#matt reeves risqué game

[archtroop]

I HAVE REWATCHED THE BATMAN

[Reposted from discord, so I can gather more hot takes on this ramble]

It's like the gift that keeps on giving, I am sure that whenever you rewatch it new stuff floats up to the surface

Mind blown

Matt Reeves has a pair of 🎱🎱

Ok this is a feverish "I've connected the dots/you've connected nothing"

In the movie, Selina is shown to have been some kind of favorite of Falcone. In what capacity, that is not deliberated. Enough for him to be touching her in a smarmy way in the 44 Bellow, and for them to show that they recognize each other in a more than just "she works there" way.

We also know she was sent to foster care at age 7, so Falcone wouldn't know or care of what happened to her anyway.

Later in the movie she asks for an audience with him, to kill him actually, but either way, he grants it, but then she reveals she is "Maria's kid" and he looks like "Oh, yes I remember her", which suggests HE DIDN'T KNOW Selina was his daughter.

So I would like to ask this. So Selina warmed and wormed her way through the club to get to Falcone. She knew he was her father.

In what FASHION did she win his attention??? Without laying out the daughter card from the get go???

That is a fucking risqué shit the movie suggests.

Ok but say, this is a setting that fits the bill, this is a club of notorious reputation, Gotham has notorious reputation, and Selina was born right into this, under the makeup table of the gogo girls, so.

But here comes another interesting one: Selina and Annika.

Selina is, or so it seems, older than Annika, and if not by age than by experience. Selina was born and raised in Gotham, in its literal underbelly. Annika is an immigrant (a fandom wiki states she is 22? We are shown her passport, so it may as well be true), but she is referd to by Selina as "Jesus, she is just a kid", implying that, whatever their age gap is, be it 1 year or 8 (if we presume that Selina and Bruce share a birth year?), in any case Selina views her as "a kid".

She cares for her and for all it's worth takes her under her wing.

She says Annika is her friend. But also reserves her the nickname "baby", while when being condescending she calls others "honey", but when she cares for another, she uses " baby" (that one is a polished theory I've read here somewhere, hey if you wrote this theory and reading this, you are a genuis), and anyway.

Let's be real, no one for a moment here would deny that Selina and Annika slept together.

Like it's just. It's literally there.

Selina has "a thing about strays" and loose morals (as far as some might assume) so it fits.

What I'm trying to point out, is that, Reeves DOES NOT shy from the vagueness of relationships and is embracing The La Problematiq (tm), he's just really good in concealing it without bumping the rating up to the skies.

He shows Bruce laser focusing on the Mayor's kid, when at the crime scene early on. He is incapable of NOT seeing himself in the boy.

When he saves him at the church from the ramming car (BTW, the car with the poor corrupt DA in it was spraypainted DOA on it. Dead On Arrival. Love the details in this movie) the car swerves early on sideways and isn't even on the trajectory that would hit the kid. Bruce is laser focused on the boy anyway, like he is the only person in the hall at all. He grabs him and all that hero shenanigans, but the kid was literally not in harm's way at all. It was extremely excessive.

Here be my post on this from way back.

And later on he pulls the kid from the rubble during the flood. Three times is a charm. This kid probably already has a "saved by a dark tall man" complex.

Twice he makes eye contact with The Batman, and one time he is literally smothered to the floor by Bruce himself.

Dad killed brutally, then he finds him. Then almost gets killed in dad's funeral. Then almost drowns at the elections day, all within *a week*. Poor kid has a bag of ptsd now the size of China.

Goddamn, The Batman has a full on ready to go stage for introducing Dick Grayson, and if by the end of it, if Reeves keeps his balls and nerve, Bruce will be kneeling by that kid as he implements those iris cameras like the ones he gave Selina, and he will hold the kids chin up to see that it sits well, and the Cinema hall will be soooooo uncomfortable.

And Dick will have his heart in his throat. He'll get all of his wires crossed like Christmas lights in storage.

The Batman has set the tone and stage for "weirdness" (tm).

Now I wonder how brave they would be about it, if at all.

We are shown how Bruce, The Batman, makes people react. Make them tell him things. He is, with not so many words, manipulates people like nothing.

His interactions with Selina were literally "I know your name and where you live and who you live with, now you work for me". He literally did that.

He talks to Jim Gordon, in Jim's own language in a way that Jim becomes reliant on Batman in a way, and trusts him without questioning too much at all.

With a glance he made our beloved Officer Martinez tell him nonsense that came to be extremely useful. Like, Martinez is us. He's that human who saw a freak but by the end of the movie was almost blushing in the presence of The Bat.

The new mayor Bella Reale! She now has to endorse Batman! He literally dragged her out of the flooded rubble.

I wonder will we ever be shown Bruce realizing the power he has over people ---

SO MANY THOUGHTS

#the batman 2022 #many thinky thoughts #matt reeves risqué game #matt reeves