TV Obsessive
The Batman Trailer
Simon: Nothing in the world gets me more excited than a trailer for a new Batman film. They make me feel like a kid again, in the best possible way. I still remember distinctly seeing the one for Batman Returns when I was four years old and the new teaser for The Batman makes me just as giddy as I was back then. I also vividly remember seeing the first trailers for each of The Dark Knight Trilogy also, as they’re events in themselves. The latest was the main offering from DC Fandome, their own virtual version of Comic-Con.
Their Chief Creative Officer and legendary artist Jim Lee shrewdly capitalised in a year where Comic-Con’s own virtual event was a massive flop, and saw an opportunity to get people excited about upcoming DC projects after being on the back foot to Marvel for many years. It looks like it’s their time to shine as there’s not much on the horizon from Marvel and they’ve been quiet since Avengers: Endgame, which came out back in April 2019. All they’ve got coming up is a Black Widow movie that’s arriving many years too late, The Eternals and Shang-Chi, which are based on characters so obscure that they’re hard to get excited about, and yet another Spider-Man movie, as if I haven’t seen enough of those to last a lifetime.
DC have the sequel to the massively successful, first female-lead superhero movie with Wonder Woman 1984 about to drop, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie and Black Adam following next year. However, after the runaway success of Joker last year, The Batman will obviously be their main event for 2021. Following in the former’s footsteps, we’re getting the darkest, grittiest Batman film to date, from a director who has a singular vision and clearly knows what he’s doing. Matt Reeves (of Cloverfield and the recent Planet of the Apes movies) is at the helm and he’s making all the right moves.
He’s chosen a young Batman a la Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One and perfectly cast Robert Pattinson in the role. He’s come up with an über cool, edgy, fresh suit for him to wear, one that’s still a work in progress and carries the damage from the previous nights, adding to the realism. He has a more practical muscle car that’s equally impressive to tear down the streets of Gotham in and it looks as if we’re finally getting a film version of Batman that’ll justify his moniker of “World’s Greatest Detective,” as he has full access to crime scenes. The story is centred around a murder mystery, with Reeves citing the classic private eye noir thriller Chinatown as inspiration. A fine choice.
The teaser has set the tone immediately with a grungy atmosphere, accentuated by the perfect song choice in Nirvana’s low-key track “Something in the Way.” The first thing we see is a masked man covering a victim’s head completely with tape and leaving a message written across his face. A sinister opening indeed. This dimly lit, horror-tinged tone is maintained with eerie, rhyming dialogue, perfectly delivered from Paul Dano’s version of The Riddler.
We get intriguing dialogue from Andy Serkis’ Alfred too and our first look at Colin Farrell’s Penguin and Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman. The new Batmobile looks fierce in action and we see Bats efficiently and savagely beat a thug to a pulp, showing this incarnation is still a bit feral. He clearly doesn’t mess around, being as brutal as he needs to be to face the challenges of this new version of Gotham City, shot in cities such as Liverpool and Glasgow to give it a unique, genuine gothic look. We also finally see a Batman who paints his eyes black, as one would in reality and even the logo for the film is on point.
Reeves has said that only 25 minutes have been shot so far before lockdown, so there’s clearly plenty more to see and the fact he’s managed to cut such a compelling teaser from very limited footage is a good sign of things to come. I have high hopes for his movie. I’ve been lucky enough to work on the production and see Reeves’ directing style up close and it instilled confidence in me that this will be something very special. As I do after seeing all first teasers for Batman films, I’ll be counting down the time until it comes out and looking forward to seeing it next year.
Those are our recommendations this week! What are yours? Let us know in the comments!
