Why 'The Batman' Isn't a Superhero Movie

• The Batman

  hit theaters on Wednesday and is the third incarnation of the masked vigilante in less than a decade.

• After the modern version of Christopher Nolan or the mythological of Zack Snyder, how did director Matt Reeves and his actor Robert Pattinson reclaim the character?

• More detective than superhero, this new Batman goes back to basics and comics

Three different Spider-Mans in ten years is a lot, isn't it?

The question arose when the Tom Holland reboot was announced in 2017, and found an unexpected and exciting answer in the recent

.

It arises again with

, in theaters since Wednesday and the third incarnation of Dark Knight on the big screen in less than ten years, after Christian Bale at Christopher Nolan and Ben Affleck at Zack Snyder.

To which we can add Michael Keaton, back in costume in the next

and

films .

Thank you multiverse.

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Batman has never been shown in costume

Each Batman had until then succeeded in asserting his identity, from the very pop

series with Adam West to the dark and modern trilogy

, passing through the gothic approach with Tim Burton and mythological with Zack Snyder.

How would director Matt Reeves and his actor Robert Pattinson stand out, what could they bring to the character?

They do not completely free themselves from the influence of Christopher Nolan, still omnipresent in Hollywood from

to

, with a black, tortured, heroic but human Batman.

But the paradox – and tour de force – of

is that rarely has a Batman film shown Batman so much in costume, to the point of forgetting that he is also Bruce Wayne, while giving the impression of not being a "real" Batman movie.

Robert Pattinson almost never drops the mask, and crosses the film as Batman, right up to the crime scenes, during interrogations, in nightclubs.

With this moment, both beautiful and symbolic, where he had to jump from a building but got scared.

He then has nothing of a superhero like in recent productions of the genre.

More detective than superhero

With each film adaptation of Batman, the director claims more or less directly from the comics, like Zack Snyder who read an extract from

by Frank Miller to announce his Batman V Superman at Comic Con 2013. Matt Reeves, for his part, readily quotes

by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli,

by Dawrwyn Cooke or 

and its

sequel by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, for, respectively, the beginnings of the vigilante, the exploration of his psychology and the hunt for the serial killer.

is thus above all an investigation, and refers to the origins of the DC character created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

Because yes, DC are the initials of

, the publisher's first and longest series of comics, which saw the birth of Batman in May 1939.

The viewer thus discovers a Batman that is more detective than superhero.

Matt Reeves says he has seen his classics from the 1970s

,

,

, the films of Alan J. Pakula), but his film seems above all to be under the influence of another contemporary filmmaker.

And no, it's not Christopher Nolan.

The villain, the Riddler, he thus evokes the Killer of the Zodiac or the

book .

You will have understood,

looks like a thriller by David Fincher, between

and 

, even in his high visual outfit, and proves that the one nicknamed the Black Knight, the Masked Justice, the Batman or even the Greatest Detective in the World is not a superhero like the others .

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