FortuneCookie posted... Bruce Wayne looks emo, the film appears to have a very grimdark aesthetic, and on the whole it looks like an R-rated drama that's ever so slightly trimmed down to reach a PG-13.
I think the grimdark fad is as dead as the zombie movie fad. I think superheroes who take themselves too seriously are missing the point of superheroes. And I don't think Batman should ever be written in a manner to fully exclude his originally intended target audience: children.
My fondest Batman memories are watching The Animated Series as a child. A generation or two before me, it would have been the SuperFriends or the Adam West series. A little after my time, there was that weird cartoon where Joker had dreadlocks and a monkey-like fighting stance. And there's that weird WWE crossover with John Cena. I haven't seen it, but I am curious who has the stronger plot armor between Bats and Cena.
This film looks like it desperately wishes it came out during a time when a good movie was No Country for Old Men, the best show on TV was The Walking Dead, and The Wire was the show that you talked to your friends about around the office water cooler. It's not far enough in the past to be able to bring it back and make it new again. It just feels like it's chasing yesterday's trends.
grim noir detective has been in again. True detective revived it