THE BATMAN MAESTRO J. Ricardo Félix

THE BATMAN

Maestro Jesús Ricardo Félix

Celluloid: The Batman

What is it that makes the history of Batman generate so much interest in the great directors of the time? Filmmakers like Tim Burton or Chris Nolan would be some examples of how what is considered auteur cinema merges with entertainment cinema or the blockbuster industry and gives rise to quite interesting and complex visual products when it comes to the Gothic City bat. If we compare it with Superman or SpiderMan or Wonder Woman, the trend is that they are characters aimed at a more childish or perhaps adolescent audience. Trying to answer the question we could start from the fact that the character himself is a human without super powers but at the same time psychologically complex, deep and dark that resembles the psyche of a villain. His parents were killed leaving a theater so he becomes a "vigilante" to take revenge or handle his own guilt. There is also the depth of the villains that flow between the border of madness and genius. Among the most recognized: the Joker, the riddle, the scarecrow, Bane, two faces, etc. That is why this week on Celluloid we will talk about The Batman. The Batman is an American film directed by Matt Reeves released in March 2022. Matt Reeves is an American director who began his filmography in the early nineties, films like Cloverfield or Planet of the Apes are some of the works that he boasts in his trajectory. Although he does not have the credentials of Tim Burton or Chris Nolan, it can be said that he is a promising director with more future than present. His Batman has more to do with the detective area of the character. Tim Burton came to Batman through Beetlejuice just like Michael Keaton, we saw the beginning of the modern era of the dark knight with Burton's gothic world, his colorful joker contrasting with the darkness of Batman, Burton is a visual master, he left Jack Nicholson build his character without going too deep, it's a comic brought to the screen, it's fiction. Chris Nolan relied on the psychological depth of the characters, particularly the Cillian Murphy villains as The Scarecrow explored his victims' fears aided by drugs and his mastery of psychiatry. Heath Ledger's joker has been one of the best in history, in fact some claim that the actor took the character to the limits of madness causing his accidental death. And what about Tom Hardy's Bane and the same Batman played by Christian Bale. But if Nolan's villains are the center of attraction, he also takes advantage of Gotham City as a pretext to criticize politics and the corruption of today's societies. In Reeves's Batman for his part and following the trend of Todd Phillips's Joker, the characters give us the feeling that they could be part of real life. Reeves's Gotham City dominated by corrupt politicians in the service of the Falcones and the penguins could very well fit the reality of some country in our time that I am going to leave to the reader's imagination. The riddle is close to the way of thinking and acting of some terrorists or psychopaths to the point that we forget the tone of superhero movies and we approach a noir tone closer to David Fincher's Seven. Actors Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz as Batman and the new Catwoman work better than we thought, but there is something that we still owe with the theme of villains. Perhaps it is because our latest references are a brilliant

Joaquin Phoenix and a masterful Chris Nolan, we must give Reeves the benefit of the doubt. By removing the mask that riddle played by Paul Dano is left to us. Something strange also happens for John Turturro's Carmine Falcone to be overshadowed by Colin Farrell's penguin and we should ask the director about that. Reeves' Batman delivers on the box office theme, provides a new dark knight by turning a light vampire from Twilight into a Bruce Wayne haunted by his father's past, has the approval of pizza-guzzling teenagers of bat, the hamburger with the seal, clothing lines, lipsticks, legos, etc. I feel that new filmmakers like Reeves try too hard to give hyper-realism to characters from a fictional world in an artificial city and turn Batman into a profitable product but with weaknesses in the script and in the performances of key actors in the cast. . With this new Batman we lack a touch of humor, some action, the depth in the madness of Nolan's characters, Burton's aesthetic, forget about realism without abusing fiction.