f13.net

Main Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqqft2x_Aa4

Emo Batman / Bruce Wayne looks terrible.

Not feeling it. But I've been wrong before on these things. There's some interesting notes here and there. Clearly gonna be chock-full of Batman-villains.

Looks boring.

I think it looks fine and Pattinson will carry it. But it only looks fine relative to every non-Joker themed DC movie (including all the Batmans barring maybe the first one, even though Keaton was pretty boring).

I like it and I agree Pattinson is going to carry it. Not entirely sure about Catwoman, but it does appear they are going for a very New 52 Batman aesthetic, which might work for cinematic treatments so long as they don't fall into the over the top-ness of some of the stories.

Keaton was boring? He's literally the only live-action movie Batman that was entertaining.

Did I miss some change in Pattinson where he pokevolved into something other than the guy you hire for your movie because he pulls off looking hot as long as he doesn't talk (or do pretty much anything else but stand there and look hot)?

Like, I can't think of a single thing I have ever seen him in where I would say he was there for his ability to act.

Unless by "carrying" it you mean we are going to spend a lot of time staring at Hot Batman or something....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pattinson#2014%E2%80%932018:_Independent_films_and_critical_acclaim

Also, yea, looks fine. I'm not a huge Batman fan anyway so I'll probably skip it in theaters unless we're bored that week, but it'll be a decent watch on whatever streaming service it lands on. HBO, I'm guessing; isn't that where Suicide Squad 2 landed day 1?

Yeah, he was boring and still the best batman. That's how bad batman has been throughout cinema.

It turns out both Pattinson and Stewart are fucking great and they weren't the problem with Twilight. Yes, I know, I couldn't have predicted that either.

Watch The Lighthouse if you want to see Pattinson act.

Diggory looks good, the film looks bad.

Also I count three villians even if we don't count Falcone.

Have we still not figured out that this is too many villians?

Ironically it was Batman Returns that started that trend... only in that movie all the villains interacting with one another so they shared screen time, so it worked. Its never worked since.

Pattinson is a good actor that got saddled with sparkly emo typecasting early on in his career and is finally getting out from under it. Think about the source material he was working from, he nailed the character as written.

--Dabe

Agreed. They've both slowly but surely crawled out from under the shadow of Twilight (ironic phrasing notwithstanding) and have proven to be very good actors.

Keaton sucked as the bat. He was so much better as the Vulture, a character that has been pretty horrible throughout all comics.

Spider-man has also struggled as a franchise to get the Sinister Six done well, here's hoping for the MCU magic to work on the next one. I felt Into the Spider-verse dealt with a cast of villains (and heroes) pretty well.

I think you can have multiple villains in a Batman-as-detective story the way you can have multiple suspects in an Agatha Christie novel. E.g., a few of them feature only as red herrings early on. But it takes the script and the director not spending any time at all on the backstory etc. of a given villain--you just say "This is the Penguin. I know you guys know who this is, just like you know that Batman's parents are dead. Batman is going to punch the Penguin, then have to deal with a trick umbrella, then he's going to punch the Penguin again and find out what the Penguin knows. Then he's going to move on."

If you want to do a whodunit you make the film about the Riddler (or whoever) but don't reveal the Riddler's identity.

But I don't get the impression a whodunit is what is happening.

They've said a few things about the intention to make it centrally about Batman-as-detective. I doubt it's a whodunit with the question of whether it's the Riddler or not, but it might be "detective work is required to solve the Riddler's clues", rather than the usual "the clues are just riddles that when you solve them tell you where the next crime/deathtrap is located". Could also be that the Riddler basically drags Batman through the dealings of other villains--a bit like the way that the Hush storyline in the comics (not one of my favorites overall) involved a lot of deliberate misdirection by Hush and the Riddler to get Batman tangled up with other villains so he couldn't focus on what they were doing.

Lets be fair, if I was landed with universal ridicule from my performance in a 4 awful movie marathon I, too, would spend the next decade in acting college training my ass off.

I would definitely have trouble sleeping on my piles of cash. I'd have to snuggle my money bear extra close.

The trailer didn't show us the Riddler's face so it's possible they're going that route. "The Riddler is doing things" can still be an interesting story if, as you say, the central question is "Who is the Riddler?" This is made more difficult by casting announcements and comic fans knowing Riddler's real name(s*), but they could still have a misdirect in the movie like they did in Iron Man 3 with the Mandarin.

*I don't know if there have been multiple in-universe Riddlers or not, I only know Edward Ligma.

Nigma. (E. Nigma).

So maybe that's the way they're going, yeah.

I mean, Alfred IS Serkis, who isn't exactly known for being a good guy...

Even if you know the Riddler's real name he could be operating under an alias. Equally it could be a Colombo thing where the audience know who he is even if Batman does not.

Good films can't be spoiled.

I know, I was acting like a twelve year old.

eldaec, I disagree with your last statement. And I've never enjoyed "mysteries" where the audience knows but the MC does not.

The key is the MC has to be competent.

The worst way to spend 90 minutes is watching fucking inspector gadget bounce around failing to do the obvious thing.

As for spoilers - what good films can you think of that don't work once spoiled?

