I finally saw it last night and thank you for writing the critiques of this Batman as a detective! While I liked the movie (although it was too long and I laughed loudly when I listened to Van Lathan’s partner criticize it by pointing out it could be a half hour shorter if Pattinson just walked faster), Batman wasn’t a great detective, everyone else was just _terrible_ at riddles. And dumb in other ways - how did he not pick up that following the instructions of the Riddler led _directly_ to the next deaths? I get following up on them, but the approach of “just do exactly what he says” was so, so dumb.
Also, this movie seems to be getting a lot of props for the action. I agree that the hand to hand fighting in this movie is really good, as is the deservedly praised guns in the dark scene. But the Nolan movies were so much better at dealing with the obvious response - guns at close range - with the cinematic solution (cool looking but mostly physics defying gadgets and making Batman a ninja).
We need to talk about the car. It looks cool, revs its engine nicely, has admirable flame effects, but does what exactly? Despite the *jet engine* it's not fast enough to catch Penguin's car, and seemingly bad at evading dump trucks? No guns, armor, etc? How is this a useful superhero vehicle? Chris Nolan's 'mobile could jump, auto pilot, block bullets, etc. as well as look cool/convert into a motorcycle. This one does so little I was expecting an Elon Musk cameo offering to deliver a super-Tesla to Batman. Upgrade.
For some reason, there's been a lot of Batman content produced in the last several years depicting the Batmobile as a lower tech, "muscle car" sort of vehicle, often with accompanying backstory about it having been Thomas Wayne's car and Bruce restoring it, which I'm guessing informed the take here.
This is actually one thing where "The Dark Knight" trilogy did a good job showing how hard true reform is, and also does a good job showing how each villain either has a point, or at least an understandable motivation:
-Batman Begins: Bruce Wayne comes into his own and saves the corrupt city from destruction, rejecting the "burn it all down and start over" idea pushed by his enemies.
-The Dark Knight: Bruce & the police start actually attempting to root out corruption but...they get pushback from the people themselves. Gordon attempts to use corrupt cops to push his agenda and, despite being relatively pure himself, winds up falling victim to his cops betraying him. Batman eventually defeats the madman hired by the corrupt crooks and politicians who attempt to keep the system in their thrall, but it comes at a cost. At the end of the day, the best Batman can do to reform the system is to create a hagiography.
-The Dark Knight Rises: in the final film the hagiography's issues come back to bite Bruce and Gotham. The sins are revealed, and the systems problems are laid bare. Now, here is likely the weakest part of the series in terms of reform, Nolan never made it clear how the city reformed itself after Batman dies. But...I choose to believe that Batman became an actual symbol which inspired the city, not the fake one which he was in the second film.
Just my 2 cents. I have not seen "The Batman" yet.
I'm interested in the we don't know how to address corruption. My thought has always been its mostly about individual incentives. A judge/prosecutor/etc. in the US vs Afghanistan has very different incentives. In the low corruption countries, not being corrupt means you get to keep a job that pays reasonably well and usually provides a decent amount of prestige. If you are caught, you will lose the income and much of your wealth, lose the prestige and also go to prison. That doesn't mean corruption doesn't happen, but the incentives are to play it straight. In a high corruption areas, almost all of those are reversed. The pay for public officials is often very low and its assumed to be complemented by payoffs. Much of the prestige of the office is in its ability to demand payoffs/bribes. Being caught or more specifically being prosecuted usually has less to do with how corrupt you are and more on your political alliances and your own ability to make payoffs.
I'm no expert, but I think we made significant progress in Colombia through the 2000s, but that an unfortunate result was to spread narco trafficking and the resultant corruption to other countries in the region - principally Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.
When Batman finds out something the Riddler already knew by solving a riddle, that doesn't make him Sherlock, it makes him Watson. This is Sherlock Holmes but from the perspective of a very jacked sidekick
Was batman *ever* a detective? I know he debuted in "detective comics" and was "the world's greatest detective," but it seems like even then he was more vigilante than detective. It's usually pretty obvious who the villains are. The closest he comes to being a detective is solving the riddler's riddles, but that's more like wordplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oixtywlMdmQ
I appreciate the spoiler alert (I didn't read beyond that) but I deeply resent the anti-anti spoiler footnote. As a left leaning, big government, class firster, I often disagree with MY but I respect and admire his perspective. However, being effectively pro-spoiler is an indefensible and frankly disgusting position. FOR SHAME!
