If you're going to be nearly 3 hours long, you'd better earn it. This film doesn't.
I can count on one hand the number of films around or above the three hour mark which actually deserve to be that long. A good script is a must, good direction and good acting, of course. Perhaps the most important thing though is a purpose (beyond pure profit). I can't find that here.
We've already seen all the shades a Batman film can take. We had campy over-the-top comic book-lite Batman with the late 80s and 90s Batman films. We had the "comic books are super serious", SFX laden, "Batman saves the world" Snyder films of last decade. Most importantly, we've also had the gritty, realistic and complicated Batman seen in Chris Nolan's brilliant Dark Knight trilogy.
There's literally no good reason for this film to exist. Yes, Pattinson is a better Batman than I ever realised he could be. Yes, the script is decent and so is the direction too. If the Dark Knight trilogy didn't exist, this film could perhaps be heralded as the start of an interesting new direction for the Batman franchise, but the Dark Knight trilogy does exist and is superior to this in every way.
A film doesn't get to be this self indulgent without a very good reason, this film simply doesn't have one.
I can count on one hand the number of films around or above the three hour mark which actually deserve to be that long. A good script is a must, good direction and good acting, of course. Perhaps the most important thing though is a purpose (beyond pure profit). I can't find that here.
We've already seen all the shades a Batman film can take. We had campy over-the-top comic book-lite Batman with the late 80s and 90s Batman films. We had the "comic books are super serious", SFX laden, "Batman saves the world" Snyder films of last decade. Most importantly, we've also had the gritty, realistic and complicated Batman seen in Chris Nolan's brilliant Dark Knight trilogy.
There's literally no good reason for this film to exist. Yes, Pattinson is a better Batman than I ever realised he could be. Yes, the script is decent and so is the direction too. If the Dark Knight trilogy didn't exist, this film could perhaps be heralded as the start of an interesting new direction for the Batman franchise, but the Dark Knight trilogy does exist and is superior to this in every way.
A film doesn't get to be this self indulgent without a very good reason, this film simply doesn't have one.