The Batman branded ‘self-important’ and ‘tiresome’ in first reviews

The Batman has been branded both ‘self-important’ and ‘tiresome’ in reviews of the hotly anticipated Matt Reeves-directed blockbuster.

This year’s release, based on the DC Comics superhero sees Batman pursue The Riddler in his second year of crime fighting, uncovering corruption that is connected to his own family in the investigation, forcing him to make new allies to bring the supervillain to justice.

An all-star cast sees Robert Pattinson star as Batman while Zoe Kravitz appears as Selina Kyle, or Catwoman.

Also appearing is Paul Dano as Edward Nashton / Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, John Turturro as Gotham City crimelord Carmine Falcone, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth and Colin Farrell as Penguin.

However, while the film was criticised for its ‘overlong’ runtime of nearly three hours and its characters ‘bland’ performances, others were somewhat impressed, simply describing it as a ‘good film’. 

The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw gave the film three stars and branded The Batman a ‘gloomy reboot’ and ‘overlong’.

Catwoman: An all-star cast sees Robert Pattinson star as Batman while Zoe Kravitz (pictured) appears as Selina Kyle, or Catwoman

He said the start was ‘intriguing’, comparing it to a serial killer chiller such as Saw that promises a mystery plot ‘for a time’.

Peter praised Zoë Kravitz in the role of Selina Kyle, or Catwoman, writing that her ‘superpower is charisma’ and said that Jeffrey Wright and John Turturro both put in good performances.

He wrote: ‘The ending is tiresome and shark-jumping in the extreme, with faux-apocalyptic scenes which work better in less solemn superhero adventures, and an exasperating non-revelation whose significance is teased for the next film. 

‘Inevitably, night falls on the latest Batman iteration with the cloudy sense that – of course – nothing has really been at stake. A classy turn from Pattinson, however, as the crime fighter with an injured soul.’

Empire’s John Nugent gave the movie four stars and wrote: ‘Matt Reeves’ arrival in the Bat-verse is a gripping, beautifully shot, neo-noir take on an age-old character. 

‘Though not a totally radical refit of the Nolan/Snyder era, it establishes a Gotham City we would keenly want a return visit to.’

He said the director’s approach was ‘evolution rather than revolution’ and so Pattison’s Bruce Wayne was very different from previous portrayals.

‘Where Christian Bale and Ben Affleck embraced the macho side of the character, Pattinson looks like a boyish vampire, his skin tone only a shade warmer than in Twilight,’ he wrote

‘His is the first screen Batman to be fully seen wearing the eyeshadow… In the suit he’s methodical and muscular; out of it, he’s racked with insecurity and self-doubt. A repeated needle drop of Nirvana’s Something In The Way confirms it: this is emo-Bats.’

Caution: The hotly-anticipated comic book film is said to have a running time of two hours and 55 minutes

The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin gave the flick a full five stars, saying Pattinson and Kravitz ‘generate an astonishing sensual charge in a brilliant addition to the Batman canon that refuses to behave like a blockbuster’.

While he claims the film has no ‘star turn’ as ‘the film doesn’t have room for one’, telling movie fans to ‘dispel all thoughts of Jim Carrey’s Lycra-sheathed flamboyance (as the Riddler) in Batman Forever’, he insists the set up brings ‘a deep bench of tremendous character performances that add enthralling colour and intrigue to the winding underworld mystery plot’.

He added that ‘Pattinson and Kravitz together generate more sensual charge than entire franchises have been known to muster’.

Kevin Maher of The Times gave the film two stars, lamenting it for its near three-hour length and ‘moody self-importance’ that ‘tries to bludgeon the audience into submission and to distract them from how derivative nearly everything on screen is’.

He seemed equally unimpressed with the star performances, writing that ‘Pattinson, who has delivered so many thrilling turns recently, struggles to elevate his antihero beyond a pouty emo brat’.

However, he praised Colin Farrell in the ‘underused’ role of the Penguin for ‘having a blast throughout’.

Mixed bag: while the film was criticised for its ‘overlong’ runtime of nearly three hours and its characters ‘bland’ performances, others were somewhat impressed 

The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey gave the movie four stars and wrote: ‘The Batman is a very good Batman film. To think of it as anything more only leads to delusion or disappointment’. 

She pitched the flick between Christopher Nolan’s and Tim Burton’s, saying Reeves’ version has ‘one foot in our reality, and the other planted in a Gothic noir aesthetic and comics’.

