THE BATMAN Trailer (2021) - Don't look if you don't want to know

I am disappoint...[SPOILERS AHEAD]

I'm sorry, I just felt like this was a further step backwards from before. Batman looks small like a 5' 8" man in dirt-bike pads . Hist costume look rudimentary and uninteresting. The Bat mobile looks like it a half finished NASCAR vehicle with flimsy sheet metal. The gang he fights at the end of the trailer look like twenty chubby 30 year old men in ICP makeup. That gang could not possible pose threat to anyone besides David Schwimmer from 'Friends'. Cat woman looks like a lady with a winter hat on. Oh, wow, the hat has two peaks that might look like ears from a certain angle - shocking!

Hell, this Batman makes every other Batman ever look fatalistic...even Blake Wilson, also known as BatDad, looks more like Batman. The whole production look like that want ultra realism. So bad man if in military style boots, web gear and small arms armor. Cat woman looks like a common thief with a raggedy-ass hat. The Bat mobile looks like a rear engine modified 1976 Chevrolet Camaro with 1950s Chevy wings on the back...that is just a sheet-metal cover for a shitty NASCAR frame.

Bottomline, the whole thing looks cheap, boring and just depressing. It is not a gritty reboot, it is a distressing realistic take on a 'sad-sack' vigilante.

Eh, I disagree. The look seems very in line with the "Year Two" concept they're pushing for and the improvised unpolished look of the Batsuit and the Batmobile seem like a logical "one year later" evolution of the rough-and-tumble Year One Bats in the comic. I liked it. As for the rest, I'm on board for someone trying to do a super dour "David Fincher's Batman" thing and the cast seems pretty great. However, I'm still not very optimistic...the high profile villains they crammed into the trailer (Catwoman, Riddler, Penguin, etc.) makes it seem like it's going to be far too overstuffed for its own good for a fresh reboot. Just do a Se7en ripoff with The Riddler and leave it at that, no need to get all Arkham City right out the gate.

I felt insane watching the trailer for that thing on Youtube and seeing all the positive comments about it. It felt like the equivalent of listening to one of those slowed down "haunting" song covers that every AAA publisher put in their video game trailers, come to life in the form of Batman. I assume I have become the out of touch old man who doesn't know what the kids like.

EDIT: Like, those Dark Knight movies were already a gritty reboot, and now they're doing a gritty reboot of the gritty reboot. It just comes off as corny to me.

I thought it had an interesting look; I mean you cant really tell anything from a trailer and this will sink or swim on the merits of its story, acting and direction. Robert Pattinson can be a really good actor too who takes his job pretty seriously.

As a die-hard Batman fan I've yet to see any live action rendition really capture "My Batman" anyway but I'd be more then happy to sacrifice the physicality of Batman for a far more introspective take if the movie is going to lean into Batman's brilliance and tragic, obsessive, self-sacrificing mind - the things I love most about that character that we've really never seen on the big screen.

I liked the trailer besides the eyeshadow looking a little too emo and like The Crow. As others have said, it feels like a Fincher Batman, which is interesting to me. The song choice was a little too on the nose and cliched, it's like if they chose "Mad World". I do wonder if he kills, hopefully not, but seems like someone could die from the punches he gave that guy.

I think the trailer was safe and a little corporate, but they are still probably limited with what they have to use. Conversely I am quite into the look and thing they are going for though. I like early years Batman, and Gotham was a bit, meh, so this should be up my street. I'm watching it with interest.

If DC are leaning into this multiverse concept it's quite easy for them to just have however many batmans they can afford, sell and people will want. Maybe they've just come to the conclusion that a character that old, with that many different writers contributing to the mythos will never have a 'definitive' cinematic version. So rather than wait a decade for each reboot they'll just release as they please. The late 90s, early 00s were rough for anyone wanting a good cinematic release, everything just ended up in development hell, which Warner wouldn't have been pleased with either. No movies, no revenue. The Pattinson Batman is a Batman that is markedly different from the Affleck one, I think this approach is fine while the depictions are so distinct - and I think Warner are hoping the market is big enough for that. We shall see if it pans out for them, just trying to Marvel up there universe wasn't working out so it's good that they're trying something different even if they don't get it right all the time.