The ripping on movie reviewers that starts this post is, sadly, the ultimate shooting fish in a barrel. My one valid cranky old guy take is that movie reviewers were much better and much smarter Back In The Day. And that's because movies were just a lot better back in the 70s and 80s (and to some degree in the 60s) when great movie reviewers were most prominent. Now a reviewer writes about tiny indie/arthouse/foreign films many of which are very good but no one sees, even as they win Best Picture Oscars that no one cares about, and big dumb (albeit expertly made) CGI comic book films.
Why anyone would want to be a movie reviewer today is a mystery to me, but they're not very good at it anymore. That's why I only pay attention to audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and not the critics scores.
I have not seen the movie yet and haven’t really followed any of the buzz about. So this post is my first real exposure.
It’s probably just me, but the first thing I was reminded of after reading the post is the show “24” where Jack Bauer is also a vigilante “detective” fighting a nasty stew of corruption and external threats.
The Batman is very clearly a detective movie, it's just one where the detective (Batman) is behind the curve the whole time and struggling to keep up.
I think the bit with Batman and Gordon interrogating the Penguin really exemplifies this: our two heros have been chasing leads and solving riddles for 60+ minutes and they think they've figured it all out, except then it's made very clear to them they don't know what's going on (the Spanish grammar bit was priceless).
In terms of "realism" I think the movie is styled as realistic but it's also fantastical in a more comicbook-y way than most of these movies are. Very curious as to where Matt Reeves will go next with the property (Mr Freeze? Harvey Dent? Robin???)
"it really is a much more interesting and well-crafted film than a lot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies"
It's a shame WB's marketing department couldn't communicate that through the advertising because I'm a huge DC fanboy, but from the trailers and TV ads I've seen for "The Batman" I'd go see a re-release of "Ant-Man and the Wasp" before this. :-/
That said, regarding this not really being a detective story, I think that's explainable by two things: (1) writing a good detective story is hard in any context and there's often a very big "informed attribute" (in TV Tropes' terminology) aspect to it because writers, directors, etc. don't know how to do it in a way that's compelling on screen, and (2) writing a good detective story where a core requirement is that your detective spends a lot of time dressed up in a bat costume is even harder because you can't really do witness interview scenes the way a traditional detective story does and which is where you usually find a lot of the drama in a detective story.
I finally saw it last night and thank you for writing the critiques of this Batman as a detective! While I liked the movie (although it was too long and I laughed loudly when I listened to Van Lathan’s partner criticize it by pointing out it could be a half hour shorter if Pattinson just walked faster), Batman wasn’t a great detective, everyone else was just _terrible_ at riddles. And dumb in other ways - how did he not pick up that following the instructions of the Riddler led _directly_ to the next deaths? I get following up on them, but the approach of “just do exactly what he says” was so, so dumb.
Also, this movie seems to be getting a lot of props for the action. I agree that the hand to hand fighting in this movie is really good, as is the deservedly praised guns in the dark scene. But the Nolan movies were so much better at dealing with the obvious response - guns at close range - with the cinematic solution (cool looking but mostly physics defying gadgets and making Batman a ninja).
We need to talk about the car. It looks cool, revs its engine nicely, has admirable flame effects, but does what exactly? Despite the *jet engine* it's not fast enough to catch Penguin's car, and seemingly bad at evading dump trucks? No guns, armor, etc? How is this a useful superhero vehicle? Chris Nolan's 'mobile could jump, auto pilot, block bullets, etc. as well as look cool/convert into a motorcycle. This one does so little I was expecting an Elon Musk cameo offering to deliver a super-Tesla to Batman. Upgrade.
For some reason, there's been a lot of Batman content produced in the last several years depicting the Batmobile as a lower tech, "muscle car" sort of vehicle, often with accompanying backstory about it having been Thomas Wayne's car and Bruce restoring it, which I'm guessing informed the take here.
Looking forward to the newsletter on why “anti-spoiler culture is annoying and bad”!
This is actually one thing where "The Dark Knight" trilogy did a good job showing how hard true reform is, and also does a good job showing how each villain either has a point, or at least an understandable motivation:
-Batman Begins: Bruce Wayne comes into his own and saves the corrupt city from destruction, rejecting the "burn it all down and start over" idea pushed by his enemies.
-The Dark Knight: Bruce & the police start actually attempting to root out corruption but...they get pushback from the people themselves. Gordon attempts to use corrupt cops to push his agenda and, despite being relatively pure himself, winds up falling victim to his cops betraying him. Batman eventually defeats the madman hired by the corrupt crooks and politicians who attempt to keep the system in their thrall, but it comes at a cost. At the end of the day, the best Batman can do to reform the system is to create a hagiography.
