‘The Batman’ Is Very Dark And Not Just Emotionally

“I am the shadows,” Batman murmurs in a voice-over before materializing in a crypt-like subway station to pummel a gang. 

For the filmmakers who inherited a movie franchise defined by darkness, the job was to push the three-hour movie to a new level without letting it dissolve into a murky mess. Though fans and critics have debated whether the movie needs more jokes and remarked on the total absence of glitzy black-tie galas for Bruce Wayne, they aren’t complaining about being unable to see who’s who on screen. 

“If you sit in a theater for an extended period, there’s a point where you start struggling to read information visually, and I was very attuned to that,” says “The Batman” cinematographer Greig Fraser.  

His work includes the night raid in “Zero Dark Thirty,” and he’s up for an Oscar for the somber look of the sci-fi picture “Dune.” Because of the need to help the audience follow the action through countless dark settings, he says, “The Batman” was “the toughest lighting job I’ve ever done.”

In the 33 years since director Tim Burton’s “Batman,” the movie franchise has—with a couple exceptions—cornered a somber vibe that even “The Lego Batman Movie” spoofed. The reaction to “The Batman,” directed by Matt Reeves, proves that audiences welcomed an even darker turn, despite a real-world backdrop of grim events. The palette of “The Batman” matches its themes: The hero struggles with his own fury as he pursues a serial killer who taps the anger in society. (Spoiler alert: It does end with a ray of hope.)

For Warner Bros., steering into the shadows with its DC Comics properties is one way of counterprogramming against the brighter Marvel Cinematic Universe. “The Batman” had the No. 2 premiere of the pandemic era after “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which went on to become the third-highest-grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office for Sony and for Disney’s Marvel Studios. 

“There are few films in the same genre further from each other than the new Batman film and the last Spider-Man film, which was going out of its way to please audiences,” says Scott Higgins, director of Wesleyan University’s College of Film and the Moving Image. Many have compared “The Batman” to David Fincher’s serial-killer thrillers “Se7en” and “Zodiac.” 

Darkness has always been at the essence of Batman in comics. In filmmaking, it’s also a signifier of prestige. The trilogy of Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan set the bar for seriousness in the superhero genre. Christian Bale played the Dark Knight with black eye makeup and a gravel voice.

“The Nolan films had that patina. He was able to define that franchise as one of superhero auteur films,” Mr. Higgins says. 

“Joker” took the doom aesthetic further. With no Batman present, the 2019 hit borrowed the grimy look of 1970s films and explored mental illness and mob mentality. It landed 11 Oscar nominations—a record for a comic-book movie—including one for best picture. 

Compared with “The Batman,” the “Batman” of 1989 seems sunny. At the time it was a major risk to set a summer popcorn movie in “a nightmare projection of civilization in malignant, life-threatening retreat,” as the Boston Globe described Gotham.

After an even moodier Burton sequel, director Joel Schumacher reversed course for 1995’s “Batman Forever,” with skewed camera angles referencing the 1960s TV series. Candy-colored lighting showcased hammy supervillains played by Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones. 

Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt bathed Val Kilmer’s shiny Batsuit in hues of purple, blue and green. He sent slashes of light across the star’s masked face to bring out his features. “His lips were perfect, and it made a really strong image,” Mr. Goldblatt recalls.

“Batman Forever” earned the cinematographer an Oscar nomination. He agreed—“foolishly,” he says—to come back for 1997’s “Batman & Robin,” widely considered to be one of the worst iterations of the Batman brand. 

Despite that, Mr. Goldblatt laments the depletion of fun from the earlier films, though he hasn’t kept up with the franchise. “I just can’t get into the existential bullshit about the dark nature of Batman,” he says. “There are dark things in the world right now, and it ain’t Batman.”

Students of the genre would argue that “The Batman” is a mood-appropriate proxy for 2020s anxiety. “It has this fantastic quality that lets us play through some real fears, but with a distance that makes it more comfortable,” says Travis Langley, a Henderson State University professor and author of “Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight.” 

To help make “The Batman” shadowy yet legible, the filmmakers used custom camera lenses with sharp focus at the center and a blur at the edges, and transferred their digital footage to film for a look of analog grit. A climactic fight scene unfolds in a pitch-black hall where Batman was lighted only by the muzzle flashes from prop guns firing in time with strobe lights. 

Calibrating the light around Batman’s eyes required occasional postproduction tweaking, and patience from Mr. Pattinson on set.

“Rob understood that the film needs to see his eyes. When you’re Batman, you’ve got very few techniques to act with,” Mr. Fraser says. 

Lighting the Batsuit, source of one of the most iconic silhouettes in movies, was among the most delicate parts of the process. 

“It makes all the difference about how you feel about the Batman,” Mr. Fraser says. “If I overlight it, there’s a danger that it becomes kind of what it is—a guy in a suit—as opposed to an enigma.”

Write to John Jurgensen at [email protected]