In The Batman, director Matt Reeves shows the darkness and terror within Gotham City before he ever presents his title character. First, Reeves presents the murder, theft, vandalism, and assault that is rampant throughout the city. But out of these shadows comes Batman, played by Robert Pattinson, who uses fear to stop the crime of Gotham, a blunt solution to a complicated problem. When Batman fights crime, it’s equally blunt: a few quick punches to a gang—dressed in makeup that looks similar to such iconic criminals as Two-Face and Joker—before the group disperses. Batman hasn’t stopped the criminal element of Gotham, he’s simply delayed the crime for another night.

Through voiceover, we learn that for two years, Bruce Wayne has been hitting the streets of Gotham dressed as Batman, using fear as a tool, and crime has only risen. It’s been twenty years since his parents were murdered, and while he wants to stop the crime that led him to become an orphan, it certainly seems like Wayne’s attempts to combat the villainy of his city have only backfired. Batman might not be the solution he believes himself to be, but rather, the indirect cause of Gotham’s myriad problems. While we’ve seen plenty of Batman takes over the decades, never before has a live-action Batman quite dealt with the moral gray area that this superhero works in quite like The Batman. Reeves starts The Batman with the city, the corruption, the crime, and it becomes clear that what makes The Batman so different from other Batman movies is that this isn’t a Batman film—this is a Gotham film.

The Batman isn’t exactly introducing new ideas that we haven’t seen before in a Batman film, it’s simply focusing on components that have often been in the background of previous Batman films. Villains in the past might have used the duplicitous nature of Gotham’s finest as an excuse for their crimes, but with The Batman, this dishonesty and misconduct becomes a central piece of this puzzle, even more important to the story than Paul Dano’s disturbing and unsettling Riddler.

The Riddler, played by Paul Dano, in his mask and ripping off a piece of duct tape in 'The Batman'
Image via Warner Bros.

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The Batman largely centralizes on the idea of Bruce Wayne being the “world’s greatest detective,” teaming the hero with Jeffrey Wright’s James Gordon to solve a series of puzzles and murders from The Riddler that is terrorizing Gotham. This cop duo pairing and the horrific nature of The Riddler’s puzzles makes large swaths of The Batman a clear homage to David Fincher’s Se7en. From The Riddler’s morbid clues left amongst the blood to teach Gotham a lesson, to The Riddler’s dingy apartment, Reeves’ take on the villain feels at times like an alternate take on Se7en’s John Doe as well. Yet putting this type of darker mystery at the center of a Batman film does make this reverence not feel as egregious as, say, Joker’s borrowing from The King of Comedy.

In this journey to take down The Riddler, Reeves—who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Craig—gives us a Batman who is still trying to figure out how to be The Dark Knight. Even more so than the origin story of Batman Begins, The Batman shows Bruce Wayne often struggling to be the hero he wants to be. Bruce is frequently clumsy or in over his head, and again, Pattinson plays him with a bluntness, as if he can’t seem to see the faults in his plans until it’s too late. More than any other Batman, Pattinson plays this character as part emo kid (we’re introduced to Bruce blasting Nirvana in his Batcave located under a bridge, as black eye makeup trails down his face), but also as a man who has been hurt by this city and wants to make sure what happened to him never happens to anyone again. It’s an illogical task, but this Bruce is willing to die to make the impossible possible.

As Batman, Pattinson focuses on the fear within the character, with an underlying seething anger he's ready to let loose at any moment. While The Batman doesn’t show us the death of his parents (thank god), we can see the wounds still coming to the surface, the pain that has been inflicted on him that has caused him to be this way. Pattinson is great at these types of performances, where what’s most important is what is left unsaid, and he uses this to excellent effect with this version of the character.

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Image via WarnerMedia

But The Batman nails the casting of all these classic characters, not just Pattinson’s stoic Batman or Dano’s uneasy Riddler. Wright makes for a perfect Gordon, a good cop surrounded by corruption, while Andy Serkis’ take on Alfred Pennyworth beautifully marries the character’s unspoken past with a tremendous amount of love for Bruce. Colin Farrell steals every scene he has as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, an extraordinarily fun performance that leans heavily into a Robert De Niro impersonation at times. Even antagonists without some type of villain gimmick shine here due to the excellent casting, such as Peter Sarsgaard as the unscrupulous District Attorney Gil Colson, or John Turturro, who makes Carmine Falcone into the puppet master behind Gotham’s underworld.

