56 years ago, Adam West starred as Bruce Wayne, or the caped superhero we all know as Batman. At its roots, the Batman franchise was much more jovial and comical than today’s iterations would lead you to believe. 

As Batman’s character developed and the franchises rested in the hands of directors like Christopher Nolan and Todd Phillips, Batman became a superhero for more mature audiences. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is perhaps the most well-known Batman film to date, and features the most dark themes and dense plot of any Batman movie. This year’s Batman film takes the franchise on an even darker path.

From this point on there will be spoilers, so reader discretion is advised.

The first and most obvious change was the casting of Robert Pattinson as The Batman. People may know Pattinson as Edward from the Twilight Saga, Neil in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, or Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 

This was a casting decision that came as a surprise to many given that Pattinson’s Twilight performances had come under a lot of criticism in the form of multiple Golden Raspberry nominations for Worst Actor, Supporting Actor, Ensemble Cast and On-Screen Couple.

Despite this, Pattinson’s performance might be my favorite Batman of all time. His gravelly voice is not nearly as dramatic as Christian Bale’s, which is a huge plus, and he keeps the brooding darkness that Bale pulled off so well in the Nolan trilogy. 

Apart from Pattinson, this movie has an incredible cast. I wish Paul Dano had the opportunity to do more than a few minutes of exposition with Batman at the end because he’s incredible once the mask is taken off. Dano is part of a great set of movie villain actors in the Batman franchise, joining Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, and Cillian Murphy.

Zoë Kravitz as Selena Kyle, or Catwoman, was not a casting choice I was especially excited about given her work in the Divergent series and After Earth, but she proves herself to be a competent actress in this movie.

Casting aside, this is one of the more rough Batman movies to come out in the past few years. 

The main problem with this movie is the consistent darkness that forces itself into the narrative. While I have no problem with movies that have a darker tone such as The Dark Knight (2008) and Joker (2019), which utilize their darkness very well, this film’s insistence on being dark and rainy in every single scene would make it nearly impossible to watch outside a movie theater. It’s an infuriating aspect of this movie, and one that is made more unbearable due to the near three-hour runtime. 

Speaking of the film’s length, the plot points introduced are incredibly boring. Characters will spend minutes on end just standing and practically vomiting exposition in a dark and rainy alleyway while throwing a bunch of names at you that you wouldn’t know unless you had a fair bit of knowledge about Batman. I’ve seen The Dark Knight at least five times in the past year, and I still couldn’t tell you with certainty who Falcone and Maroni are and what roles they play in the Batman universe, which leads me to another huge issue I have with the movie.

Bruce Wayne has almost no presence in this movie, and there is no backstory given about why Wayne has chosen to don the bat suit. While I fully understand that most people know Batman’s story by now, not only are there still people that might not be caught up, but you still have a responsibility to show the audience why Wayne is motivated to do the things that he does because in every Batman movie, the story is always slightly different. Delivering the nuances of these differences with some hasty Alfred Pennyworth dialogue simply does not work.

Bruce’s sudden knowledge of riddles and cyphers is also never explained beyond the Riddler saying some throwaway line about how he and the Batman are similar in a multitude of ways. These are crucial plot points to know why Batman is the way he is and has the motivations that he has.

The Riddler’s final plan makes absolutely no sense at all. Putting seven bomb-rigged vans in a circle in order to flood an entire city simply would not work. In addition, the Riddler’s Discord channel or whatever that chat room was would not have required nearly as much time to decode as they make out in this movie. Where is The Riddler getting all of these followers? How did they all get hands on rifles and shotguns? Where did The Riddler scrape up the money to get seven vans? Why bother telling Batman about your plan before it happens when he’s clearly used no restraint in letting disasters happen before? This movie leaves a whole lot more questions asked then answered.

A very prevalent problem that I find with this movie is that it spends a ton of time trying to ape The Dark Knight. These come in the form of a car chase which doesn’t even begin to come close to The Dark Knight. The Batman’s car chase does not add up to the intensity of flipping over an actual semi like in the Dark Knight, and an interrogation scene that doesn’t hold even a little bit of the same gravitas that Joker and Bale’s Batman had in The Dark Knight definitely won’t make the cut. If this movie spent some time trying to develop its own unique ideas then it would be a much less messy film.

However, the final, and most upsetting aspect of this movie for me was the inclusion of the Joker in the final scenes of the movie. The Joker has by this point, become one of the most revered superhero villains of all time. Heath Ledger’s performance as this villain in The Dark Knight is, in my opinion, the best acting job of all time. And let’s face it, DC lucked out when it came to The Joker. Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning work is also an incredible performance that will be held in high regard for years to come. Now it seems that rather than just getting lightning to strike in the same place twice, DC is hurling every lightning bolt it has at that same spot but this time with a blindfold on and with the target zig-zagging in every direction. Dragging Dunkirk’s Barry Koeghan to play yet another Joker will very likely not have the desired effect.

While there is a chance for this new Batman franchise to improve, this was certainly not a great start, and does not compare to the best Batman films of the last few years.