Weekend Plans Post: Returning to the Movies

I gave Maribou a big ol’ smooch and she got in the car and hit the road early Saturday morning. A couple hours later I realized “I have a Saturday to myself and it is the first Saturday I have had to myself in a while.”

So I went to the movies. I didn’t want to go see a movie that was packed. So I said I’ll catch an early matinee and I’ll go see something that has been out for a couple of weeks already.

I went to the big theater on the big road and put on my mask and went to the ticket counter and said “One for Batman, please.”

I got into my theater and it was *EMPTY*. Well, there was a couple of people in the upper back left and there were a couple of people in the middle right and so I took my spot in the spot smack dab in the middle in the seat a couple rows back from the screen. Whew. Just us.

After 5 minutes of commercials and 10 minutes of trailers (I had forgotten that), we get to The Main Event.

I don’t want to get into *TOO* many spoilers despite the fact that the movie, being a superhero movie, is only minimally spoilable in the first place. So, before the spoiler avoidant hit the back button, lemme just say: If you already know that you’d hate the movie, you’re not wrong. It’s not going to change your mind. If, however, you saw the trailer and were curious? The movie will tickle your fancy (though you’ll note a handful of flaws). It is also 3 friggin’ hours long. Those of you who enjoy peeing at leisure may wish for the movie to get to streaming so you aren’t spending the second half of the movie reminded about how you’re going to want to be.

And with that… well, let’s talk about the movie.

Robert Pattinson is not playing the “Billionaire Playboy” Bruce Wayne. He’s playing the recluse weirdo Bruce Wayne. The director said that Batman’s playlist consisted of bands like Joy Division, The Cure, Bauhaus… you know. 80’s Goth. He was not wrong. You hear Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” in the trailer and, yep, you hear it in the movie too. That’s the Batman you’re getting.

Well, it’s like Frank Miller said. There are 50 ways to do the Batman and they all work. Well, this one is the Batman that listens to the Cocteau Twins.

As for the story, it’s not *EXACTLY* a Year One story… you’ll see some Year One elements, of course, but it’s established that Batman is established enough to have a working relationship with key law enforcement players (though is very much distrusted by the majority of them) but he’s not established enough to have met key law breaking players. So I’d say that it’s more of a Year Two kinda story. The Batman is good but not great, he sometimes gets punched while fighting people rather than perfectly parrying, dodging, or blocking. In more conversations in the movie, Batman communicates that his sense of Justice remains vaguely adolescent and gets called out on this more than once (and congratulated for it, oddly enough).

There is a deleted scene circulating on the internet from somewhere around the middle of the film where Batman goes to ask Joker for insight. So this is at the point in Batman’s career where he has not yet concluded that that would be, like, THE WORST IDEA ANYBODY HAD, LIKE, EVER.

So that deleted scene establishes that Batman and Joker have a relationship but Joker knows stuff about Batman but Batman doesn’t know anything about Joker. So, yeah. Year Two.

How are the supporting characters? Well, Catwoman is absolutely FANTASTIC. Penguin is pretty good. The GCPD is very good. Alfred is a mixed bag, I think… some stuff was *AMAZING* while other stuff struck me as imperfectly written (not Andy Serkis’s fault… more the script). Gotham Itself is a delightful mix of seedy Art Deco and Cyberpunk Modern.

How is the action? Absolutely amazing. It’s as hard a PG-13 as I’ve ever seen. Pugilism, gunfights, car chases, and explosions are in there for the kid in you but be warned: there is also some seriously dark violence as well that made me think “jeez… I’d need a content warning to talk about this in detail.” Like, I’m almost surprised that it didn’t get an R.

Does the movie have problems? Yeah. A few. The Riddler is more physical in this movie than struck me as appropriate for The Riddler. He struck me as an amalgam between The Riddler and Hush. Not only capable of putting together weirdly intricate plots but also capable of physical violence (not merely physically capable of it, but completely unsqueamish in the moment). There are a handful of scenes in the film that are a little too on the nose. One of Catwoman’s lines, some of Riddler’s later scenes… not *BAD*, but stuff that mixed feeling accurate for the character as we understand them in 2022 with stuff that felt like crowbarring 2022 into the characters.

On top of that, you may have seen that, periodically, a person tweets something to the effect of “instead of hitting people with his fists, Bruce Wayne should set up charitable foundations and actually *HELP* people!” and it gets thousands of retweets and people arguing about how much Bruce Wayne has helped, is helping, and charity theory and, well, the person who wrote the script for the film has seen those arguments too. I kind of liked that part. (Though he does not let Bruce Wayne off the hook, despite explaining why this sort of criticism misses the mark.)

I suppose I could say that “it’s the best movie I’ve seen in years!” as a bit of a punchline but I will instead say “if you like Batman movies and are curious if the 2022 one is good? Check it out. But if you haven’t seen it yet, you can probably wait until it starts streaming on Monday.”

I have no need to see a movie again this weekend, as Maribou is coming home. I’ll have to do stuff like “get the house ready” and… well, that’s the main thing. Get the house ready. Maybe a trip to Costco. Maybe some groceries. Maybe some laundry.

So… what’s on your docket?