This week: Brickheads and dropheads,with all spoilers forThe Batman.
Last week:Something was definitely bleeding.
See you in June 2023, when the Flash enters the Batverse.
The Batman, The LEGO Batman Movie.Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures; Warner Bros. Pictures
Even the Batman movies know something’s wrong with Batman.
Her Gotham remains “the most crime-ridden city in the world” despite 78 years of caped crusading.
“My dream is for the police force to team up with Batman,” she announces.
Warner Bros. Pictures
That line shocks Bruce Wayne (Will Arnett), though it’s nonsensical in an allegedly self-referential movie.
Didn’t Batman just lead a blue army in 2012’sThe Dark Knight Rises?
Surely every Bat-signal symbolizes collaboration?
Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz in ‘The Batman’.Jonathan Olley/DC Comics/Warner Bros.
Still, you get her point.
“Actual laws and proper ethics and accountability” are tenets of a healthy society.
But movie franchises only deploy oversight committees to prove the good guys don’t need oversight.
Then there’sThe Batman, which asks a provocative question: What ifeveryonewas an orphan?
No Bruce Wayne was ever sadder than Robert Pattinson.
He’s a hermit who lives in Wayne Tower, which means he lives at the office.
Black bangs hang low beneath his eye shadow.
Reader, he journals.
And still, every local rogue declares him as an out-of-touch aristocrat.
She turns into the most openly virtuous Gotham mayor in movie history after Batman saves her, of course.
The story in a nutshell:You’re no hero, hero, now hey be a hero!
But they rhyme more than they should.
A strong female character complains about Batman before triumphantly joining forces with him.
Meticulous world-building dead-ends into elemental calamity.
Thomas and Martha were murdered, have you heard?
Bruce Wayne must change, must learn to punch bad guys more holistically.
These Batmen respond to their critics, which should interest a critic like me.
But the deck comes stacked against the skeptics.
“I hate to say this, but the city needs you,” LEGO Barbara admits.
(Of course it does!)
(As in: “white privileged aholes.")
And then she kisses Batman, one of the most famously privileged white men ever.
I like the first ten hours, the last five hours drag a bit.
Director Matt Reeves epitomizes blockbuster restraint.
Nobody calls Catwoman “Catwoman,” and her ski mask barely has ear ripples.
Non-costumed gangsters usually henchmen for colorful psychos are main villains for half a runtime.
There’s something tiresome about this mentality.
It can feel like craven marketing: Tee-hee, whoisthat joking guy, see you next sequel!
At worst, that whole approach to comic book adaptations demands something like self-lobotomization from creators and viewers.
When Reeves spoke to EW in February, hewouldn’t even confirmBarry Keoghan’s inmate was Joker.
(He hassince come clean.)
The cartoon features every Batman villain plus Sauron plus Voldemort.
The Batcave has every Bat-costume and Bat-vehicle imaginable.
alongside mega-franchise restorative justice (Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face!
).LEGO Batmancan do all this because it is a LEGO movie.
I was so wrong.
Anecdotally, I have heard moreLEGO Batmanlove in the last couple weeks than in the last five years.
Wrong to speculate about why people like things; even hazier to wonder why peoplevocallylike things.
Fair to say, though, thatThe Batman’s arrival has done wonders forLEGO Batman’s reputation.
The new film provides a handy counterbalance on every level.
The Riddler has David Fincher affectations: an apartment full ofSe7ennotebooks, shadowZodiac-ish TV-news appearances.
We hear a woman strangled on a voicemail.
Every Batman movie has a gala, andThe Batman’s gala is a funeral.
Pattinson generally whispers and walks more than he swings.
I don’t want to underrate the lighthearted moments.
Pattinson is flat-out great when he’s in costume.
This is still an action movie, and it can be frivolous.
A truck collision gives the Batmobile a perfectGrand Theft Autojump-ramp.
ButThe Batmanmoves the goalposts for downbeat superhero thrills.
It makes the Christopher Nolan movies look like the Joel Schumacher movies.
Cillian Murphy’s clinically restrained Scarecrow would be over the top next to Dano’s murmuring live-streamer.
Michael Giacchino’s score could be church bells ringing in Hell.
Alfred (Andy Serkis) gets exploded into intensive care.
Some scenes are so dark you cannot see what is happening.
“Something in the Way,” the slowest song on Nirvana’sNevermind, plays twice.
So lovingThe LEGO Batman Moviemeans something now.
It’s a vote in favor of comedy, canon, and basic visibility.
Arnett’s macho-gruff self-satire was one of the best things aboutLEGO Movie.
The solo spinoff pairs him with hisArrested Developmentnephew Michael Cera, who is the best movie Robin ever.
By rights, the boy wonder should sound betrayed when Bat-dad’s antics land them both in super-prison.
(Anotherlonely-famous superhero gets emotionally rebooted by mentoringanothersuccessor.
)Spider-Versewas a dam-opening moment for multiverse chatter.
This means thatLEGO Batmanfeels oddly conventional today, and its manic charms only go so far.
The third act turns pure onslaught, with Joker teaming up with Warner-branded content for a nonstop invasion.
The ending requires every character to stand on each other’s heads to hold their world together.
The story wants to be about Batman’s journey out of selfishness.
By film’s end, he finally has pals to watchJerry Maguirewith.
This goofily mirrors Pattinson’s non-goofy arc inThe Batmanfrom single-minded vengeance to expansive social conscience.
All of which is certainly more emotionally delicate than, like, realizing many people are named Martha.
But it’s also oddly navel-gazing.
You feel a point has been missed.
you’re free to’t just put “karate-chopping poor people” back in the bottle.
Oddly, these movies about explicitly problematic Batmen prioritize Batman’s role in the plot more than ever.
He is the villains' whole motivation.
Bat-fandom has become a character trait.
I wanted to be as strong and as fast and as smart as Batman.”
A line like that is supposed to be disapproving, but look how much praise it embeds.
Worth pointing out thatLEGO Batmandoes not become a movie about the glory of ethics and accountability.
And inThe Batman, the give-and-take between Kravitz’s Selina and Pattinson’s Bruce feels too one-sided.
She turns a little less amoral; he becomes none more fun.
The fantasy of Batman is supposed to be achievability.
He is the superhero without superpowers.
Of course, that’s a lie.
He’s fortunate twice over: born both handsome and loaded.
Arriving on Earth via spaceward Kryptonian birth matrix is only marginally less likely than being born a billionaire.
I think the real Batman fantasy is more unnerving.
Here’s a dream of eternal self-justification.
That’s why I haven’t really written about, like, Good and Evil in these columns.
that Gotham City’s most powerful people are corrupt.
Isn’t that Gotham City’s motto?
This particular corruption extends to Thomas Wayne, but only barely.
Falcone reveals that Batman’s dad was an acquaintance who demanded the silencing of a journalist.
Meanwhile, the Riddler cedes any moral high ground.
Meanwhile, inThe Dark Knight RisesandThe Batman, various Selina Kyles learn that noteveryrich person is bad.
Gotham City is a horrible place full of dark wonder.
So what a shame thatThe Batmanbungles its most fascinating biographical detail.
Bruce finds out that Martha Wayne (Stella Stocker) was often institutionalized.
He barely seems to react to this information, more shocked by the revelations about his dad.
Mental illness is a complex malady, not something to fan-theorize over.
Is Batman the hero we deserve?
Or just the inmate running our asylum?
