There are far too many Batman films, particularly Batman origin films and only a couple of them have been worth a rematch to me. This film tries to reboot the character yet again by reintroducing some of the elements from the original comics and some of the better later comics and finally accepting that every person on planet earth know why Batman is Batman and does retread that ground yet another time.
Robert Pattinson plays the lead and was not the obvious choice, which is why I think it works. He has a new intensity and anger that we haven’t seen before. The character is much more human and not some indestructible hero but gets hurt, often, and actually grows as a character during the movie. One really welcome addition is that the “world’s greatest detective” actually does a lot of detecting for once. There is a lot more of him figuring things out than action sequences, not that this 3 hour film lacks action sequences. The villain are more humanize as well and the world for the most part seems plausible and as over the top as previous incarnations in this franchise.
Some weak points are the lack of humour throughout. It could have used a little levity here and there to break it up and the obligatory special effect set-piece involved the sea walls around Gotham City being danger… you didn’t know Gotham was on the ocean? Well neither did I until the sea walls were suddenly part of the plot. Speaking of the plot, it does get a little rambling and over complicated as it suffers like many DC superhero films do with an access of villain and plot twists some of which are poorly executed.
One of the better Batman movies overall but still suffering from some of the same stuff many other comic book adaptions do which might be unavoidable especially with such a well know main character.
