Batman: World’s Greatest Reflective
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I was writing an article about the war in Ukraine, and instead, I’ve scrapped it for this article. Well, “scrapped” is a generous word, considering I only came up with a witty headline:
So here comes a movie review about a comic book film, which is my bread and butter. Why, you ask? Well, people all over social media keep reaching out to me, and then I had a tweet about my list of favorite comic-book adaptations blow up the other day, thanks to this guy:
So now the situation is even more nuts:
And then, in the midst of writing this article, Matt Reeves (the film’s director) released new footage of the Joker, who had one of his scenes cut from the film. So ideally this article is relevant again. So, here we go, get ready for me rambling about The Batman. Don’t read this shit unless you’ve seen the movie, because I’m going to go deeper into spoiler territory than usual.
Batman is my favorite superhero, and that will never change. When I first got into comic books, I was fresh off of Sam Raimi’s Spider-man 2 and decided to read every issue of The Amazing Spider-man. I adored Spider-man because he was so human and relatable, so dedicated to being a superhero that he let his normal life go to the wayside often. His worlds were always colliding. But soon after I got into comic books, my cousin introduced me to Batman just a year later, with Batman Begins, and loaned me a copy of The Long Halloween, a perfect Batman comic to start with, and one that inspired The Batman. I promise, this film is the focus of this review. Bear with me.
The Long Halloween is a Batman comic that takes place not too long after Bruce Wayne takes up the mantle of Batman, but early enough that mobsters are still problematic in Gotham City, still more problematic than the iconic supervillains…
