There is a moment in the fantastic new trailer for The Batman that really sticks out to me and has been turning over in my brain again and again since I saw it.
No, I’m not talking about the reveal of Catwoman. I’m also not talking about the first time we see Robert Pattinson suited up. I’m not even talking about that shot of Colin Farrell in amazing prosthetics as The Penguin.
Yes, that’s Colin Farrell playing Oswald Cobblepot. Crazy, huh?
No, the moment that has been lingering with me comes at about 1:40 into the trailer. It features Pattinson’s Batman, pestered by a group of ne’er-do-wells, beating the ever-living shit out of a lowly criminal.
Watch that moment — hell, just watch the whole trailer again — below:
There is something striking, familiar but also brand new about seeing Batman physically destroy the bad guy. On one hand, it is true to form for Batman. On the other hand, it feels like something we haven’t seen yet in a Batman film.
Batman has fought many evildoers since his first big modern cinematic adventure in 1989’s Batman. He’s come to blows with the Joker, Two-Face, The Riddler, Bane and many more. He has gotten physical many, many times. More so in the comics, where Batman has practically crippled thousands upon thousands. Yes, Batman fights.
But the sort of Batman fights we have seen on film have always been heroic and tough. Keaton was stoic and calm, gracefully batting down thugs without breaking a sweat. Kilmer and Clooney followed that tradition. Christian Bale’s Bats was more aggressive and even a bit clumsy but he felt well-trained and still quite methodical. Ben Affleck’s fighting style (what little we saw of it, anyway) was the best committed to celluloid. It was violent, loud, a bit nasty. Credit is due to director Zack Snyder, who filmed Affleck’s lone fight scene like a ballet sequence. It was one of the sole bright spots in an otherwise shitty film.
Still, it felt so…staged. Cinematic. Rehearsed and fictional.
The moment I mentioned above, with Pattinson pounding a criminal’s face into jelly, definitely does not feel staged or cinematic or rehearsed or fictional. It feels raw, animalistic, even wrong. It feels brutal. And that brutality is surprisingly new. I say “surprisingly” because you’d think we would have seen this sort of portrayal of the character already, the man has a huge chip on his shoulder and busts bad guys for a living. Yet, all the representations of Batman on film have had him bringing people to near death on multiple occasions but never like this: never with the sheer gruesome reality that we see in the trailer above. You can practically hear the bones breaking. Pattinson’s Batman isn’t messing around. He isn’t using Kung-fu or looking for hidden pressure points or strategically incapacitating his foe. No, he’s trying to destroy him. He’s trying to ruin him. He’s trying to beat him down. That’s brutal, there is no better way to describe it.
There has been so much talk of “realistic” Batman movies over the year. It’s a buzzword that filmmakers use when taking on the dark knight. They swear they’re going to make a gritty, authentic take on the iconic character. This is what a “real world” Batman would be like, they say. And, yes, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy was far more realistic than what came before it. But it still lacked the brutality that a real world Batman would bring. Let’s think about it: this is a grown man who is trying to work through some severe mental trauma. His whole existence is focused on revenge. He is walking violence, a loose cannon so desperate for vengenence that he devotes his entire life and fortune into prowling the streets in hopes of finding someone to disarm and dismantle. A real world Batman would be messy and violent and uncomfortable to watch. A real world Batman would be the absolute definition of brutality.
Batman is a messed up dude. He has serious problems. Other films have talked about that but they haven’t shown it in his physicality. Seeing Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader tear into that crook feels like Batman’s emotional state pouring out of him, bursting from inside with every punch. It’s an unsettling and honestly faithful moment. Batman is a tormented, hurt, violent person. Brutality should be no surprise. Finally, after all these years, it looks like we might be getting the most authentic — and troubled — Batman yet.
