It’s nice to see a Batman movie spend its time with Batman doing Batman things. Almost every other Batman movie wants to spend its time with the villains or show Bruce Wayne at a charity gala. I was worried we’d get the same given how many characters are in this film. But instead we spend most of our time with Batman moving through one coherent (though expansive) crime story.

They succeeded at telling a coherent, balanced story with an ensemble cast. Despite having four well-known Batman villains—Penguin, Catwoman, Falcone, and Riddler— everyone was in the same movie telling the same story. This is rare in Batman (and the superhero/comic book genre generally).

Pattinson was possibly the least well cast actor, but that’s only because the rest of the cast was that great. He’s totally fine, but being a movie that spends its time with Batman and not Bruce, I’m not sure it’s a big deal who is behind the mask so long as they have the physicality to perform the action scenes.

As shot, it’s hard to point to things I would cut in the movie even though it’s too long. If I were reviewing the script, I’d probably remove either Falcone or Penguin (their roles for this story can be collapsed). This will be blasphemous to those who rightfully love Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, but I also suspect you could cut this movie significantly by removing her. It’s not that she wasn’t great or didn’t pull together a lot of plot— she was far better integrated than I feared— it’s just that I think they could have saved Catwoman and write an equally effective story without it.

This whole movie gave me a very Seven/Fincher vibe.

I think it might be the best Batman movie.

The car was dumb.