“Every day, I come by your house and I pick you up.

[benji]

Finally got around to watching The Batman. 

That was a good 2-hour flick stretched out to a pretty tedious 3-hour movie. 

I blame Christopher Nolan for all these directors thinking their dumb capeshit is worthy of the extra length.

I actually think that the Snyder films are the only ones with enough actual plot for the length*. What happened to BvS when it was stripped of just half an hour is perhaps the best proof since the plot falls apart. (Zack Snyder's Justice League is just him indulging with a director's cut, but you can see how there's a tighter three hour cut in there.)

The Nolan films I don't think match this, even TDK meanders in very boring ways, but TDKR is the worst offender in my mind because it actually starts off very tight and with probably the most engaging of any of the trilogy before shitting all over itself after Bruce goes in the sewers. The Batman absolutely feels like TDKR. It's really hard to see how a half hour couldn't be cut out of it.

Even Wonder Woman probably could be cut closer to two hours without losing anything. I think it's hilarious that the one film they shouldn't have cut down to two hours was the one they set a hard limit on (then reshot stupidly), while letting so much else sprawl towards insufferable lengths. Wonder Woman 1984 is the worst offender of the DCEU because there's probably barely two hours worth of content in there but it's two and a half hours long, while Birds of Prey feels so inoffensive because it's only 110 minutes. And Black Adam feels "better" than it should because it barely goes past two hours. I think one reason people are agreeable to the MCU is how many of them barely go past two hours, you notice the ones that go longer and how they feel dragging while nothing happens. Meanwhile, Aquaman, The Flash, etc. are all closer to two and a half but you have trouble seeing how they couldn't be cut even when they have more consequential plots to them.

I think Nolan's films and The Batman have the same issue versus their length really. They're "crime epics" but the setting is never established, only Batman is. The Batman is slightly better about establishing Gotham, when these obviously should be films about Gotham, not Batman. Batman Begins is probably better than its sequels at this even though it spends half the running time on Bruce becoming Batman, you get more sense of Gotham versus "generic city backdrop" in the others. Nolan's films spend so much time on Bruce being a whiner and trying to establish him even though he has no character at all, it's kind of amusing.

Ironically, I still think the way to deliver what people seem to actually want from Batman films is films that focus on Gotham and Batman is a mostly unseen force except for the action sequences. Instead you get these films that focus deeply on Bruce. Joker seems to get around this because Arthur is delusional, but I don't think you could have really given him additional films without running into this problem. Also ironically, Leto's Joker works better as he's cut towards this unseen force that everyone fears. People seem to think they want a Joker who chews scenery like Ledger's when that was more of a one-time thing. (Same with Nicholson, I think. The fact that we got two back-to-back seems to deceive.) I think the ideal way to deliver both Batman and Joker is instead to show their impact on Gotham and everyone else in it. This is the effect of Ledger's Joker because his purpose is incoherent beyond chaos, he switches from manipulating a robbery to manipulating the mob to manipulating Batman to manipulating the city. (Just like Nicholson's.) Arthur's Joker is somewhat similar and it seems to be Phillips intent with him, especially in the sequel. Also amusingly, this is how it is Azzarello's Joker since the Joker is less the central character.

Ultimately, Batman isn't a very interesting character and so devoting him nine hours of a trilogy will underwhelm but the "idea of Batman and how it effects Gotham" is something that gives you nearly a century worth of material at this point. Filmmakers, and Warner, seem to want to make the least interesting characters in the Batman mythos their central characters despite the lack of meat on their bones. I do wonder if The Penguin is evidence that Reeves may understand Gotham, not Bruce, is his real character but I'm skeptical. (Selina arguably should get this treatment. Somebody ship the powers that be Brubaker's run.)

*I understand why Endgame is three hours, but I think it has less plot than BvS: Ultimate and ZSJL.