Film Noir and Crime Cinema Influences in The Batman (2022)

[00:00:02][Music] welcome back screen crush i'm ryan airy batman may be the most popular comic book character of all time and he resonates with people for several different reasons he's dark he's cool the gadgets but i've always been fascinated with how batman is an amalgam of thousands of years worth of stories and myths his spiritual ancestor is odysseus the hero of the trojan war who was not blessed with the powers of the gods like achilles but instead odysseus is described as a man skilled in all means of contending just like the batman he also has elements of hades because he lives in the underworld and hey two thumbs way way up for our leading lady he's an animal totem and tribes have worshipped animal totems for thousands of years so you add in a little bit of dracula pulp heroes like zoro and a relatable origin that resonates with the 20th century american audience that was terrorized by organized crime when you put all that together you have a character that resonates with everyone now the new movie the batman also does a brilliant job of combining elements from older movies to create something that feels both familiar and new we call that the star wars trick the batman combines the genres of film noir neo-noir horror thriller mysteries gangsters silent films and puts this all into the framework of a modern day superhero blockbuster at dc fandom in 2020 writer-director matt reeves mentioned a few inspirations from other films citing chinatown and mystery thrillers but now that we've actually seen the movie we can go through and cite homages to some of the greatest films of all time some of these you may have seen and some maybe you haven't but warning there will be spoilers for these movies ahead now for me the element that makes this batman film stand apart from any other superhero film is the setting and tone now most superhero movies are set in new york even superman's metropolis was obviously new york tim burton reimagined gotham cities ripped straight from the funny papers littered with looming towers and decaying cathedrals while joel schumacher reimagined gotham as a bizarre cartoon filled with enormous statues that you could drive your car on and nolan's gotham was chicago whereas matt reeves filmed on location in several cities like london glasgow new york chicago to give his gotham city a lived in feel more than any other setting in a comic book movie this gotham felt real to me it felt alive for gotham because gotham is like our world felt like our world and felt like our world now i mean that's the whole idea of the kind of social media and the social media mob and all of that the riddler uses like i wanted it to sort of connect so that the audiences would be able to see a character that's beloved to them but in a way that felt fresh but also relevant for now and not every movie has to seem realistic i mean sam raimi's new york was a brightly colored pop experience inhabited by citizens with a heart of gold you want to get to him you got to go through me and me me too this is a fictionalized version of new york city but it's a fun one it's in new york we all want to believe in but reeves gotham owes way more to the new york crime films of the 1970s and the genre neo-noir that neo-noir storytelling and the and the kind of revisionism the way that chinatown is kind of a revisionist noir um i was very affected by those stories and i thought there was an opportunity here that's interesting what is neo-noir well you've probably heard of film noir that's the 1930s genre of the hard-boiled detective on the outskirts of society it's been parodied countless times looking for something no she said she wasn't but her eye said otherwise she was all dame legs that went all the way to the bottom of her torso the kind of arms that had elbows um now there was a revival of film noir after world war ii called neo-noir which was very much like film noir but shot way better in the 1970s though neo-noir detective films became famous for this very rough-looking aesthetic for decades crime movies were filmed in controlled environments often on set with precise lighting now in the 1970s technology advanced cameras became lighter this allowed directors to take cameras out into the streets and take advantage of shooting on location in cities like new york which was in the 1970s considered to be something of a [ __ ] so these 1970s crime and neo-noir films felt tactile they felt real like you could be pushing your baby in a stroller and suddenly your life's in danger by a rogue cop who plays by his own rules batman opens the movie with narration when that light hits the sky it's not just a call it's a warning which we see later in his journal this immediately calls to mind the journal of travis bickle and taxi driver it's a long hustle but it keeps me real busy i can take in three 350 a week sometimes even more when i do it off the meter that movie is the gold standard for gritty 1970s new york movies about a vigilante loner with delusions of grandeur mat reef said that he made batman into a journaler so we could get inside his head that's the same method that scorsese used for travis bickle but look