The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022)

[yoloswegmaster]

Runtime for 'The Batman' is going to be 167 minutes.

[willoneill]

That second paragraph is a little sloppy, as it's comparing The Batman's running time "without credits" with two movies' running times "with credits". Just me being a stickler today.

Also, the multiplex nearest my house doesn't have free parking but reimburses you for 3 hours. After the last few months worth of blockbusters, they need to start upping that to 4.

[swo17]

Runtime for 'The Batman' is going to be 167 minutes.

Finally, a chance to find out what this Batman character is all about

[cantinflas]

The Batman Theme

[cantinflas]

The World Needs Heroes

[Finch]

The trades are positive; Roger Ebert.com and Slant also like it; on the other hand Walter Chaw, a big Reeves fan, found it pretty disappointing. A few weeks ago, when they announced the running time, I groaned (though I did like the trailer). Walter's complaints about the bad pacing amongst other things kind of make me think, I might wait for a home video rental, especially since we are not out of woods with Covid yet and my husband is immuno-compromised.

[therewillbeblus]

I liked Ehrlich's review a whole lot, especially the self-reflexivity with which he compares this film's macro-scale approach to superhero films down to its internal themes and vibe

[DarkImbecile]

I almost totally relieved myself of the obligation of keeping up with the genre for the last five years or so, but taking everything I've seen over the last 20 years into account, Matt Reeves' The Batman would rank as a well-above-average comic book film — probably the best since Nolan's 2008 entry — purely on the basis of its narrative and ideas. The dense, very dialogue-heavy (and, in a seemingly obvious step I don't think any other Batman feature has taken, voiceover-driven) script by Reeves and Peter Craig is built around relatively few but impactful and exciting set pieces, some new angles on the familiar tropes of this mythology, and a welcome interest in explicitly examining the fascist fantasy so fundamental to the character and the depiction of his environs.

Though many people noted seeming similarities to Fincher's Zodiac from the marketing materials, those references are mostly superficial — the film it's most deeply indebted to is Se7en, both stylistically and thematically, and despite the occasional notes of absurdity

Spoiler

(boy, are there a lot of dead parents in this movie)

or bits of plot incoherence, it mostly hangs together as a narrative. Pattinson is a more than viable Batman, and the supporting cast is filled with stellar actors having a lot of fun, with my favorite being a delightful John Turturro, in an upset over the always-great Colin Farrell.

But the primary reason that I found this to be on par with The Dark Knight (potentially usurping it as my favorite superhero film ever) and was perfectly happy to spend three hours in a packed IMAX screening with a bunch of overexcited fanboys — some of whom clearly struggled with the film's exceedingly patient, almost languid pacing, which I thoroughly enjoyed but may bode poorly for the film's box-office performance — was that Matt Reeves really directed the hell out of this movie. Greig Fraser's cinematography puts the glossy sameness of nearly every other Marvel or DC feature I've seen to shame: probably two-thirds of the shots are either in some way obscured by water, smoke, or shadow or else only giving us a sliver of the visual information we want from through a half-opened window, around a corner, or some other obstruction, turning the audience into frustrated voyeurs struggling to see the whole picture. Like many of these movies, it's purposefully very dark and drab most of the time, but purposefully and repeatedly splashed with shocks of reds and blues. I hate to tempt Finch and others who might be interested in the film to try to see this theatrically, but the sound design is pretty spectacular as well — the Batmobile is felt in your chest as much as heard — and the production and costume design is excellent throughout.

Overall, very pleasantly surprised by how much I found to chew on formally, and there is certainly enough in the way of plot machinations and tweaks to the Batman mythos to keep those more interested in those elements happily engaged; as much as I bemoan the timesuck such franchises often represent for the talent involved, I have to admit I'd be happily buying a ticket to see what this team does with a sequel or two.

