I know what you’re thinking, another piece about how great The Batman is, while taking a dump on Zack Snyder’s films. Well, yes and no. I’m not here to talk about why Zack Snyder’s DC universe fell apart, in fact I enjoyed Man of Steel and found the director’s cut of Batman v. Superman to be a decent film and often think of great moments from Snyder’s magnum opus version of Justice League. I’m here to talk about why these films didn’t connect with audience the way The Batman did. It’s all about character.
To put it simply, The Batman is not a superhero film and Snyder’s films are. When I’m asked what is my favorite superhero film I usually reply with Black Panther (certainly one of the most thematic superhero films), the now taboo X2:X-men United, or what I still think is the pinnacle of superhero cinema, Spider-man 2. (Which I will get into in a later blog post.) One I never mention is The Dark Knight and I won’t mention The Batman either because they aren’t superhero movies.
Sure, they both feature a grown man dressing up as a bat, beating up criminals and saving a city, but they aren’t superhero films. Batman himself doesn’t have any powers, other than being really rich, while Spider-man, the X-men and Black Panther do. “But what about Iron Man”, you’re going to ask? Tony Stark, to me, ends up firmly in the superhero territory because his power is actually his intelligence, which is so fantastical. Batman wears fancy armor, has grappling guns, and a decked-out car, but against gods and aliens, he’s always on the losing side of that. Batman is not a superhero, he’s a vigilante.
Matt Reeves, the director of The Batman gets this. His take on Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattison) is a borderline psychopath, so consumed with his ideas of justice that he takes to calling himself Vengeance. Snyder does not. He sees Batman as a god like figure who can hold his own against Superman. This is a betrayal of the character, Batman is just a man and that’s the whole point of him. Snyder gives him his own bat Iron Man suit, weapons made of Kryptonite and a tank. His version of Batman (Ben Affleck) brands criminals, uses guns, and doesn’t hesitate to kill, which is not in line with the character at all.
An audience can’t relate to a god, they can relate to a human. Underneath it all Batman is Bruce Wayne and Bruce is human. He is a man trapped in his own childhood trauma, not a xenophobic military type. Reeves and Christopher Nolan got this, that is why their films succeed where Snyder’s did not. Batman Begins is a vigilante origin story and just barely not a superhero film, The Dark Knight is a sprawling crime drama, The Dark Knight Rises is a war movie, and The Batman is serial killer detective story. They all just happen to feature Batman, which is where he belongs, squarely in grounded story, not amongst gods and monsters.