It’s new, fresh, and unique. The studio deserves an A+ for the idea of depicting Batman in an unorthodox angle and an A for the execution.
The story revolves around a series of murders committed by the Riddler (Paul Dano) where he’s obsessively leaving special encrypted messages for Batman (Robert Pattinson ) to solves. This movie began with a brief explanation of Gotham City, a city that is chaotic, busy, corrupted with crimes, and rainy (I mean, is it even Gotham if it doesn't rain?).
Rather than showing the audience the classical plot of Batman that started with young Bruce Wayne-became an orphan-went on a long journey to find himself-came back to Gotham City as the Dark Knight, this movie skipped it to the time when Batman has already put quite a fame in that wicked city. Feared by low-life criminals and despised by the cops except for his companion; James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright).
The journey of Batman in this film flows smoothly as he encountered Carmine Falcon (John Turturro ), and Oz/Penguin (Collin Farrel) which you won’t believe that he is Collin Farrel by the way.
The film is also cast away Bruce Wayne’s public persona to focuses more on Batman’s journey in finding his reason to fight crimes for Gotham City which I think is a risky move to do in a standalone project because if we are talking about Batman, we are also talking about Bruce Wayne, two characters emerges into one. In this film, Bruce Wayne's public persona is nowhere to be found.
Utilizes the hero’s most downplayed nickname -The World’s Greatest Detective- in this film, the audience is served with Batman’s journey in each murder scene with a little bit of help as his loyal guardian; Alfred (Andy Serkis), and Selena Kyle (Zoë Kravitz). Pattinson performed well under Batman’s cape and built a young great detective, depicting Batman’s struggles on deciding what he is trying to do behind that mask, especially when he realizes that what he is doing is exactly the same as what the Riddler is doing.
The revelation that opened his eye about his purpose is depicted in a dramatic way in this film, where we can see a young Batman that is full of rage turned into a beacon of hope for the people of Gotham than inspires its society to not merely fight crimes, but also building Gotham and make it a better place for everyone. Just like the Batman that we know about; a Symbol of fear for the criminals, a symbol of hope for Gotham’s citizens.
Matt Reeves has put quite a show in this movie with his typical gloomy atmosphere to thrill the audiences, creating a Batman movie with detective-noir perfectly. In terms of is this the greatest Batman movie yet, it will depend on the follow-up of this movie, if this project stays as a standalone project, I will say that Christian Bale’s Batman is still the greatest Batman movie(s), but if Pattinson’s Batman is transformed into a franchise like Nolan’s trilogy I believe that it would stand a great chance to be the greatest Batman movie(s).
Oh, and the consistency of Batman’s eye makeup deserved an ovation for the production team.
Final Score: 8.5/10
