Did we really need another Batman?

I saw the new Batman movie today and I loved it. After the latest Spider-Man we get another great superhero movie on the big screen this year. For me as a fan, that’s a real treat. If Spider-Man: No Way Home was the movie I wanted but didn’t think I could get, then The Batman is the movie I didn’t know I wanted until I saw it.

After all, there have been so many on-screen adaptions of Batman already. How can you still make the character interesting? Did we really need another movie-Batman? Several years ago I was getting used to Ben Affleck’s Batman from Justice League, and I was excited about DC’s plans of expanding the their movie universe with standalone movies for each of their characters. After Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman, it was only logical for Batman to also get his own movie in the DCEU (DC Expanded Universe, DC’s equivalent of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe).

So I was kind of disappointed when Affleck decided not to pursue his plans to both direct and star in his Batman movie, and DC announced that director Matt Reeves would make an entirely new adaptation, not part of the DCEU. This move signaled a different direction for DC compared to the strategy of their big competitor Marvel. Rather than have all movies and TV shows in the same universe, DC shifted to making different adaptations of their characters — sometimes in different universes, sometimes in the same universe, but not very strongly linked. This gave their movie and TV makers much more creative freedom, which resulted in very interesting and highly intertaining movies like The Joker and The Suicide Squad.

And now The Batman. This Batman is unlike the previous movies. If you thought Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy was dark, this version is even darker and grittier. The main character may be a superhero, but I wouldn’t call this a superhero movie. It’s more like a detective. Which makes total sense, as Batman has been called “The World’s Greatest Detective”. But there hasn’t been a movie that centered so much on his detective skills like this one. I also liked Matt Reeves’ take on Bruce Wayne. Instead of portraying him as the playboy billionnaire, this Bruce is very reclusive, which in this story makes total sense. Apparently Reeves was inspired by Kurt Cobain — he even put his music in the movie. The Batman is indeed a very grungy movie.

But if I had to pick one word to describe this adaption of Batman it would be quite the opposite of grungy — to me this Batman is fresh. It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s different. The suit, the car, the batcave, Gotham, the villains — they are all familiar, but in many ways different from what we’ve seen before. And that makes not just this Batman but this whole world exactly what we want as a film audience: to be not just entertained, but to be given something interesting. Now I can’t wait what Matt Reeves brings us next. Because some things never change: every Batman movie gets a sequel.