THE BATMAN

Long Dark Knight of the cowl

- Dave Golder

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 176 minutes

Director Matt Reeves

Cast Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, Andy Serkis

What’s new about the latest cinematic reinvention of Batman? Something very old. Y’see, sticking The in front of Batman isn’t just part of a cunning new marketing strategy that DC initiated with The Suicide Squad.

Back in 1939, when Batman made his first appearance in Detective Comics #27, he was billed as “The Bat-Man”. Director/ co-writer Matt Reeves draws much inspiration from that original iteration of the Caped Crusader, specifically the idea of Batman as “the world’s greatest detective” (a phrase actually used in the film). As a result, The Batman is an attempt to create a film noir crime story set in Gotham with the Dark Knight as the laconic private dick, albeit one with a fetishistic sartorial style.

The other major influence on this version is Frank Miller’s much-lauded Batman: Year One comic-book arc from 1987. We don’t get another origin story here; this is a Batman in the early days of his crime-fighting career, full of rage and vengeance, more of a dangerous unpredictable vigilante than the hero he becomes.