The trailer didn't put me off or anything. I'm always a little skeptical when a movie demands to be taken seriously. Sometimes that just doesn't land for me. I think The Joker was a pretty big miss on that front, for example. But sometimes it does land and we get a really interesting take on something that is commercial and widely known.

I don't think Nolan's movies are really the "gritty" version of Batman people make them out to be. They're glistening and big, they're shot like blockbuster movies. Which is fine, but that's not really the tone The Batman is going for. It feels closer to The Joker, for better or worse. So this doesn't really feel trite to me. I'm also not the person who is going to get exhausted at the mere ubiquity of a character if the different things they're in are different enough. Matt Reeves has done some interesting work so far, nothing I'm in love with, but I'll hear him out on this.

I'm in the camp of thinking Snyder's DC work, especially with Batman, has been great, so maybe I'm just coming at this from a different angle than people who just want their super heroes the way they know them.

I'm not interested in yet another reboot. DC feels like it's all over the place and very inconsistent with its many different takes on this universe. I like a good Batman movie occasionally, but I like it better when it feels like the movies are connected and add up to something meaningful. I want to see meaningful character progression and maturation, not yet another start from zero. I understand that Batman is a mythic figure at this point and there will be different takes on the character, but at least let his story develop for a while before pulling the rug out. At least James Bond gets a decade or so for most incarnations.

I strongly disagree. I really liked the trailer. Robert Pattinson is a great choice for Batman and I think the trailer showed that. They did not really show him as Bruce Wayne but we have seen that side of his ability before so I am not too worried.

Things like his costume, car, Catwoman's hat etc. looking kind of cheap is intentional and I like it. This is early on in these character's careers so they do not have the super polished costumes yet. There is always the worry that they take it too seriously, which the trailer kind of does. At the end of the day Batman is about an unstable billionaire who dresses up in a bat suit and beats up criminals and it is best to always understand the inherent silliness of that concept.

I also like that it seems like they are going to focus on the detective side of Batman which is hardly touched on in any of the other films.

Overall I am very optimistic about this take on Batman and it is one of the few things from that DC event that I thought looked good.

I thought the trailer was fine. The eye shadow doesn't bother me at all. It seems to me like we are still in a more grounded batman universe but with the slider leaning slightly towards more comic elements. What I didnt like is we seem to have the same "I will beat the living shit out of you" batman. The "I am vengeance" part for example has some killer choreography that just ended with batman beating in this dudes skull over and over. Brain damage at best, neat! We have all seen batman be at the top of the chain in terms of physical power but he is also suppose to be the world's greatest detective. Yet in the movies, we only seem to see him detect other people's face with his fists.

Obviously the edition of the riddler in this movie could lead itself to some interesting detective espionage from the bats. But the trailer definitely didn't seem to hint at that too much. That said, I'll just have to wait for the movie to come out to see.

All in all, the trailer definitely didn't turn me off but it's not showcasing the kind of batman story I would like to see right now.

Is it really a “dark and gritty” reboot when Batman is inherently dark and gritty? If anything these movies seem more in line with the core material while the only two outliers were Batman and Robin/Batman Forever which felt like a reinterpretation of the Adam West show more than the comics.

@humanity: I think that's why it's ridiculous to me. It's not that they're making it dark and gritty, it's that it feels like, to me, that they're taking something already dark and gritty and saying "This isn't dark and gritty enough. We can make it darker and grittier." It feels like a continual escalation to me and it's now reached a point that it just looks goofy.

I left the trailer with pretty positive impressions.

Unlike Arkham Origins (game, not a movie, I know, but similar angle on Batman) they're taking the "early Batman" approach seriously and showing some jank-ass equipment, which I appreciate. But, in all honesty, that wasn't the first thing I noticed, just responding to your takeaway from the trailer...

This movie looks good, from a cinematography angle. Super black blacks in the shots, instead of being crushed to hell like usual in a superhero film, nice lighting, one of the more "realistic" (whatever that word means these days in aesthetics) Batmen takes, especially compared to the hyper-stylization of Snyder and the gloss of Nolan.

