The Batman is stuffed with A-listers doing their damndest to bring something new to characters we’ve seen plenty of times before (the titular hero aside, Zoë Kravitz is the third actor to play Catwoman since 2004), perhaps the most interesting new direction in the film is for Gotham itself.
The Batman was billed as a “journey into Gotham’s dark underbelly” and that’s certainly what we got, as the action moved between a seedy mob club, to a parking garage, to the Riddler’s gross incel flat, and back to the mob club again. (In order to convey the repetitiveness of real police work, about half of the three-hour movie is Batman going to the same place, to ask the same people, the same questions. Gritty.)
