The Batman
A turbulent production story resumes interrupted by the outbreak of the pandemic, pauses, doubts about the cast: the fact that on March 3 in the arrivals hall The Batman already seems a small miracle.
A dark, hard thriller, completely set at night and in the rain, a detective story at the height of Seven, a work of reworking a strong and persistent imagination, after more than eighty years of stories on the comic pages and over 30 on the big screen. An operation so intelligent and successful, so solid and against the trend in a market saturated with comic book adaptations, that the feeling of being in front of a miracle is replicated after viewing.
The Batman, no icon
After so many films, so many readings and interpretations of the Dark Knight, it was difficult to do something original or iconic, and Matt Reeves, with The Batman Movierulz, does neither. He moves away from the icons of the character's mythology, filling his very long film with quotes, references, flavors, and visions.
Between cinema, comics, music, and video games, he creates a unique universe that has Gotham as a background, a dirty and rotten city, beaten by constant rain, which we see only at night, full of garbage and crime, a lost city where the slums are populated with criminals, guarded by the gothic towers that rise against a cloudy and livid sky.
Which constantly reflects a rudimentary bat-signal, once again not the icon we know, but an adaptation, a large remedied lighthouse, a communication tool that becomes useful, functional, and loses its solemnity. Like the Batmobile, the Batcave, the costume, scratched and stained with mud and blood.
He renounces icons, therefore, but also originality, mixing Fincher with comics and video games and with what Todd Phillips made in Joker, moving away from Nolan and Burton, yet using them as a paradigm for what not to be, and thus find his Street.
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Batman and Riddler, the clash
In The Batman, Bruce Wayne is Batman's alter ego, it is he who hides, while The Batman Moierulz proudly rises from the shadows to perpetuate his generic revenge against a city that has committed the sin of not being pure and perfect. . If the Riddler is the villain, who stands as executioner against the top of the city, who have done business with the underworld, helping to rot it, Batman is not too different from him.
The two figures are mirrored in each other but, unlike Nolan's Batman and Joker, who were clearly separated from the granite awareness of the Dark Knight against the chaotic will of the Clown Prince of Crime, here they get to merge and overlap, up to which one of the two does not realize the difference, the distance that separates revenge from awareness.
Robert Pattinson's Batman does not want to become a symbol, nor a hero, nor a reference, he wants revenge at all costs in the name of a purity that does not exist, not even in the people we idolize and love. But as an idealistic kid, he will realize that his city needs an outstretched hand and someone to give it hope, not an avenger but a rescuer.
The products of a rotten city
Glorious against Matt Reeves' livid Gotham stand Bruce Wayne / Batman and Edward Nashton / Riddler, the Yin and the Yang, two opposites that have a point of contact and that from a common condition choose to take different paths. They are both products of the city, both orphans and raised without the love of their parents, both seeking revenge.
Robert Pattinson is a subtle Batman, compared to his previous iterations, tormented, immature, marked, he is in a limbo in which he is no longer a boy and not yet a man, he asks himself many questions about his identity, his purpose, his legacy, is questioned.
Paul Dano is instead a very focused Riddler, focused on his purpose, unshakable in his conviction, dedicated to the plan that he has meticulously devised, a madman perfectly in possession of his abilities. And the two performers instill in both a soul, powerful emotional vibrations, an impeccable construction of the characters.
The Batman has a perfect cast
Nothing seems out of place in The Batman, starting with the many characters on stage. Each component of the Dark Knight mythology fits perfectly into the story: Colin Farrell's Penguin who has so much about the gangster and whom we meet when he's not yet fully blossomed as a crime boss.
The very sensual Catwoman by Zoë Kravitz, who despite winks at Michelle Pfeiffer, brings with her unexpected depth and nuances; the highly refined Carmine Falcone / John Turturro, the lighthouse of justice in Gotham Jim Gordon / Jeffrey Wright, the unprecedented Alfred Pennyworth / Andy Serkis.
Like the story it tells, even the style of The Batman Movierulz is rich, mixed with influences, echoes, and suggestions, in which the action, the master of the scene in the superhero genre, is relegated to some scene (unforgettable is the chase del Pinguino), while the times of waiting, of investigation, of reflection, of the discovery of the next clue that will lead to another and yet another, prevail until the case is resolved.
The Batman is a fruit of the lesson of Joker, the confirmation that if Warner Bros wants to make its IP DC Comics pay off, it must set aside the "Marvel model" and rely on the power of the characters and the filmmakers who respect them but are not afraid. to transform them to tell them to the contemporary public.
The Batman Movierulz is a descent into Gotham's sewers, a winding obstacle course in the mind of a troubled boy who goes out at night to beat criminals and who needs his time, his rite of passage, his share of beating, to truly and consciously become the Caped Crusader of a city for which he will never stop fighting.