Depends on what you mean by "don't work" but films like The Usual Suspects are amazing if you go into them unspoiled. Still good if they're not but not the same.

As Riggswolfe said, they can still be good movies but a good unspoiled twist is a great moment in a movie. Shutter Island and Arrival immediately come to mind.

This was great, if it has any flaws it's going a little too long. Do not stay for the post credit scene, it is a big nothing.

I liked a lot of what this movie did, or at least what it was trying to do.  Enough to give it a pass on the parts where the execution wasn't perfect.

I liked this quite a lot.

Great feeling of dread throughout. Sort of Se7en-meets-Batman feel for some of it. Does a good job of creating uncertainty about what's going on; does a good job of making Batman an actual detective. Good dramatic arc for a Batman who is beginning to realize that just punching people isn't good enough. (and an interesting explanation for why it doesn't make a difference if he punches people--it's the opposite really of the arc between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight where the big-name gangsters are scared of Batman now)

Could have used a slightly tighter edit in the last quarter of the film. A lot of good action though . Does a good job on its visioning of "realism", including the Batmobile.

Sort of wondered why there aren't gangsters all over the Bat-Signal site, it's not hard to figure out where it's coming from.

Did they change the placement for this movie?  Cause I was pretty sure the signal is almost always sent from the top of Gordon's Police headquarters building in almost every iteration of the Batman franchise.

Yeah, this time it's not--it seems like it's in a half-finished skyscraper and it's seemingly Gordon's personal initiative that has been tolerated by the city hierarchy. I liked that they didn't feel the need to give us the whole backstory on that either.

Just watched this tonight. I think it did a great job of doing something none of the prior Batman movies has done. It showed me why people would be scared of Batman. There were multiple moments where I thought to myself "stick this scene in a horror movie and he's Jason Vorhees not the hero.". I think that was intentional though as it was showing him having to evolve by the end of the movie.

I didn't hate it. Maybe a bit emo at times, but it was a fun 3 (!) Hours.

--Dave

There's a scene in Batman Begins that also plays this street--Batman as horror movie for the bad guys. But I do think this movie does it way better and way more thoughtfully.

Honestly, I think this is the best Batman film to date. The only odd thing is that it's the best Batman movie with the most non-existent Bruce Wayne, but if they get a sequel, I think they'll address that.

I thought the movie was ok. The end fight felt a bit forced and the beginning felt too emo with lines like
 
from Batman in the first 10(?) minutes of the movie starting to make me wonder if Bruce was supposed to be a teen.

Two of those emo lines were part of the overall character arc of the entire movie. One in particular came back to haunt him at the end and pushed him towards changing his approach.

Yeah. I think this is what really pleased me about the movie: Reeves found a way to give the character some development within the film that wasn't an origin story, and it was pretty subtle in the way that it was done. When
I really hope that if they get a greenlight for the sequel they  I think Hugo Strange would be a great fit, on the other hand.

Yes, there are two moments that I think perfectly illustrate Batman's growth in this movie.

One is in the very beginning


And at the end

I'm gonna go waaaaay out on a limb and say that superhero movies in general may not be your thing.   :why_so_serious:

I like my superheroes to care about civilians and for the end fights in superhero movie to be

The highway scene is pretty ill-considered in terms of the overall arc of the film--it seems almost like a consequence of Reeves feeling obligated to have a Batmobile but then needing to keep it "realistic" dictated a car chase that felt like actual traffic.
Speaking of realistic,

That happens earlier in the movie. His growth happens at the end. At that point he is still blinded by being "vengeance."

Well, think about high-speed police chases: the common policy position is that you don't chase a suspect at high-speed if there's a chance of lots of civilian casualties unless the suspect is a clear and present danger, e.g., is shooting at people from his car or is known to have a bomb, something of that sort. Cops don't always follow those policies, but a lone cop chasing someone under these circumstances would likely stop. And I think if you watch again, you'll see Batman pulling a few maneuvers that cause some of the accidents. It's not quite Batfleck shooting criminals with the Batmobile but it's close.

I liked this quite a lot, and yes it was way too long. That said, it still didn't feel overextended and the end fight was pretty essential to where they were going with the character arc. I also completely understand why they felt the need for this to not be connected to the Affleck/Justice League version of Batman. This is a different animal altogether - much more horror/crime than any of the previous iterations. Pattinson's take on Batman as the slow plodding wave of dread was a unique and effective take on the character, but I do wish we'd had a little more for Bruce Wayne to do. This was year 2 Batman in which Bruce had not really figured out how to co-exist with the Batman, as evidenced by his lack of interest in the business.

If this gets a sequel, I also hope they don't follow through on


because we've seen that character done and they will not top the best version of it.

I really like where they went with him discovering that he can't just be this boogeyman in the shadows to criminals, he also needs to be a beacon of hope to a demoralized city. Threading that needle in a sequel would be interesting.

Completely agree:

I could really see a sequel that focuses on Hugo Strange and the Monster Men that works from Matt Wagner's updating of that early storyline. It's got lots of elements that would work well in this setting--the horror of the cannibalistic monster men, Strange's complicated relationship with the mob, and then maybe they could throw in the later plotline where Strange learns Batman's identity and tries to fuck with Bruce's mind.