Batman is a staple in the superhero world. From his first official appearance in the 1939 comic “The Bat-Man, The Case of the Chemical Syndicate”, Batman has seen many iterations. Director Christopher Nolan directed the iconic ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy from 2005-2012, but since then Batman had faced almost a decade box office bombs. The Batman (2022) was an amazing breath of fresh air with an awesome directorial style from the mind of Matt Reeves, an eerie and intense musical score from Micheal Giacchino, and a brilliant lead performance from Robert Pattinson.

The Batman’s new darker, more eerie tone was a very welcome addition to the film. The Batman features plenty of close up shots, with high focus on the subject and an extremely low background focus, giving this sort of tunnel vision on the focus of every shot. This style is all the more complimented by the occasional wide, full focus establishing shots throughout the film. The film featured an extremely more monochrome color palette, with the most common colors being black and dark red. This choice in color can get slightly boring on the eyes during long sequences. The film overall is pretty dark, which is a good choice during some scenes, but does become a tad annoying when you can’t tell the more precise details during other scenes.

Micheal Giacchino created a musical score and soundtrack that perfectly mirrored the tone of the new Batman. The soundtrack overall had a far quieter and eerie tone to it, with the dialogue and investigation scenes featuring lower orchestral, whilst the action scenes introduced powerful horns. The score is solid and keeps a good pace with the film, but does feel really basic at times. During emotional scenes the soundtrack feels painfully forgetful, with slow orchestral music that makes me feel less emotional and more tired than anything.

The new Batman was played by Robert Pattinson, who’s best known for his role in Twilight. Pattinson plays a far quieter, solemn batman, and even though this makes the dialogue scenes a bit annoying and whiny at times, the fighting scenes are pretty solid as you would expect. The Bruce Wayne scenes may be some of the weakest in the film, as the new Batman gets only a little bit of character development, fortunately the majority of the film Pattinson is seen in his suit. The weakness of Bruce Wayne as a character is definitely one of the key dragging features of the film, at times I was finding it hard to root for him as a character and instead was rooting for ‘Batman’. With that being said the action was as good as ever, with awesome fast paced choreographed shots, and some really clever sequences. The action was as good as you could hope, if not a bit over-choreographed.

Although this movie had all the aspects that could make a great film, it certainly fell very short in some categories. The dialogue was painfully ‘say’ instead of ‘show’, all of the “investigation” scenes had Batman and Commissioner Gordon stumbling upon a clue, to which Gordon would say “What is this?” and Batman would immediately tell him what it was and how it was important. This concept of saying instead of showing drags down all the dialogue and makes the viewer feel far less engaged in the film. A good portion of the investigative plot feels more like it just happens to the main character, and less like it’s an actual back and forth between Protagonist and Antagonist. This seems to be a clear choice by the director, but makes the plot feel stale nonetheless.

All things considered, The Batman (2022) was definitely a step in the right direction. Although there are some noticeable flaws in the film, It still managed to be an entertaining watch all the way through. With hopes and rumors of a sequel, I’d definitely recommend watching this movie when you get the chance. For me the film hit upon everything you want in a good Batman movie. We can only hope that a sequel could expand and improve where this film fell short.