Yet the standout amongst this fantastic cast is Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, who gets tied into Batman’s hunt for The Riddler. The chemistry between Pattinson and Kravitz is almost overwhelming, and their dynamic is the only time that Batman allows himself to lighten up a bit, which only makes both characters even more endearing. Kravitz plays Kyle as—like Bruce—another person hurt by Gotham, yet without the optimism that the city can change. Catwoman has always been an antihero to some extent, but through Kravitz’s performance, her take almost makes us realize she probably has the more grounded take on Gotham’s future. Catwoman has had its share of excellent takes in film, but Kravitz comes extremely close to being the best take on this character.

Again, what makes The Batman a unique take on this tried-and-true story is that focus on Gotham, the effect it has had on these characters, and the seeming impossibility to make an actual change in a world this torn apart. From the opening scene of The Riddler taking down a dishonorable politician named Don, homages to the levees breaking in New Orleans, to discussions about promises of renewal being a lie, it’s hard not to see the real-world parallels in The Batman and understand the almost overwhelming suffocation of this Gotham. But it’s Reeves’ focus on the world of Gotham that makes The Batman something truly distinctive in the world of live-action Batman films. Usually, Gotham is little more than a wicked city, churning out supervillains, but Reeves makes his Gotham into a living, breathing city, one where we can see the consequences of the deception and fraud at the top and how it hurts everyone underneath. While The Riddler’s tactics are clearly villainous, it’s easy to see why someone dealing with this unavoidable nightmare would want to purge the city of its sin.

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Image via Warner Bros.

But this way of showing a different angle on entertainment that is already well-established is what Reeves does so well. With Cloverfield, he took a city-destroying monster film and told a story from the perspective of those running away from the destruction. With Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, he reinvestigated this franchise from the viewpoint of the apes in a grounded and surprisingly touching way. With The Batman, Reeves continues this trend by spending more time in the trenches of Gotham, showing the insurmountable challenge that Batman has ahead of him, and creating a richer version of this city than we usually get in these films.

At three hours long, The Batman flies by thanks to Reeves’ direction. He takes time to focus on the city, the heroes, the villains, and the legacy of Gotham that has led to this scenario. Reeves and Craig’s screenplay handles Gotham with care and consideration, a city ruled by men who lived in the murkiness of their situation, many of which had the best of intentions, yet became overtaken by reality. Reeves doesn’t rush by the structure of what makes Gotham the way it is, and still manages to make The Batman move at a clip.

The Batman is also just a gorgeous film, with cinematography by Greig Fraser (Dune, Rogue One, Zero Dark Thirty) that embraces the darkness, but never feels saturated by it, and a commanding, powerful score by Michael Giacchino, with a Batman theme that almost feels like it was birthed out of “The Imperial March.” Like its cast, Reeves has clearly found the best team to bring this version of Batman to life at every step.

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Image via Warner Bros.

But the biggest problem with The Batman is that despite all the Fincher inspiration and the phenomenal cast and crew, this still has to be a Batman film. Especially in the third act, The Batman can’t help but start to hit the notes one would expect from a superhero film. While the film’s major action set piece is expertly handled, it does feel somewhat tonally at odds with what the rest of the film has done. At the end of the day, The Batman is the beginning of a trilogy planned by Reeves, and is on track to be the source of at least two HBO Max spinoff series, and the end of The Batman is stuck setting up these future stories, for better or for worse. It should be expected that The Batman would be a part of a bigger whole, but especially in the final act, it’s hard not to sort of hope that The Batman could exist on its own terms, to take its own chances, and try to break the mold a bit more, especially considering what the film is doing up until that point.

Still, Reeves has made the best Batman film since The Dark Knight, with a captivating and rich world that reinvigorates characters we’ve already seen on screen over and over again. With The Batman, Reeves prioritizes the shadows of Gotham, setting up this city in a way we’ve never seen before onscreen, bringing life to the world around Batman. Instead of heroes and villains that live in black and white, Reeves has presented a city defined by the gray. The Batman doesn't redefine what we know about this character, but through Reeves' direction, we're shown a Batman story in a way we've never quite seen before. While most other Batman films focus on the hero that comes out of the darkness, Reeves has focused on the darkness that hero came out of, which makes all the difference.

Rating: B+

The Batman opens in theaters on March 4.