copied my letterboxd review of the batman (2022) because, uh, why not. minor spoilers (mostly just my opinion on characters, plus a slight tease at the end of the movie)
okay so, first off, i've been putting this movie off because (surprise, surprise!) i am a giant batman fanatic, and i genuinely wasn't sure i'd be able to handle this LOL. it took me an extra hour to watch this, actually, because i kept pausing it to yap... anyways.
this is genuinely the best modernization of the batman i've ever seen. the classic trip-up of newer batmans (batmen?) is that nobody knows what to do with him! they try to recreate an older gotham (30s, 60s, 90s) and mess up, or they plant an older batman in a newer gotham, or they try to actually modernize the batman, and just...miss. this doesn't fucking miss. in my humble opinion, this modernization is PERFECT. bruce himself, selina, the penguin, alfred, falcone, gordon, eddie...truly fantastic work. the writers and actors did an incredible job portraying these characters.
speaking of bruce and eddie: wow! just, wow. not a whole lot of writers understand that they are mirrors. they're selfish, they've got one-track minds, they've got damn horse blinders on. eddie's work ended in countless lives lost, and so did bruce's! the car chase scene, with the penguin—can you imagine how many people must have died? and that's the thing: bruce doesn't always consider everything. he's a highly flawed individual.
"you must be hideously scarred under there." eugh... really nailed it. bruce wayne is a child. he is a seven year old boy wrapped up in twenty years' worth of scar tissue. eddie says that the mask is the real bruce, but that's not quite it! bruce has never learned to be a real person—isn't that exciting?
finally: selina leaves at the end. she tells bruce to go, because she knows he can't abandon gotham, even though she says it'll never rise from its own ashes. but, really? she's lying. call me a conspiracy nut, but i totally think that the sequel is gonna pull a no man's land—perhaps without the government seal—and she's gonna come back. because selina loves gotham. alright? just as much as bruce does. that is why they're so compatible. they love gotham, they love its people, and they can't leave it—not for long, anyhow.
finally finally: i knew just from his voice...joker. go away. jokes (heh..) aside, i am hopeful that this team can write an interesting joker. just about everything's been done (and, personally, as a batman fan...put him up on the shelf, man.) but this is such a refreshing, yet loyal take on the riddler. i've got faith. wavering faith! but faith.
