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Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather answer the OTI-signal and take on The Batman, Matt Reeves’s unrelentingly grim installment in the franchise, starring Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader. We discuss this film’s distinctive tone, it’s monochromatic character, its villain and his plan, the “fourth act,” which is either superfluous or crucial, and play a few rounds of armchair director, offering alternative plot or character twists to the film.
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Regarding the fantasy of the loss of privilege: it makes sense to me, considering how the modern institutions that support our privilege are some combination of corrupt, exploitative, and actively harmful. The privileges people enjoy in the US act as some combination of golden handcuffs or a gilded cage, (when people aren’t literally handcuffed and caged), and the destruction of that privilege also obviates those wicked institutions.
Re Ridder’s incoherent 4th act mass casualty event: superhero movies love to have a villain with a point, shedding light on systemic issues, but then they have to have the villain do a 9/11 to distract us from the possibility/necessity of systemic change, and to justify placing -more- reliance on the corrupt institutions of the status quo.
Maybe the penguin knows spanish from dealing with a certain luchador?
You’re right, Batman isn’t a vigilante. He’s a black water-ish contractor.
I miss cloth suited Batman. Just training a gun on him should be unthinkable. More gymnastics, less space marine.