[R0lf]

Greig Fraser's cinematography puts the glossy sameness of nearly every other Marvel or DC feature I've seen to shame: probably two-thirds of the shots are either in some way obscured by water, smoke, or shadow or else only giving us a sliver of the visual information we want from through a half-opened window, around a corner, or some other obstruction, turning the audience into frustrated voyeurs struggling to see the whole picture.

I struggled with this element of the film.

Why is it ok here but when Jess Franco does it the movie is simply written off as being ineptly made?

[knives]

The script.

[RIP Film]

Admit I’m kind of interested in seeing this, based mainly on the cinematography and The Crow vibes. Also, what DarkImbecile said about it exploring the fascist fantasy that has been the elephant in the room for quite a while. It seems to me the only way the character makes any sense at all is in a city setting that borders on Escape from New York levels of collapse, especially with a police commissioner openly signaling someone who is above the law.

But what’s with studios green lighting these 3 hour cuts of blockbusters? First Bond and now Batman, as if people are eager to go to theaters at all. With that kind of indulgence you might as well go for the ‘R’ rating.

[DarkImbecile]

Why is it ok here but when Jess Franco does it the movie is simply written off as being ineptly made?

I wouldn't know... never seen a Jess Franco movie!

But what’s with studios green lighting these 3 hour cuts of blockbusters?

Unlike the 3-hour Avengers: Endgame, which I think was the last superhero film I saw before this one, the length actually feels appropriate to the unraveling of the story and the style Reeves is using to tell it; instead of using the runtime to jam in more and more characters, cameos, and bloodless, meaningless fantasy battles, The Batman uses its deliberate pace to establish characters and let them interact with each other in ways outside of punching. Not all of these mysteries to solve or motivations to unearth are equally satisfying or successful, but I for one was much more invested in the smaller-scale focus of this film, and correspondingly more willing to invest the time required.

[tenia]

Honestly, it feels to me as if Hollywood has given up on past limitations regarding runtimes vs $$$ (since you can now get 12 showings per day of a 3hrs movie), and as such has now been using for at least a decade longer runtimes as some kind of epicness metric for their big productions. Except that the utmost majority of the time, 2hrs+ movies have pretty much no reason for such durations, and the longer they go above the 2hrs mark, the lower I tend to score these movies (of course YMMV). I remember first realising this with The Bourne Legacy (135 min) and at some point, I can pretty much guess how much below the average my score will be just by looking at the runtime.

More recently, I've had the issue with No Time To Die : I never felt there was any reason for such a runtime (163 min) and what I suspect was supposed to be a marker of epicness only ended up being a marker of sluggishness. I often felt, in the past, that many 2hrs movies could work with 10 min trimmed here and there. I now feel that these "cinder blocks" could work with 40 minutes less. I'm not sure we're better now than before, especially because those runtimes have become the norm rather than the exception for many big productions but how many movies actively justify such runtimes ? It's interesting for instance to see what happened with the Fast & Furious franchise : the runtimes for each movie were 106 min / 108 min / 104 min / 107 min / 130 min / 130 min / 137 min / 136 min / 143 min (F9 even has a 149 min DC). Hobbs & Shaw is 137 min.

If it turns out however that The Batman is one of the rare movies that are actually properly using such a runtime, all the best. I hope to check that soon.

[domino harvey]

As David Mamet once said, most modern films could stand to just lose their first act completely

[knives]

And denouement. I really miss the day when the film would just end.

[Finch]

^ Blame Peter Jackson for that one!

[therewillbeblus]

^ Blame Peter Jackson for that one!

The largest audible collective groan in a movie theatre experience for me was the return from black to the ninth of twelve endings to Return of the King

[Mr Sausage]

I dunno. Whenever I hear discussions like this, I remind myself that the general length of a Shakespeare (or any Renaissance) play or for an opera was 2.5 hours. (And that includes the bad ones in case anyone's thinking of making an argument from reputation). That fact gives me pause.

