Darkness. Shadows. Vengeance. Do these words mean anything to you? Do they remind you of someone? Maybe a billionaire orphan who fights crime. Yet another take on this popular character, but could this be the best Batman yet? 

The Batman hit theaters on March 4th reaching a box office of nearly $675,000,000 worldwide according to Box Office Mojo. This investigative noir scored 85% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes by professional critics and 88% by audience members. Many enjoyed this take on the classic Caped Crusader, in fact, it was ranked as the fourth-best Batman movie of all time by Rotten Tomatoes, but what was good and what was bad? 

Let’s start with the good. The cinematography throughout this entire movie was fantastic, thanks to award-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser who shed a new superhero light on the noir-style film. He has worked on very popular movies like Rogue One, Vice, and Dune, and recently finished working on The Mandalorian. Having to tackle shooting in the dark, with hard lighting, and often rain was a challenge, in fact, the only scenes not at night were right at sunrise or right at sunset, just barely escaping the night. These types of shots make us truly understand how broody and broken Gotham seems.  With all of these challenging shots, however, he still did an absolutely phenomenal job. Very dramatic shots such as the chase on the highway, which was shot in the dark and rain, were still executed perfectly; or the unveiling of the Batmobile. The red light emitting from the Batmobile added an evil and vicious feeling to the vehicle. 

The sound throughout the movie was very well done as well. The sound of the Batmobile was iconic. The roar of the twin-turbocharged V8 combined with the sound of “a distorted bottle rocket going off,” as the booster engine said by Fraser, just made for an ear-pleasing rush. The film also featured an extremely dramatic soundtrack with huge swells done perfectly by Michael Giacchino. 

The support characters throughout this movie were phenomenal as well, such as the Penguin, Carmine Falcone, and Alfred all helped the movie have more depth to it so it wasn’t all about Batman. I also enjoyed that there were no backstories in this film for villains or heroes, in combination with the letters written by the Joker there was an actual sense of mystery throughout the film. 

There weren’t a ton of negatives with this move, in fact, it was hard to think of more than two. Firstly and most obviously, the nearly three-hour-long film starts to become hard to sit through as people like to move around, and three hours is a long time. There were definitely scenes that weren’t needed and could have helped shorten the length of the film. 

There was also this feeling throughout the film surrounding Batman. He didn’t feel like this super powerful untouchable hero, he just felt like a rich guy in armor which took away a part of the respect and power he normally holds. This could also be the fact that in this film, there wasn’t much difference between Batman and Bruce Wayne. In other films, Bruce Wayne was a very charismatic outgoing rich guy who was a completely different man than the one who ruled the dark, but not in this film. Bruce Wayne in The Batman felt just as dark and cold as the one who wore the suit, which allowed for little upbeat happy moments.

I would still say that this movie was absolutely a blast to watch and I would definitely recommend it to anyone, even if superhero films aren’t you think you can enjoy the character development, mystery, and beautiful cinematography.