beyond the setting reeves also took several style cues from other great movies for starters the french connection now this movie is about new york city cops busting up a heroin ring and it won best picture in 1971 but most people remember it for its car chase when it's gene hackman vs train this scene is famous for having no music just the blaring horns and the escalating sound of the train [Music] but the real innovation was placing the camera on the front bumper and under cranking the speed so there were fewer frames per second making it appear like the car was moving faster than it actually was i used the same technique for the speeder bikes and jedi that's right good manager good boy i love you i love you too so there is a lot of the french connections dna in the chase with the penguin cinematographer greg frazier even mounted the cameras to the cars so the audience would feel every hit a 70s chase like like the french connection or bullet i wanted hard mounts because when the car shakes i wanted the camera to shake in fact it's stunning that they did this whole race practically you know this shot the one where the penguin reacts and the car burst through the flames in the background that's not cgi they really mounted the camera there on the car film cone farrell's reaction watching the batmobile fly through flames i got you i got you take that two quick now for this shot reeves was inspired by the film adaptation of stephen king's christine i wanted to jump that batmobile through fire because i thought it would be like uh like it would be like a christine you know the the stephen king i keep talking about how immersive batman was for me and that's mostly due to the way it was filmed now we're very used to blockbusters being sanitized they're all really clean they're shot on digital and processed through a computer so many times we don't even know if what we're looking at is real but the batman felt messy and grimy and this was a deliberate choice but we took further where we took the finished digital image and we ran it out to film and then we scanned it back reeves and cinematographer greg frazier even made the decision to use lenses that were less than perfect and would give the film a damaged look greg deliberately sought out the most technically flawed anamorphic lenses you could possibly have because like these neo-noir films and they were you know they were shot in many cases anamorphic and the chase ends with one of the most iconic shots from any superhero movie ever now this shot is kind of rare for a superhero movie it's from the first person point of view reeves said that after that propulsive french connection kind of craziness he wanted this pov shot of the penguin this accomplishes three key things that make this scene so memorable one the chase sequence was fast and kinetic so we need a quiet moment afterwards to catch our breath two placing us in the penguin's point of view makes us focus on the batman and only on batman we're not seeing part of the penguin's head or his shoulder we're not wondering if he'll be able to escape from the car and three shooting from this point of view makes the viewer feel like we are trapped in the car with the penguin and batman is coming after us reeves told slash film that hitchcock's pov shots were his main inspiration for this scene hitchcock was the master of pov shots he placed us in the eyes of a killer in psycho and rear window put us in the head of jimmy stewart's voyeur as he tries to work out what's happened to the wife next door reeves also saw this movie as a way to honor the legacy of the warner brothers gangster movies from the 1930s now this included films like the original scarface white heat angels with dirty faces is that like angels with filthy sorrows actually doug yes angels with filthy souls was a parody of angels with dirty faces keep the change you filthy animals now these films were made in what's called the pre-code era of hollywood before the content of movies was more heavily regulated to be family friendly as a result these are dark violent movies you get the feeling that just like in the batman the violence is real and guess what in the case of scarface's famous shootout scene the bullets were real they actually hired world war one marksman to fire at the wood behind him so the actor was actually being chased around by real rounds of ammunition now you can see the influence of these movies all over the batman and its lighting the realistic violence and how it places us in the point of view of less savory characters now this dingy aesthetic doesn't last through the entire movie the climactic fight had more in common with brian de palma's snake eyes an action thriller set in a stadium and also a little bit of 1993's in the line of fire where clint eastwood stops an assassination attempt at a political rally but that's just the style of the movie now let's talk about the many films that influenced the batman's story back at dc fandom in 2020 matt reeves specifically cited one film as his major influence which non-batman movie were matt reeves yours inspiration for the batman you know a lot of movies like chinatown was a key one now i'm gonna try not to spoil chinatown if you haven't