Pretty sure this is all cultural conditioning. Some members are talking like the perceived two-hour sweet spot is inherent to movies themselves, but I would be very surprised if it were. The trend now is for spectacle and grandeur over narrative efficiency and economy. People go to the movies less, so when they do go they want more out of it. If anything we seem to be retreating to an older cultural preference for narrative excess and for the baroque, a willingness to wallow in mood or pile on elaborations. The pace of individual scenes remains quick, but the overall story is drawn out and lingered over. Reminds me, too, that there was once a taste for gigantic, digressive, over-stuffed novels in Victorian England, with Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope, Collins, and more turning out doorstopper after doorstopper (although serialization was probably to blame for that). Cultural tastes are changing. Maybe streaming and the ability to binge anything for long periods has increased people's tolerance for extended watching, tho' probably that's just an easy reduction. This is less a sustained argument than a series of disconnected ideas I've just had. Sorry.

[knives]

I was thinking as well that in a way we seem to be moving toward whatever it is motiving Indian blockbuster cinema to often be over three hours for even the most trite story.

[R0lf]

Also, what DarkImbecile said about it exploring the fascist fantasy that has been the elephant in the room for quite a while.

Here it is more like Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA which uses fascism as set dressing to lend it artificial weight and fake pathos but has nothing to say about and no point to make be it political, historical, or emotional.

[DarkImbecile]

It’s certainly not an academic treatise on the issue, but it’s also a big budget PG-13 superhero franchise movie, so just the fact that it addresses it with any kind of consideration at all is a pleasant surprise.

[Walter Kurtz]

As David Mamet once said, most modern films could stand to just lose their first act completely

When I was a youngster... 7 or 8 or so... my friends and I would go every week to the local discount movie house where they'd be showing a double feature. We never showed up on time for the first movie so I missed the first act of 50% of the films I saw. When the second movie was over they all wanted to stay and catch what they missed on the first film.

And I always said... "You're not missing anything."

Quite frankly, it was always easy to figure out what had happened... and it made the movie more fun as you puzzled it together.

That's probably why screenwriting came easily to me when I grew up. When I taught a symposium out here one of my cardinal rules was "always enter a scene as late as you can."

Movies also.

[R0lf]

It’s certainly not an academic treatise on the issue, but it’s also a big budget PG-13 superhero franchise movie, so just the fact that it addresses it with any kind of consideration at all is a pleasant surprise.

It’s certainly a very low bar when it’s given significantly less overall consideration than Zack Snyder gave in his boneheaded engagement with Middle East militarisation, sex trafficking, and political philosophising in BATMAN VS SUPERMAN.

[tenia]

Pretty sure this is all cultural conditioning. Some members are talking like the perceived two-hour sweet spot is inherent to movies themselves, but I would be very surprised if it were.

I'm not so much talking of the 2hrs threshold as a sweet spot but rather as an anchor to how it was before. It's not a perfect point, not a clear-cut one : some can work at 1h45, others at 2h15, but I don't believe these big movies would work efficiently at 1h25 nor do I see now many of them not feeling heavily boring and sluggish at 2h25+.
It indeed most likely is cultural but also as you wrote industrial : this is likely to make tickets' prices more justified than for a 90 min movie, and the fact that blockbusters more and more "advertise" their long runtime certainly feels this way.
But again, the issue remains, to me, that so few of those movies don't feel like they have been extensively padded to achieve these runtimes, and that these longer runtimes don't make these movies better, but only longer, this in a structural way.
And what's interesting is that now, Venom 2's gross incompetence is perceived by some as a consequence of its very short runtime (whereas no, it's just a bad movie, 30 minutes more would just get us more garbage).

[Robin Davies]

Yet more dark gothic shadowy gruff-voiced Batman stuff.
Aren't people bored with this?
Obviously the Adam West series was the definitive Batman.
As Charlie Brooker said "Calling Batman the Dark Knight is like calling Papa Smurf the Blue Patriarch."