Warner Bros. Pictures and Matt Reeves’ new “The Batman” film reportedly clocks in at 175 minutes – five minutes shy of three hours. That run time includes around eight minutes of credits.
That makes it the longest-running solo “Batman” feature to date and one of the longest theatrical superhero films – behind only “Avengers: Endgame” at 181 minutes and “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” at 242 minutes, though the latter never played in cinemas.
The previous longest solo Bat film was Chris Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” a decade ago at 165 minutes. This news continues a trend of long major studio films of late such as “No Time to Die” (163), “House of Gucci” (158) and “West Side Story” (156).
Robert Pattinson stars as Bruce Wayne/Batman in the film which plays out like a dark detective noir story. Speaking with MovieMaker Magazine recently, Reeves explains the film boasts a narrative close to horror movies about serial killers:
“This idea of a place that is corrupt, and you try to swim against the tide in order to fight against it and make a difference, is quintessential Batman. And at the center of those noir stories is almost always the detective, right?
And that’s why he is the world’s greatest detective. And so this story is, in addition to being almost a horror movie, and a thriller, and an action movie, at its core, it’s also very much a detective story.”
Reeves also confirms how The Riddler (Paul Dano) is inspired by the Zodiac Killer case and explains how he sets up the scenario:
“The premise of the movie is that the Riddler is kind of molded in an almost Zodiac Killer sort of mode, and is killing very prominent figures in Gotham, and they are the pillars of society. These are supposedly legitimate figures. It begins with the mayor, and then it escalates from there.
And in the wake of the murders, he reveals the ways in which these people were not everything they said they were, and you start to realize there’s some kind of association. And so just like Woodward and Bernstein, you’ve got Gordon and Batman trying to follow the clues to try and make sense of this thing in a classic kind-of-detective story way.”
The film also stars Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman and Colin Farrell as The Penguin. “The Batman” is slated to open in cinemas on March 4th, check out the just-released main theme music for the movie below:
Source: THR