, but in his own unique way Pattinson’s Batman feels perfectly adapted for the uncertain and unjust times we are living in... And if the film itself isn’t totally original, it at least spreads its latex wings in some fun and surprising ways.