🎥 Watched The Batman.

Despite fairly glowing reviews I found this a little disappointing, with the exception of the visual rendering of Gotham City which was a treat for my eyes.

Maybe I’m being a little unfair. I absolutely loved the previous film in that world, Joker. So this had a lot to live up to. It also takes a lot for me to enjoy a 3-hour-long film. Especially when at times the reason it needed to be that long seemed to be that the hero speaks. extremely. slowly.

There were moments that got very close to interesting. Without giving spoilers, there was a little meander into Batman’s family history which could have led to a fascinating exploration of the tension between his singular focus on catching individual criminal masterminds vs the Wayne family’s historical and current potential culpability in creating or reinforcing the structural conditions of the society within which the residents of the imperilled Gotham City exist.

It’s not a pretty place. Inequality seems rife. Violence is infused. Healthcare seems minimal. The arms of the state are corrupt. It is explicitly noted that there’s a vast difference even in what it means to be an orphan based on the wealth one happens to have access to. And the Wayne family, past and present, seem to be powerfully connected billionaires. It’s not clear that punching bad men in the face is the only or optimal approach to reducing the harm the residents of Gotham city experience.

Hopefully someone somewhere has written an essay on that because whilst the film almost seemed like it was going to centre that uneasiness for a few moments it didn’t really follow through. I think it was an fine enough film, worth a watch if you’re a Batman film, but kind of forgettable in a way that I didn’t think the Joker was.