seen it but you really shouldn't see chinatown forget it jake it's cloudtown but i am going to describe the movie and the elements that the batman boros the film was released in 1974 and it's a neo-noir film that uses 1930s and 1940s film noir as a major point of reference we have the hard-boiled detective the femme fatale that he can't seem to trust so there are obvious parallels to the batman where the main character is the world's greatest detective who like jake getty's in chinatown works outside the law and he also catches feelings for the femme fatale selena kyle in both movies this love interest has a secret relationship to the big bad villain who's controlling everything behind the scenes but the key to chinatown's plot is a deep conspiracy involving the city of los angeles siphoning off public funds for a corrupt purpose now this was repurposed for the batman which revealed that falcone is using the wayne renewal fund to control all of the city's institutions and speaking of government conspiracies matt reeves also told movie maker that i watched all the president's men and i just started saying okay so how do we start to describe just how high this corruption went all the president's men tells the real life story of how bob woodward and carl bernstein uncovered nixon's involvement in the watergate break-in which led to his impeachment i see batman and gordon as being woodward and bernstein and that they're trying they're on the trail of trying to understand where this corruption is and how this sort of corruption leads all the way to the top now in all the president's men these reporters are tipped off by a well-meaning informant named deep throat just follow the money the batman subverts this idea it also has an investigative duo with their own informant who talks to the press except the informant is the villain of the movie so now let's pivot and talk about the riddler and the many influences that shaped this film's characters the movie that influenced the batman's villain the most is david fincher's zodiac this is a retelling of the real-life zodiac killer now much like the riddler he involved the press in his murders and sent them hidden decoded messages to prove i killed them i shall state some facts which only i and the police know both killers created their own insignias and the riddler even dresses like the zodiac they wear dark crude costumes like they're wearing executioner's hoods and the riddler's glasses match drawings of the zodiac killer and they also match jim carrey's in batman forever which is weird both the zodiac and the riddler are motivated by a desire to feel important to be seen by the world as more clever than anyone else hey pig doesn't it rile you up to have your nose rubbed in your boo-boos and the way that they both give themselves nicknames the riddler and the zodiac are examples of their narcissism there's even similarities in the way they talk the riddler says bruce wayne just like how zodiac says now this hunt for the riddler also takes on the beats from a 90 serial killer movie and so the idea that you would be in a room with a bunch of forensic cops and beat cops and all these people that had been the murderer of this high-profile figure like the mayor and a guy walks in in a cow with a cape this was a huge genre in the 1990s kind of a precursor to the docu murder mysteries of today like making a murderer this trend was kick-started in 1990 by silence of the lambs now i don't think a movie can feature a scene where a hero speaks to a villain behind glass without it being compared to this movie i ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti but actually manhunter is the original adaptation of the book red dragon with brian cox playing hannibal lecter so he was lecter before anthony hopkins reeves specifically cited manhunter as an influence on his joker originally there was a scene where batman broke into arkham asylum to get the joker's advice similar to the scene in manhunter i want you to help me dr lecter yes i thought now there are a ton of great serial killer films from the 90s there's kiss the girls summer of sam the bone collector but by far the one with the most influence on the batman was david fincher's seventh and seven i guess i guess it's just seven spoilers for seven are ahead that movie follows two detectives an older veteran played by morgan freeman and an up-and-coming hothead played by brad pitt the same dynamic is repeated with gordon and batman they're tracking a serial killer who is obsessed with the seven deadly sins and he leaves puzzles for the cops to find long as the way and hard that out of hell leads up to light it's from milton paradise lost now just like in the batman we never learned the killer's real name he flees from his apartment in a shot that's nearly exactly recreated in the batman and his home is also crammed full of journals that are filled to the margins with cryptic nonsense what sick ridiculous puppets we are what a gross little stage we dance on john doe and the riddler both allow themselves to be captured and in a shocking twist each uses the younger more hot-headed hero to complete their mission riddler uses batman to bring falcone into the light and