Big Picture Big Sound

Moviegoers just can't quit their superheroes, and that will continue to prove true with the release of Matt Reeves' "The Batman," which is one of the final blockbusters to be released after pandemic-driven delays (the pair of Tom Cruise films continue to float in the ether). Just a few years after Ben Affleck became the new Batman, Robert Pattinson dons the cape and mask in a film that is desperate - occasionally overly so - to stand apart from the iterations that preceded it. Reeves is intermittently successful in doing so, but the picture becomes exhausting after a while.

Reeves adopts a hardboiled noir style to tell the story of Gotham City's most famous vigilante. The whole film is coated in shadows, with Pattinson's Batman providing voiceover narration while zooming through the streets on his motorcycle. It's an often thrilling aesthetic exercise, even if Reeves lays it on a bit thick. Comic book movies have started going for homage to try and elevate their reception above the average superhero movie, and "The Batman" has taken that approach. Reeves has said that he modeled his film after David Fincher's stunning procedural "Zodiac," but it plays like a noir pastiche, rather than copying Fincher's movie. Even at Reeves' most indulgent, he doesn't tip over into the obnoxious territory Todd Phillips' Scorsese riff "Joker" did.

Pattinson, much like his "Twilight" counterpart Kristen Stewart, has emerged from prior franchise frame to become one of the more interesting actors working today. He had shifted to taking on challenging roles in movies like "The Lighthouse" and his career-best "Good Time," but now makes his way back to franchise filmmaking for the first time since the end of "Twilight." He's a serviceable Batman, and - as we see anytime a new actor takes on the role - many will giddily proclaim he's the best, but that title remains with Michael Keaton. Pattinson's characterization of Bruce Wayne and his alter ego is much more dour than we have seen in previous movies, whether he's skulking about his vampiric castle with his butler Alfred (Andy Serkis), meeting Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), or helping Commissioner Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) close in on The Riddler (Paul Dano) after his latest kill.

Dano's The Riddler is the film's Big Bad, and he's a great fit. But the movie also introduces another familiar foe in The Penguin (Colin Farrell), who's integral to one of the subplots but not used in a satisfying way. In presenting a nemesis, "The Batman" clears the room for Dano's The Riddler, whose presence is felt even when he isn't on screen.

"The Batman" offers several great action pieces, but the movie does begin to crumble under its own weight, both in terms of the near-three-hour runtime and its own self-importance. If studios are going to keep making new versions of familiar characters it's important to stand out and feel fresh, and "The Batman" does so with a few constant reminders. It's looking to be called "haunting" and "sprawling" in coverage, and it is both of those buzzwords in part, with an added dose of posturing.