I understand being tired of "gritty" Batman, but I'd point out, as some others in the thread have, that what we've had the past couple of decades is not "gritty Batman." Nolan makes incredibly slick blockbusters that garnish good popcorn films with a dusting of "theme" and a really constraining tone that goes out of its way to let the audience know "hey, this is serious, guys." At the end of the day, they're very much still adolescent masculine power fantasies, just in a way that caters to insecure fans. I have similar thoughts on Snyder, though he has a very different aesthetic.

I bring all this up because when people say of this trailer "this is just a lame attempt at gritty Batman," I don't see it. The song choice was on the nose, sure, but the actual footage and scenes shown don't reek (to me) of "hey, this is serious, guys" in the same way the Nolan/Snyder films did. It's portraying some rough shit without much extra spin.

That opening shot of the guy's face duct taped was genuinely unsettling. And this might be me reading too much into things,. but the scene of Batman beating a guy almost to death started as the power fantasy of earlier incarnations of Batman, but became more and more intentionally excessive/critical of his methods with each extra punch as the guy just lay on the ground, his peers watching with horror. A billionaire using his wealth to get himself cool gadgets and a suit and beating up criminals is not the best use of his vast resources, and from what little we've seen, The Batman seems to get that.

For the time being? I'm on board for this.

I think people are missing the inherent theatrical nature of Batman and his roster of on the nose Villains in crazy costume that have no super powers. Nolan’s movies where “gritty” in the fact that they didn’t make Batman seem like magic, but the Joker was as close as they came to theatrical tone of Batman. Those movies are pretty dry and obsessed with making Batman real. This movie seems to be avoiding that and going for the themed gangs and high melodrama that is common in a lot of Batman comics.

Also, people who are objecting to the eye makeup:

First: Batman wears eye makeup, look at how the mask is depicted in the movies. It is even cannon in the comics, though often not featured for creative reasons.

Second: Batman is the OG of emo kid. He was a brooding sad man long before Neil Gamian created Dream, the god of brooding sad men. The Crow got a lot of its vide from Batman comics and the first and second Batman movies. Batman looking like a sad scene kid is a bit of a return to form and part of his appeal. The character that never is defeated by his emotional trauma and turns it into an endless for justice(through face punching).

Also the casting is perfect because it taps into one of the things that made the marvel movies successful: ladies are super into all the male leads. There is an army of now adult Twilight fans that are very excited to see this pretty sad boy in an armored suit.

The trailer did nothing to me. I will probably watch it (somehow and sometime), but it will not be because of the promotional material.

The OP complained about Catwoman being a girl with a hat with pointy flaps from certain angles, but that is not worse than Catwoman being a girl with goggles that had pointy bits when pulled up. The truth is, ever since Nolan, they have been force-feeding us adaptations by people that are not really interested on the characters or the comics, but they are interested in what those character would look like in the real world and are intentionally distancing themselves from the source. Forget about the weird fat villain with umbrellas, or the guy whose gimmick is being obsessed with eggs, even the clown had to trade all its gadgets for a revolver. It was refreshing at first, but now it feels so embarrassing to me as it must be for them to remember that they are working on comic books created for children.

Same with all those statements that they will explore "Bruce Wayne's trauma". Boys, you have done nothing but "explore Bruce Wayne's trauma". There had been several versions of Bruce Wayne in celluloid on the last decades, and almost as many renditions of the scene of his parents deaths. Even things that are not technically "about Batman" can't escape from it (Teen Titans Go, Gotham and Joker all had that same scene), and they rarely add anything new to it. You know what (IMO) the best explorations of Bruce Wayne's trauma has been on the last decades? Mask of the Phantasm and LEGO Batman, at least neither of them involved a broken pearl necklace being scattered in slow motion.

I do hope this film is smart enough to put Wayne’s parents on the shelf next to Uncle Ben. The only way I want them brought up is Batman talking to some kid about grief and how to get over the loss of someone. Just let The Batman brood for the new reasons, like failure to save someone, along with the reasons we all know exist. Because rising above terrible, intangible things happening to him is the enduring narrative of Batman.

It's an early Batman years story, and it seems an actual detective plot as well. I'm interested, will definitely see in theaters.

I don't understand the argument that this is a continuation of making grim and gritty. To me the trailer seemed like a response to the Nolan Batman movies. The Nolan movies were all about the high tech tacticool and martial arts aspects of Batman, whereas this seems to be the exact opposite and focusing on the detective parts as said. I've always preferred the more street level Batman, as the Justice League level Batman always ends up in a territory that's just uncomfortable, both because the power creep ends up making Joker go from a clown themed criminal into a genuine genocidal maniac who is still protected by Batman (and they have to come up with meta reasons for that, like Joker being a supernatural being that infects whomever kills them with being the Joker), and Batman creeping very much into a fascist territory.

I'm confused about which part of the trailer seemed more detective-y than past Batmans. I mean there's the one shot at the very beginning of him walking into a crime scene, but the rest is just moody shots of him, him driving the Batmobile, him fighting Catwoman, him grappling up a stairway of hundreds of dudes, and him punching a guy in the face.

@brian_: I think Matt Reeves has expressed that this movie is supposed to be more based in Batman’s detective work, and folks probably extrapolated from a couple shots in the trailer and the fact that the showcased villain is The Riddler — probably the most detective-compatible of Batman’s nemeses.

@hatking: If that's the case, as someone who has not heard anything about the movie prior to seeing the trailer, I don't feel the trailer does a good job showcasing any of that.

I'm very interested to see where this movie goes

@brian_:

The movie is barely 25% filmed and marketing usually wants the show-y bits to be on trailers. It sounds like the director wants to make a more slow-paced Batman film.

I trust the director and cast to do that to be honest.

@whitestripes09: All of that is fine. I hope they are doing something more interesting with the movie than what they showed in the trailer. I'm just saying that the tone of the trailer seemed super hokey. I hope it doesn't reflect the tone of the movie, and if it doesn't, I wish they'd put out a better trailer, or waited until the movie was more complete if it's really that early into filming.

Man, I thought that trailer was great and I had ZERO faith that this movie would be the least bit interesting. Pattinson never seemed like a good fit for Batman but he sold me.

@brian_: Him walking into a crime scene and trying to solve mysteries in a trailer is already more detective work than he did in the Nolan films all together. Also, the whole trailer is centered around the voiceovers spouting mysteries (or dare I say, riddles), which screams detective.

@retris: I can just as easily see a world were The Riddler is just a re-tread of The Joker stuff from the Nolan movies of "Who are you going to save? Who are you going to let die?". Or a glorified version of the dude from the Saw movies. I don't think his inclusion in the movie guarantee's that it's not just another big dumb Batman action blockbuster, nor do I think anything in the trailer does either.

@brian_: Trust me, I agree with you on not thinking it's a guarantee. It's a superhero movie, they're bound to get watered down. But at face value the trailer gave detective vibes to me and I was trying to explain why.

@retris: idk about that. In Dark Night he shows up at a crime scene and takes a piece of the wall with a bullet in it. Then at home he shoots a big gun with a bunch of different bullets at a different wall to figure out which bullet made the impact. Science! But ya, it's one scene in a trilogy of movies.

Hopefully the batman does a lot more than that.

IMHO (as a DC dilettante) it looked like a competent batman trailer in-line with recent video game and hollywood interpretations of the character.

i think that particular take on batman is running out of gas for me, though. if it was a deep character study that questioned the nature of vigilante justice and privilege- that would compel me to see it.

That is another issue too, its a new reboot that yet again wipes everything away! And, The Batman will appear two weeks AFTER the Snyder cut is released on HBO. Not a fan of Snyder, but talk about jamming characters and stories down people's throats.

@retris: Sure. I was just curious as to what has everyone so positive on this thing, because I can't remember ever having such a wildly different opinion compared to nearly everybody else. More than anything, I'm just trying to figure out whether I was missing something, or just becoming an out of touch old man.

Brooding Batman is my preferred Batman, so I'm totally down for this.

If TDK was Batman by way of Michael Mann
The Batman looks like Batman by way of David Fincher.

After seeing the trailer a couple more times I kinda get a Daredevil vibe due to the action and his suit, but Fincher + Netflix's Daredevil are both things I like a lot.

I would like a Batman movie series where superpowers are back - we haven't had them in a Batman movie since the George Clooney days. I'd like to see Freeze, Poison Ivy, Clayface, etc.

I had a similar reaction. The scene started like a cool power fantasy, but the more and more vicious it became, the more the reality of the sheer brutality that it would require from someone set in. None of the other thugs jumped in because, holy shit, this man is beating our friend into a coma. He says "I am vengeance" but the tone of the movie doesn't really seem to want to paint being the incarnation of vengeance as a positive thing. That was my reading, and I am all there for that. Frayed Bruce Wayne staring at his ridiculous costumed mess of a self in the mirror, confronting the reality where he is just barely indirectly responsible for setting off a spree of brutal targeted murders, is a grittiness that Nolan's Batman films were uninterested in exploring beyond very broad thematic elements.

@monkeyking1969: Historically Batman has been rebooted in comics countless times. I actually feel that it’s very on-brand for Batman to be done up in a different style every few years and for me it’s refreshing to see a new take on an existing behemoth of a character. Sometimes you get gold and sometimes you get Jared Leto but at least it keeps things fresh.

@the_nubster: That's a real good way of looking at it that I hadn't even considered. Part of what makes that sequence so brutal is that it keeps fucking going. Even in the BvS fight, Batman just mostly dispatches people quick and easy. Here? Batman literally destroys a man. Like there's no way that mook is walking away from that beating without permanent damage.

I'm sure we'll get plenty of think pieces of people clamoring for a kinder, more "fun" Batman. But, I honestly never really cared for that interpretation of the character. Don't get me wrong, I love the DCAU shows, but I think part of why Batman has such staying power is because of the franchises willingness as psycho analyze both Batman and his villains, suggesting that it's less that people are inherently damaged and more that society made them the way they are.

I don't know how much its ever mentioned in comic book or movie circles but I always thought it was interesting that people tend to not notice that most (all?) theatrical Batman iterations wore eyemakeup. It's really the only way to get a fully clad cowl where the suit does half the emoting. Otherwise you end up with Adam West Batman that exhibits emotions that aren't stoic or snaring. In fact I think most hero movies and shows that have a character in a mask use eye make up for the same reason. I don't read Batman comics so I never knew it was actually canon.

I REALLY like that they're going back to small, dark, and scary. I actually really liked Batfleck, but he was in a pair of movies that were appalling trash and took "The Batman" to such an insecure place that he's literally mowing people down in a tank before shooting them with guns, and...yeah, not really my Batman. Or anyone's Batman (even back in the '30s when he was using a gun), and while I just read a FASCINATING essay on how you could make Batman timely, relevant, and scathing again by having Joe Chill be a cop who gunned down the Waynes and then slipped through the system, they're NEVER going to do that, so I do like that they're going for a more intimate, horror movie feel.

Weird Hush imagery (that I really hope they don't jump the gun on, that's not a villain you can rush), Robert Pattinson is inspired casting ("The Lighthouse" is one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years), and the return to grit is welcome after hearing that GRITTY AND BADASS EXPLOS-O-MATIC is apparently the new way of things. Batman's supposed to be a shadow, not a branding iron.

And @humanity makes a great point: why is James Bond the only character who gets to cycle through actors/tones without anyone raising a stink, but Spider-Man and Batman (who have gone through COUNTLESS ITERATIONS in their comic forms) somehow have to be a straight, unbroken line.

I actually lol'd while imagining the encounter.

''The hell you're supposed to be?''

''I'm paleontologist familiar with concept of unagi''

I liked the choice of Pattinson I am even on record on this forums saying so. But I think the look and tone that trailer was showing a "misuse" of Pattinson.

I think they ahev great actors for teh roles, I just think the trailer make steh whoel thing look cheap and dreary...not fantasy dreary of Gotham...but relistic -the US Economy is down the shitter- dreary.

THis movie better not being gas-lighting for the police. This better not be a story of "Oh, poor Commissioner Gordon"; he is the only 'good cop' on the force - forsooth whatever shall he do?!. Because the hollywood writers have a solution for that...make Batman clean up the dirty cops for the first 30 min. Let's see less hand-wringing about dirty cops and more kicks to their blue nutt-sacks.

I liked the trailer for The Batman. It felt like it was going for Batman The Animated Series meets Christopher Nolan's Batman on terms of realism and the dark setting. I haven't seen Robert Pattinson in anything other than Twilight movies so won't judge him till the movie comes out. I just hope The Batman does The Riddler right compared to Batman Forever. I want The Riddler to be like The Joker in a sense where he messes with Batman's mind with traps and riddles/clues.