john doe does well oh what's in the box so those are the movies that influence the setting story and tone of the movie but what about the characters themselves now the penguin is actually inspired by a character from the godfather i'm gonna make him an offer not that one you just wait nope you're unlucky no the penguin was inspired by this guy he said there was something in it for me on my own fredo is the brother in the corleone family who was always underestimated and passed over i wanted him to be a character who was not yet the kingpin and was kind of underestimated and looked down on and even made fun of to a certain degree colin farrell told movie maker that fredo was definitely a reference for the penguin personally i can't wait to see how he comes into his own in the next movie and fights to become the new boss i'm vengeance this movie's batman isn't just a repetition of the many batmen that have come before he's his own character more broken more raw more emo i guess you could say a golf believes that deep down the world is totally [ __ ] up but an emo thinks that deep down they are totally he has no interest in the life of bruce wayne he's more violent reeves told empire magazine that he wanted to get away from showing bruce wayne as a playboy so he studied gus van sant's film the last days about a musician loosely based on kurt cobain he envisioned this new bruce as a kind of fictionalized kurt cobain in a decaying manner and the new bruce wayne is very grunge the hair the pouting the nirvana soundtrack that loops endlessly in his mind [Music] you get the feeling that he is dealing with the same demons that plagued the cobain character in the last days this bruce wayne is at war with himself which reeves likened to the classic horror film and novel dr jekyll and mr hyde he told esquire he's doing a kind of criminological experiment where he's trying to see what effect he can have on crime in the city the way that dr jekyll charted his experiment and what was happening to himself now that's an interesting comparison to make because the movie does a great job of linking gotham city's soul to bruce wayne's soul his father's renewal fund could have saved gotham but it was taken away from the people when he was murdered just like that same murder stole bruce's parents from his life so this single event the death of the wanes is the ultimate tragedy for both gotham and bruce so bruce becoming batman is an experiment that he's conducting on himself to see if this is a way for him to channel his rage much like dr jekyll created the hide persona to channel his suppressed id in the same way batman is an experiment to see if gotham's rage can be channeled in a positive way to clean the city up but like i mentioned earlier this version of the batman was largely shaped by 1930s noir and 70s neo-noir films it's a detective story after all batman shares many traits with those hard-boiled detectives from the 1930s they have a private sanctuary like an office or a batcave and this is where we interact with the helper character a secretary or in batman's case alfred they operate on the side of good but have a love-hate relationship with the police they're bitterly cynical and have suffered some great loss in their lives and they have a soft spot for the aforementioned femme fatale and actually if i may go off on a related tangent the main inspiration for selena kyle was actually jane fonda's character in the movie klut that film is another neo-noir from the 1970s where jane fonda plays a prostitute and the detective can't quite be sure of her motives oh well i guess i just realized that uh that i don't really give a damn pattinson told den of geek one of the first conversations i had with matt about the script was how it has so much of clute in it their relationship is just so similar where he's trying to neg her and it becomes this weirdly sex thing there's something about the rage that they both inspire in each other that is kind of what's making them magnetized now back to film noir both batman and 1930s noir detectives both have addictions for film noir detectives it's usually booze but for bruce wayne his addiction is being batman and these detectives can handle themselves in a fight but usually win by outsmarting the bad guys but what's twisted is how this version of batman was inspired by a film that embodies the dark side of film noir taxi driver you talking to me you talking to me i've already mentioned the journal but what's most important is the way batman and travis bickle view themselves they both think that they are lone crusaders for justice fighting evil on the streets and at one point travis tries to assassinate a politician the same way batman brings down the city's corrupt leadership actually i guess the riddler has more in common with travis bickle they're both psychotic keep journals and kill to obtain their goals but that just goes to show how brilliantly reeves made batman of the riddler mirrored one another but that's just the cinematic influences that we caught if you have any let me know in the comments below or at me on twitter and if it's your first time here please subscribe and smash that bell for screen crush i'm ryan airy [Music] you