Warner Bros. has given fans a belated Christmas present by releasing a new trailer for Matt Reeves’ The Batman, as stuffed with new footage as the proverbial Christmas goose. There’s plenty of Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, plenty of Robert Pattinson’s Batman beating the hell out of people, and plenty of Paul Dano’s Riddler implying the Wayne family is responsible for Gotham City’s deepest, darkest secret.
If you’ll recall, The Batman is only set a couple of years after Bruce Wayne has started his career as a vigilante, and it seems like he’s yet to find that work/alter-ego life balance that allows him to masquerade as a socialite and throw people off the track of his secret identity. Perhaps that’s why the Riddler seems to know exactly who Batman really is, and why he seemingly begins his criminal career by leaving gruesome messages for the Dark Knight instead of generically terrorizing Gotham City. What’s really intriguing is that Riddler seems to be positioning himself as an agent of justice by exposing whatever the hell the Wayne family has been keeping hidden—something that Alfred (Andy Serkis) may be well aware of, and has been hiding from Bruce. The other possibility is that Alfred knows something about the night Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered in Crime Alley, something that Bruce doesn’t know—and the idea that Reeves might be shaking up Batman’s oft-told origin story is pretty exciting. Give it a look:
This new trailer is also definitely the most we’ve seen of Selina Kyle/Catwoman, and Kravitz gives her a refreshing sense of ease with just the tiniest bit of camp that offsets Pattinson’s brooding anger perfectly. My only qualm is her... mask? If that’s what we’re calling it? It looks bananas. But I can easily get over it since her nickname for Batman seems to be “Vengeance,” which I have to assume is because he angrily introduces himself to her or other criminals by screaming “I AM VENGEANCE!” at them at some point, after which Catwoman makes fun of him mercilessly. If I am wrong, this is still my head-canon.
The Batman, which also stars Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Colin Farrell as the Penguin, and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, opens March 4, 2022.
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