-The Dark Knight Rises: in the final film the hagiography's issues come back to bite Bruce and Gotham. The sins are revealed, and the systems problems are laid bare. Now, here is likely the weakest part of the series in terms of reform, Nolan never made it clear how the city reformed itself after Batman dies. But...I choose to believe that Batman became an actual symbol which inspired the city, not the fake one which he was in the second film.
Just my 2 cents. I have not seen "The Batman" yet.
I would not object to not reading about this topic.
I'm interested in the we don't know how to address corruption. My thought has always been its mostly about individual incentives. A judge/prosecutor/etc. in the US vs Afghanistan has very different incentives. In the low corruption countries, not being corrupt means you get to keep a job that pays reasonably well and usually provides a decent amount of prestige. If you are caught, you will lose the income and much of your wealth, lose the prestige and also go to prison. That doesn't mean corruption doesn't happen, but the incentives are to play it straight. In a high corruption areas, almost all of those are reversed. The pay for public officials is often very low and its assumed to be complemented by payoffs. Much of the prestige of the office is in its ability to demand payoffs/bribes. Being caught or more specifically being prosecuted usually has less to do with how corrupt you are and more on your political alliances and your own ability to make payoffs.
I'm no expert, but I think we made significant progress in Colombia through the 2000s, but that an unfortunate result was to spread narco trafficking and the resultant corruption to other countries in the region - principally Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.
When Batman finds out something the Riddler already knew by solving a riddle, that doesn't make him Sherlock, it makes him Watson. This is Sherlock Holmes but from the perspective of a very jacked sidekick
Was batman *ever* a detective? I know he debuted in "detective comics" and was "the world's greatest detective," but it seems like even then he was more vigilante than detective. It's usually pretty obvious who the villains are. The closest he comes to being a detective is solving the riddler's riddles, but that's more like wordplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oixtywlMdmQ
Wait, Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same guy? Damn spoilers!
I appreciate the spoiler alert (I didn't read beyond that) but I deeply resent the anti-anti spoiler footnote. As a left leaning, big government, class firster, I often disagree with MY but I respect and admire his perspective. However, being effectively pro-spoiler is an indefensible and frankly disgusting position. FOR SHAME!
The ripping on movie reviewers that starts this post is, sadly, the ultimate shooting fish in a barrel. My one valid cranky old guy take is that movie reviewers were much better and much smarter Back In The Day. And that's because movies were just a lot better back in the 70s and 80s (and to some degree in the 60s) when great movie reviewers were most prominent. Now a reviewer writes about tiny indie/arthouse/foreign films many of which are very good but no one sees, even as they win Best Picture Oscars that no one cares about, and big dumb (albeit expertly made) CGI comic book films.
Why anyone would want to be a movie reviewer today is a mystery to me, but they're not very good at it anymore. That's why I only pay attention to audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and not the critics scores.
With respect to spoiler culture, I’m a libertarian in that regard - avoiding spoilers is an individual, not a collective responsibility.
I have not seen the movie yet and haven’t really followed any of the buzz about. So this post is my first real exposure.
It’s probably just me, but the first thing I was reminded of after reading the post is the show “24” where Jack Bauer is also a vigilante “detective” fighting a nasty stew of corruption and external threats.
Anti-spoiler culture is a drag until you don’t have it, then you’ll regret not having it. Fund the spoiler police.
The Batman is very clearly a detective movie, it's just one where the detective (Batman) is behind the curve the whole time and struggling to keep up.
I think the bit with Batman and Gordon interrogating the Penguin really exemplifies this: our two heros have been chasing leads and solving riddles for 60+ minutes and they think they've figured it all out, except then it's made very clear to them they don't know what's going on (the Spanish grammar bit was priceless).
In terms of "realism" I think the movie is styled as realistic but it's also fantastical in a more comicbook-y way than most of these movies are. Very curious as to where Matt Reeves will go next with the property (Mr Freeze? Harvey Dent? Robin???)
In terms of what to do next, I have five words: Michael Emerson as the Ventriloquist.
Perfection
"it really is a much more interesting and well-crafted film than a lot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies"
It's a shame WB's marketing department couldn't communicate that through the advertising because I'm a huge DC fanboy, but from the trailers and TV ads I've seen for "The Batman" I'd go see a re-release of "Ant-Man and the Wasp" before this. :-/
That said, regarding this not really being a detective story, I think that's explainable by two things: (1) writing a good detective story is hard in any context and there's often a very big "informed attribute" (in TV Tropes' terminology) aspect to it because writers, directors, etc. don't know how to do it in a way that's compelling on screen, and (2) writing a good detective story where a core requirement is that your detective spends a lot of time dressed up in a bat costume is even harder because you can't really do witness interview scenes the way a traditional detective story does and which is where you usually find a lot of the drama in a detective story.