It’s not a competition, but DC is better than Marvel.
Nowhere is that clearer than The Batman.

To produce a standalone Bruce Wayne in the wake of The Dark Knight trilogy is a tremendous task. DC rises to the occasion. Look where it ranks:

Top Films 2022

• The Batman
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Top Gun: Maverick
• The Menu
• Everything Everywhere All At Once

The historical grounding is subtle – Bruce scribbling in a journal marked “Year Two” and Alfred already ferklempt. This year-by-year breakdown of Batman’s career comes from contemporary comic lore. Starting in Year Two is smart. Gotham already fears him. He’s a vigilante, formidable but not mythic. Gordon’s still a detective, unaligned with our hero.

It’s the dawn of Gotham’s supervillainy.

Batman is a figment of darkness. In the opening scene, he coalesces out of shadow – emerging from the sunless landing beneath Gotham’s raised trainline like a tendril of justice. One that slithers from the living darkness at the city’s core.

This metaphysical undercurrent – how light and dark are used – carries through the film.
Binocular perspectives. Reinforced glass dividing observer from criminal. A drug-induced haze, vision warped. Even Catwoman’s POV – filtered and unreliable. Or maybe it’s Batman’s?

And the sound design – massive. Warner Bros. mics the costume. Rain plops and patters on Kevlar. Rubber squeals as pruning shears stab. Escaping air whines from a punctured tire.
You feel the impact. A thug’s bat breaks across Batman’s armored back; and it looks like it hurts. Pattinson commits to the realism. The first Batmobile misfires and sputters before finally roaring to life.

He glides off a rooftop – no green screen. That’s Pattinson himself, doing the stunt.
It’s all in service of tone. Dark. Gritty. Haphazard. Real.

The production uses nearly no noticeable CGI. Everything feels shot on-location. The only piece of cheap animation? A clump of machinery dangling from a cable mid-climax. It stands out because everything else feels grounded.

Christopher Nolan’s trilogy isn’t perfect – it’s cinematic. Broad, tight, blockbuster storytelling. Consider:

The Nolan Runtimes

• Batman Begins (2005): 140 minutes
• The Dark Knight (2008): 155 minutes
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012): 165 minutes

Perfect intervals. Almost too tidy.

The Batman runs 176 minutes – longest solo Batman film ever. Some call it excessive. That’s hogwash. A 130-minute origin story would’ve been safer. Instead, Warner Bros. commits to the well. The depth of the fiction justifies the length.

And The Batman gives us more Bruce Wayne in Gotham than Nolan ever did.
Nolan’s Bruce mostly broods or playacts (see: the fountain scene). Pattinson offers layers. In the funeral scene, he oscillates between his halves. Bruce acting Batmany. Bruce acting Brucey.

Each major character in this story is an orphan. But the divergence is the point.
Bruce turns grief into action. Wealth into justice. His loss defines him, but he gives.
Selina Kyle? She steals what she needs and what she wants. She trusts no one.
Edward Nashton? He seethes. Imagines Bruce’s pain came cushioned by silk sheets. Both boys lost their parents. Only one inherited a mansion. The other got rot, and resents the myth of the benevolent orphan prince.

The Batman doesn’t just retell the tale. It re-centers it. From multiple lenses of loss—each refracting through crime, cause and consequence.

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Read shorter versions on IMDb and Letterboxd. Or Man of Steel.