Clarisse stated that the film seems more ‘intimate’ than other Batman films but insisted it did not need nearly three hours to tell the story of a ‘relatively simple story of its hero’s moral awakening’.

She concluded: ‘The Batman has risen – but it might be pushing its luck if it decides to return.’ 

When you stretch a narrative arc you end up with a flat line, but there’s still plenty to relish: BRIAN VINER reviews The Batman for the Daily Mail

Rating:

Those of us old enough to remember Adam West’s Batman in the Sixties TV series, complete with pop-art ‘Pow!’ and ‘Thwack!’ graphics, have since seen the Caped Crusader fly a long way – although not necessarily in the right direction.

George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck are among the stars who have subsequently played the scourge of the Gotham City underworld, and now, in the latest big-budget reboot of the DC Comics franchise, The Batman, it’s the turn of British actor Robert Pattinson.

He’s perfectly fine both as billionaire Bruce Wayne and his crime-busting alter ego, although the extravagant length of this movie, at just a Zzzzz! under three hours, made me decidedly nostalgic for the caped capers of Batman and his sidekick Robin in the long-ago telly version. 

Just when you think the story’s all done there’s an unwanted added 20 per cent, almost as if The Batman had been crossed with the VAT man.

When you stretch a narrative arc you end up with a flat line, but there’s still plenty to relish: BRIAN VINER reviews The Batman

Director Matt Reeves, who took a whole 36 minutes less to resolve The War for The Planet of the Apes (2017), evidently decided that this time he needed to stretch his narrative arc. 

After all, the illustrious likes of Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton have already made widely-acclaimed Batman films, so how better to create an even bigger impact – Ker-pow! – than with one that cinema audiences might remember for a nasty onset of cramp?

The shame of it is that there’s a cracking movie of little more than two hours fighting – biff! – to get out of the near three-hour running-time. Unfortunately, when you stretch a narrative arc, or indeed any arc, you end up with a flat line. So it is here. 

I enjoyed the film’s two parallel stories – one in which Batman tangles with the Gotham City mob led by Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), and another in which he tries to identify a serial killer known only as the Riddler (Paul Dano) – but they both end up flat-lining long before the 176 minutes are up.

Pattinson plays Bruce as a dour, tormented young man, still uncomfortably in thrall to his spiky mentor and father-substitute Alfred (Andy Serkis), and basically too floppy-haired and miserable for anyone to put two and two together and connect him with the masked vigilante who keeps swooping down every time a bat motif appears, illuminated in the night sky.

The basic premise of this doggedly cheerless film is that Batman isn’t yet a fully-fledged crime-fighter. He’s still finding his feet – not easy in that beefy tunic – and so falls into an alliance with a sexy but embittered waitress, Selina (Zoe Kravitz). She works at the sleazy nightclub run by a scarred mobster called Oswald Cobblepot (an unrecognisable Colin Farrell), and although all comic-book enthusiasts know him better as The Penguin and her as Catwoman, the implication is that those nicknames, even more than Batman, have yet to be earned. 

There’s a striking dearth of humour throughout but a pleasing wink to the audience when Oswald, his feet bound together, is forced to waddle like a certain flightless aquatic bird.

Tormented: Pattinson plays Bruce as a dour, tormented young man, still uncomfortably in thrall to his spiky mentor and father-substitute Alfred  

Meanwhile, a sadistic psycho is brutally knocking off the high and mighty but irredeemably corrupt of Gotham City, starting with the mayor (Rupert Penry-Jones). He leaves a creepy riddle at every murder scene, one of many reasons why The Batman feels more like a psychological film noir than a superhero movie, borrowing almost as conspicuously from the likes of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Seven (1995) as it does from its most obvious influence, Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.

But where The Dark Knight (2008) had an unsurpassable baddie in Heath Ledger’s Joker, this film creates a problem for itself by keeping its principal fiend from us (brilliant as Dano is) almost until the end. Another self-inflicted issue is Batman’s voice, a kind of monotone whisper. When he says of the crime-ridden metropolis that ‘maybe it’s beyond saving’, I heard it as ‘maybe it’s Beyonce,’ which seemed like a truly startling guess as to the identity of the killer.

Still, once your ears get attuned, and your eyes too, for that matter, since daylight hardly ever encroaches, there is plenty to relish in The Batman. There’s oodles of atmosphere, and for those familiar with the great city of Liverpool, the bonus of realising that it is Gotham’s stunt double. But none of that can mitigate the challenge to the bladder when – eeek! – you realise that you’ve been in there over two and a half hours, with 25 minutes still to go.

The Batman opens in cinemas on Friday