Ross and I finally watched The Batman this weekend and I have thoughts.

All of the architecture looks like a combination of French Medieval and Hogwarts. No American city looks/feels like that. Seriously, Nothing here is older than like 300 years old. There’s also a part of me that’s pissed that they filmed this in the UK. Gotham is supposed to be a shithole. I mean, how many places have that many open vats of acid for people to fall into anyway?

How many times do you think that Matt Reeves watched Se7en before making this movie? It had to be a bunch because we were like 45 minutes in and all I could think was “WHAT’S IN THE BOX?” And OMG, that’s the first thing that comes up in my google search when I put in What’s. Google autopopulated the rest. This is AMAZING. I’m not the only one who saw it.

At some point, Batman was indeed fighting a bunch of the Riddler’s goons.

I just want to point out the fact that Batman was, in deed, fighting a goon squad which we all know is the cornerstone to any BTAS episode.

This movie was WAAAAAAY too long. Once they caught the riddler, we paused the movie and there was still 45 minutes left. FORTY FIVE MINUTES! So the Riddler could destroy the city? Meanwhile, no one thought to think twice about the damage to all those acid vats would do to the city.

Robert Pattinson‘s voice is not really deep enough to be Batman or to be scary. I’m just putting this out there. His normal voice does not strike fear.

I love the casual drop of Bludhaven. Thanks Cat Woman for taking off to Gotham’s sister city. There aren’t enough mentions of Nightwings home base. They’re always dashing off to Metropolis. Nope, Bludhaven is where its at.

There wasn’t enough grappling hook in this movie. Plus, it ended up happening all at the end. come on! The grappling hook it Batman’s signature. Ross and I have a game we play whenever we watch any Batman show or movies where we just shout out GRAPPLING HOOK whenever he uses one. If this was a drinking game, we’d be under the table for most of them. This one, only a few shouts and only at the end. I was disappointed

Was this a horror film??? I wonder how old those people who claimed this was a horror film are because us Gen X’ers lived through a whole period of movies like this. We got our feet wet and spent the entire 90’s in a dark and dingy fog thanks to films like Se7en, Fight Club, and Panic Room. Thanks David Fincher. This serial killer induced haze of dingy rooms, dark cinematography, and over the top murder set ups.

All of these comments seem like i didn’t like it. That’s not true at all. It was . . . fine. It was better than some other Batman movies. I do prefer the grittier, darker Batman as compared to the campy cartoonish style Batman from Joel Schumacher. I think of all the Batman movies since the original Michael Keaton 1989 version, I would put The Batman as a solid second place, behind The Dark Knight. No one can argue with Heath Ledger as the Joker. You just can’t.