Update, Monday, December 27, 1:15 p.m.: There’s a new trailer out for The Batman, and it’s called “The Bat and the Cat,†a phrase that carries with it the extreme cringe energy of Robert Pattinson saying “So the lion fell in love with the lamb†in Twilight. The phrase “has a nice ring to it,†according to Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman, who has got her paws all over this new trailer. She’s big into the cat puns. “I have a thing about strays,†she tells Batman when he notes that the feline situation in her house is bordering on the jellicle. Later, he tells her not to throw her life away, and she quips, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got nine of ’em.†In the trailer’s less exciting non-Kravitz moments, there’s a lot of punchy-punchy smashy-smashy, and for one second Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne wears these hilarious sunglasses that look like he tried and failed to get a part in the new Matrix.
Original story follows.
“Fear is a tool,†says Robert Pattinson’s Batman in voice-over in the trailer for Matt Reeves’s The Batman. A dusty grate is illuminated from the back, and it takes a half-second to connect the dots before you see it for what it is: the Bat Signal. “When that light hits the sky, it’s not just a call. It’s a warning.†Cut to Batman showing us exactly what he means by making a gang of cake-faced Nux-bros cower in fear as he takes them all down in an alley. The Batsuit is bulletproof, and this trailer won’t let you forget it, although the biggest problem facing Gotham isn’t gun violence but a couple of slippery mega-villains. There’s Paul Dano’s Riddler, apprehended and jailed at the outset of this trailer, who teases Bruce with clues and teases us by never showing his face. He leaves messages that say things like “THE SINS OF MY FATHER?†and “RENEWAL IS A LIE.†A news report mentions the Riddler’s pulling off some “serial-killer livestreams,†which is all very 2022 (the film is out next year on March 4).
Then there’s an unrecognizable Colin Farrell as the skeezebag known as the Penguin, clearly having the time of his freaking life under all that silicone. He sports a combover, calls Batman “sweetheart,†and giggles to himself when he thinks he has got him beat. Batman will have to balance being perpetually pissed off by the Riddler and annoyed by the Penguin with a burgeoning flirtation with Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman and a whole surrogate-dad thing with Andy Serkis — mo-cap free! — as Alfred. It’s enough to make a grown man brood.