The Batman (2022)......can indeed boast of one major achievement.
It's turned Tim Burton's much derided 1992 "Batman Returns" into a rediscovered, newly appreciated masterwork.......a much more finely tuned, entertaining trip to the dark side, as opposed 'The Batman' pounding you over the head for 3 long, long hours.
For those who've put the first crop of 'Batman' movies out their memories or off their radar, Burton's sequel rubbed folks the wrong way with its taking Batman and his villains into even darker, more perverse and violent territory.
Though the film boasted truly bravura performances by Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny DeVito as The Penguin, the level of carnage and cruelty didn't quite make it a good fit for its MacDonald's Happy Meal souvenir cups and toys.......
And so the franchise fell to director Joel Schumacher, who turned the subsequent entries, "Batman Forever" and "Batman And Robin" into ludicrous, campy circuses. .....which as of today, nobody mentions, except in dismissive smirks.
Then enter director Christopher Nolan with his spectacular 'Dark Knight' trilogy, kicking off with 2005's "Batman Begins"......
By wiping Tim Burton's exuberant comic-book veneer off the characters, Nolan stripped down the Batman mythos to grim, dark noir, accentuated by Christian Bale's raspy-voice Caped Crusader.....(later given well-deserved parodies in the "Lego" animated films.
Now writer-director Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield", "Let Me In", the recent "Planet Of The Apes" series) takes Nolan's hellish Bat-Universe even further into the abyss.......3 solid, never ending, tortuous hours of Robert Pattinson's tormented Batman battling demons from his past......literally.
These various demons take the form of John Turturro as a mob 'Godfather' refugee, Colin Farrell as The Penguin, letting 87 layers of rubber makeup do most of his acting for him and Paul Dano as a vengeful loony-toon, given to screaming, childish temper tantrums almost equal to Donald Trump's.
And don't look for any measure of guilty pleasure fun in Zoe Karavitz as Catwoman. . Unlike Michelle Pfeiffer's feline, who looked like she was having the time of her life with role, Kravitz stays within the deadly serious parameters of 'The Batman', mostly glowering while displaying her gym-sculpted torso.
As for Pattinson, doing the required monotone, raspy-voiced Batguy.......nothing much to say. As far as we could tell, Matt Reeves could've picked any actor to stuff into that sculpted rubber suit....with the same results.
Yes, this glum interminable voyage into the abyss does perk up with a few rip-roarin' action sequences, but they're no different from stuff you'd see in the Marvel superhero movies......and at least in the Marvels, the action whim-whams are better lit and more fun to watch.
The title gave us fair warning. Referring to its hero as the Batman, as if he's preparing for a coronation.
We give up trying to understand how so many film critics and pop culture commentators roll over for these pretentious, dark-as-pitch Batman endurance tests. While Christopher Nolan's level of cinematic artistry managed to made the Dark Knight trilogy come off as urgently compelling, "The Batman" so wallows and celebrates its own darkness, it fall down an endless rabbit hole of its own making.
And we anxiously do not await the next one. 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)
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