By: Jesse Striewski

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I am not a big comic book/superhero flick kind of guy. I could honestly care less about the majority of these self-indulgent, overly-complicated films and their confusing, numerous “multi-verses.” But like Spider-Man, Batman is one superhero that I’ve tried to follow since my childhood, though I gave up on the character after Ben Affleck’s portrayal of him in 2016’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (apparently he even reprised his role in a couple more crossover films, which just goes to show how little I keep up with the over-saturated superhero film market).

And I didn’t hold out much hope for The Batman, either (adding a “The” to the title before “Batman” really didn’t seem all that original to me). But early on in the film, I suddenly understood what the hype was all about. This new interpretation of Batman (this time played by Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame) creates a world of pure neo noir escapist entertainment with the ability to take one away into another reality, for better or worse.

It’s definitely a commitment to sit through the entire film (which reaches nearly three hours in running time), which finds our hero (or anti-hero?) teaming up with the Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) to tackle the seedy corruption of Gotham’s underbelly, as well as play along to the sick games of The Riddler (Paul Dano), who is more sadistic than ever portrayed on screen before (and even reminiscent of Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor) this time around.

And for the majority of the film, they actually had me invested. That is, until Kravitz’s character had to utter a disgusting line about “white privileged men.” In an instant I felt both deeply alienated, and personally attacked, as these know-it-all Hollywood elitists (in this case, lead by a white man surely more “privileged” than myself, director Matt Reeves) once again managed to insult a good portion of its own audience all at once, just in order to get their own ignorant opinions across in a film.

What people like Reeves who incorporate these types of sentiments don’t seem to understand is, they’re actually doing nothing for “equality,” but causing further division and harm among our society as a whole. Hatred towards anyone (yes, even white men) should never be accepted, yet it’s becomes more normalized now than ever before in Hollywood thanks to this type of subtle brainwashing being injected into media, and is doing nothing more than taking us all backwards. Had it not been for these underlined racist tones in The Batman, I would have definitely rated it a higher score than I did.

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars