Weekend Watch: The Batman, Star Trek: Picard Season 2
A Brucie (Wayne) bonus and a space traveller meets an old nemesis
Image Credit: Warner Bros.
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Bruce Wayne’s once more prowling the streets of Gotham and Jean-Luc Picard returns to space. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
Sooner or later, it appears every director will get a crack at a cinematic version of Batman. The likes of Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, Joel Schumacher and Zack Snyder have all brought their sensibilities to the Caped Crusader, with varying levels of success. And that’s without adding in the many animated versions and the 1960s TV show/movie.
For Matt Reeves, the man who so adeptly handled the two most recent Planet Of The Apes movies, and other projects including Cloverfield and Let Me In to tackle the character, there must have been something compelling, something fresh he wanted to say with a well-worn hero whose origins stretch back to Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s Detective Comics in 1939. The clue to Reeves’ vision is that first word in the title: this take on Bruce Wayne and his cowl-wearing alter ego is very much a detective.
While there are naturally some heroic action beats going on here, Reeves’ focus is very much on noir mystery, with corruption seeded into the dark heart of Gotham City. This is a rain-drenched, neon-tinted portrayal of the troubled metropolis, a mixture of Nolan’s more realistic feel and Burton’s art-deco stylings (though weighted more towards the former).
Filling the suit, the director has gone for Robert Pattinson, who started his career in big franchise movies (one Harry Potter, several Twilight outings) but has since switched gears to deeper, more complicated work. The Batman finds him combining the two.
Around Pattinson (who makes for an emo, moody Bruce Wayne and a Batman whose suit almost makes him feel more like RoboCop it’s so chunky and angled), Reeves has built a fine ensemble that includes Zoe Kravitz as a slinky, conflicted Selina “Catwoman” Kyle, Jeffrey Wright as dependable Lt. (not yet Commissioner) Jim Gordon, an almost unrecognizable Colin Farrell as crime henchman (not yet boss, though making moves) Penguin and Andy Serkis as Wayne family butler Alfred Pennyworth. It’s that last name whose presence is so disappointing; not for anything that Serkis does – he’s fine, but reducing him to a couple of scenes feels like a waste of someone who did such great work for Reeves in the Apes films and brings a grumpy, tired gravitas to Alfred. Yes, the movie’s not called Pennyworth, and hopefully, this is setting up future work for the pair since it never feels like The Batman knows what to do with the character besides having him be expositional. Michael Caine, for example, in Nolan’s movies had more to do.
Then there’s The Riddler, played here with nervy mental health issues (which could lead to some backlash) by Paul Dano. It’s a fascinating interpretation of the character, melding bubbling righteous rage with digital world radicalisation.
As mentioned, Reeves hasn’t simply plumped for a straightforward Bat-story, preferring to peek into secrets and lies, power and its consequences, orphans and strays. This is a narrative driven by clues, double-crosses and tragic histories, bringing Bruce’s story back down to more of a street-level hero (even though he does live in a tower) after Snyder’s galactic-sized threats.
Yet he doesn’t skimp on moments of action – a chase featuring this Bruce’s muscle-car Batmobile is a stand-out moment, keenly combining digital work with practical for a crunching, convincing confrontation. Elsewhere, there’s a feeling of a Batman still finding his feet, working out how to do all he needs to in his battle against crime in the city.
Refreshingly, though, there’s no flashback to his parents’ death (it’s mentioned but not seen), a rare side-step that, in the same way as Marvel’s recent Spider-Man movies eschews Uncle Ben’s death, lends a freshness to the whole affair.
The Batman, though, still for me ranks beneath Nolan’s one-two punch of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, which I still maintain are the best live-action cinematic representations of Bruce, Bats and everyone else in his non-Justice League world. Yet I’ve got a lot of time for Reeves’ interpretation of the character (which will expand with TV shows, because that’s how pop culture works today) and I’m anticipating where in Gotham he decides to go next.
The Batman is in UK and US cinemas now.
Image Credit: CBS Viacom
As played by Patrick Stewart on Star Trek: The Next Generation and the four movies that followed the series, Jean-Luc Picard has always had a thing for nostalgia, for contemplating and exploring the past. While the first season of Star Trek: Picard certainly had that as one of its themes, the second dives into it so deeply that you might wonder if there’s anything else to talk about.
In the first episode, at least, there are call-backs agogo to characters, ships and stories from Picard’s past adventures, and much ruminating from the good Captain – sorry, Admiral – on whether he sacrificed too much personally for them. Picard as a series is also obsessed with the past of the character, bringing up old friends and foes to warm the cockles of TNG fans who were craving something to remind them of days spent watching the show on VHS videos that they’d bought from Forbidden Planet or the local branch of Woolw… Okay, so that’s me. But it’s also a lot of people.
Yet the focus on so much of the past does mean that the narrative drive of this episode is a little off, stopping like a Starship with a faulty warp drive for chats about lost love or second chances. Don’t get me wrong – I’m delighted to see Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan back behind a bar or see John De Lancie’s Q spar with Stewart as the omnipotent alien causes more havoc. It’s just that there are only so many references that need to be packed into one episode.
And there are even connections that work double shifts in terms of nostalgia – a spatial anomaly is part of the inciting incident here, something that powered many Next Generation stories and has become a staple of the current Trek shows from Discovery onwards. Star Trek gonna Star Trek.
It also means that, despite finding ways to get them all back together, the rest of the Picard crew get short shrift initially. I’m sure that Michelle Hurd’s Raffi Santiago Cabrera’s Cristóbal Rios, Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine and Allison Pill’s Dr Agnes Jurati, among others, will all get more to do in the coming weeks, especially as the show investigates a fascistic parallel universe (no, not the mirror one, another one), deals with a new Borg threat (or is it?) and overcomes whatever obstacles Q feels compelled to throw in their way.
If it’s perhaps not as satisfying a return for the Jean-Luc crew as might have been hoped, it’ll hopefully find its feet again once it starts really telling the story and not rehashing older ones.
The first episode of Star Trek: Picard is on Paramount Plus in the US and Prime Video in the UK. New episodes will debut weekly.