Matt Reeve’s The Batman Needs to Do Better
There has never been a perfect Batman movie. Yes, I’ve seen The Dark Knight, and I stand by what I said. Heath Ledger’s Joker is widely praised but outside of that, The Dark Knight doesn’t actually tell a good Batman story. In fact, it, and every other movie in The Dark Knight trilogy, are missing a key element of Batman’s character: he’s a world class detective. This is where Matt Reeves’ The Batman has an excellent opportunity to distance itself from its predecessors and create a Batman film true to the comic character.
Batman’s adventures throughout the Nolan trilogy were full of mysteries to solve, but he never actually solved any of these problems himself. Bruce Wayne’s inability to solve his problem with anything but brute force can be traced back to his training in Batman Begins. In the comics, Bruce Wayne spends his twenties traveling the world, training both his body and mind to eventually return to Gotham and become Batman. However, in Batman Begins, Bruce’s training entirely focuses on his brief time studying stealth and combat under Ra’s al Ghul. Christopher Nolan never sets Bruce up as a superior intellectual, and instead spends the film relying on his extreme wealth and physical training to end Scarecrow and Ra’s’ attack on Gotham.
Enter The Joker in The Dark Knight, who manages to bamboozle Batman at every turn and stay one step ahead of him. Granted, The Joker’s plans do make him a formidable opponent for Bruce, which is important to developing an interesting antagonist, but ultimately it’s Lucius Fox’s tech that allows Batman to stop the Joker. Even in the Arkham games, the Joker dupes Batman into his traps multiple times, but Batman still has to use his detective skills to solve problems. While different mediums, it shows that it’s possible for Batman to not be the smartest person in the room yet still do detective work to help solve his problems.
However, Bruce is never the smartest person in the entire series, and that instead falls on Lucius Fox. Fox’s entire role in the series is to serve as Bruce’s engineer, designing just about every piece of useful tech he uses. Bruce never does any of the leg work himself to solve the problem, he instead abuses ethically gray technology he funded. But neither of these issues compare to the final movie in the trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.
While generally considered the weakest in the series, The Dark Knight Rises is also the weakest in regards to Batman’s character. Again, Batman is outpaced constantly by his opponents and more importantly duped by Talia al Ghul in the film’s third act. Even after his defeat from the hands of Bane at the end of the second act, Batman still insists on using his physical abilities to stop his take over of Gotham. Batman’s research into Bane stopped as soon as he realized why Bane wore a mask, and this not only results in cheaping Batman’s character down to a wealthy brawler, but also strips Bane of any interesting character depth. By using his detective skills to investigate Bane, Nolan could have crafted a compelling character that extended beyond Talia’s lackey.
Matt Reeves’ The Batman has the chance to take the character of Batman and add a new layer to him that many casual fans aren’t familiar with. Marvel Studios dominated the superhero genre while establishing their universe by melding an action movie with other genres. For example, Captain America: The First Avenger is a war movie and Thor is a fantasy story, but they both have superheros as their characters. DC did this with Wonder Woman by heavily mimicking The First Avenger war movie aesthetic, but the rest of their films have been action movies that pretend they deserve a spot at the table despite having done none of the work to make us care about their universe. The Batman could take DC’s most famous character, return an essential element of what makes him interesting, and create a crime film that moves the character out from the shadow of Nolan’s trilogy and shows that DC is willing to do the work to create interesting films that don’t feel like cashing in.
Throughout the Nolan series, Batman never uses anything close to intellect deserving of the title World’s Greatest Detective and it makes the series shallow. With DC’s movie universe in a weird limbo, Robert Patterson has the chance to establish himself as both the de facto Bruce Wayne and Batman, something that no actor has successfully done. This is obviously easier said than done, as every fan looks for something different in the character, but giving the character one of his defining character traits is a good start.
