We’re all busy keeping up with great films right now (West Side Story just hit streaming, After Yang released in theaters, etc.), but a little-known unheralded film also recently arrived to largely positive reviews: The Batman! Yes, the movie — which had a production process that started back to 2014 and involved a number of significant changes from its earliest iteration — is now finally here.

With it, we get a film helmed by director Matt Reeves, known for blockbuster films like the latter two Planet of the Apes reboots, and the horror/romance remake, Let Me In. With Reeves comes other notable cast and production crew members: cinematographer Graig Fraser (Dune); composer Michael Giacchino (Spider-Man Home Trilogy); and actors Robert Pattinson (Batman), Zoë Kravitz (Catwoman), Paul Dano (Riddler), Jeffrey Wright (Jim Gordon), John Turturro (Carmine Falcone), Andy Serkis (Alfred), and Colin Farrell (Penguin).

Of course, being comic book and film lovers here, many of us saw this movie opening week(end) via press screenings, IMAX fan screenings, and good old fashion midnight releases. The hype was unreal. But now it's here! So here are 9 things about The Batman from the Comics Bookcase crew!

9 Things About THE BATMAN — Staff List

1. Did Matt Reeves Decide to Adapt Every Controversial Comics Story of the Last 25 years?

Anytime someone makes a Batman thing, you’re flooded with interviews that say something along the lines of “We decided to look at Year One, Long Halloween, Killing Joke and DKR for inspiration.” Regardless of if that’s even true by the time we see the final product, so much of Batman on film is dominated by these four comics, as if the character only existed for a snapshot during the 80s and then disappeared! Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson, to my surprise, seem to have done a lot of research in their filmmaking process. The duo cited everything from Batman: Ego to the lesser known Batman origin, The Man Who Fell. I rarely believe Hollywood people read the comics they adapt outside of the bare visuals they can gleam from hanging out at a bookstore, but this film truly felt like it was driven by people who read Batman comics.

With that said, what shocked me more than that is the specific books this movie takes inspiration from. We aren’t just talking about a Year One movie, or even really an Ego movie. No, this film pulls from Earth One, Hush, the late 90s-2000s Catwoman book, and a touch of Zero Year to top it off. The film felt like someone took every Batman comic of the last 25 years that I had mild hesitation or distaste toward, stuck them in a blender and made them harmonize into something good! Unmistakably, this film feels like a true take on Batman with reference to and reverence for the specifically modern history of the character. It's both a filmmaker driven film like The Dark Knight Trilogy and a legitimate version of the character that could (and does!) exist in the comics. I enjoy most Batman films to varying degrees, and I certainly never need them to be exactly like the comics I like, but for the first time I felt I did get a Batman movie that stems from the version of the character I want to see or have actually read over the years. (Steve Baxi)

>>Read our picks for comics to inspire the next Batman film!<<

2. Everyone Needs to Send Greig Fraser a Thank You Card

Batman has simply never looked better on the big screen. Greig Fraser served as the director of photography for The Batman, and he continues to prove he’s one of the best in the business. The film is literally dripping with moody atmosphere and wrought with modern and ancient gothic architecture. Gotham has been brought to life in a way I can only describe as the comics leaping onto screen. The entire movie is a visual feast. Whether you like the new Batsuit or not, it’s also impossible to argue how great it looks on camera. The way the lighting bounces off of the suit and cowl is done *just right* and it makes for a striking image anytime Batman is in frame, which is a lot. This production also used Stagecraft/XR technology (extended reality). This tech uses huge LED screens that display complicated backgrounds generated by Unreal Engine. There’s a lot to this process but to put it in super simple terms, it’s essentially *living* green screen. Fraser is one of the most experienced directors of photography to use the methods and it shows. So many things you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be pivotal characters in The Batman are, and I’d count the cinematography among them. (Alex Batts)

3. The Music

The Batman understands that when you have an absolutely amazing theme, you play it over and over again at big moments to heighten suspense, emotion, or anything else, really (see also The Mandalorian). And The Batman really does have an amazing theme. Both my wife and I ended up humming the ominous and plodding piano bars the rest of the weekend after seeing this film. It’s simple, it’s catchy, and when you hear it, you know the #&@^ is going down. (Zack Quaintance)

4. Two Smart Conceptual Pillars

The Batman forgoes some of the (attempts at) more complex themes we’ve seen in past adaptations for what felt to me like two very smart yet relatively simple conceptual pillars. The first is that corruption is bad. There are hints throughout at deeper issues here (online extremism, hate crimes, disenfranchisement), but the overarching big bad of this film is corruption, which who can argue with that? And right behind that is…our parents sure mess us up, don’t they? Even when they’re (mostly) good people, they can’t be perfect, and that creates a ripple effect that lasts throughout our entire lives. (Zack Quaintance)

5. Other Villain Teases

Besides the obvious Joker tease at the end, The Batman also serves up references and allusions to Bat villains such as Hush (the news scene) and the Court of Owls (the first letter from The Riddler). Who knows where any of that is going, but it’s definitely classic comic nerd Easter egg stuff, and I loved it. (Larry Jorash)

6. The Car Chase Scene

So as it turns out, The Penguin could be a Formula One Driver. Seriously though, that entire Batmobile chase scene (you know that scene) was so much ridiculous fun. It was entirely unnecessary to the plot — if you think about it, the only thing it yields is Penguin saying that he’s not the rat — but it’s easily one of the highlights of the movie. It’s also an absolute gift to toy manufacturers, because now there’s another Batmobile to put out. (Larry Jorash)

7. A Batman That Could Only Happen Now

Steve is right that The Batman pulls from many different Batman comics, and I’d also like to note that it does so in a way that feels like it’s pulling and using ideas from previous Batman or Batman-adjacent films too, creating a Batman film that feels like it only could have happened now. Inspiration by Joker, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight can be seen, especially in character depictions that I’m not sure could have been sold to audiences a decade ago but are put to great use here. Ultimately, this isn’t just a Batman movie that pulled from a bunch of weird comics, it’s a Batman movie that took the prevailing thoughts about the character in general, and synthesized them into one whole. (Keigen Rea)

8. Paul Dano’s Face and Zoe Kravitz as the Best Catwoman

I could have sworn that Robert Pattinson was going to become the next actor to pummel Paul Dano’s extremely pummel-able face, right up there Daniel Day Lewis. But alas, security glass in Arkham stops that from happening. Paul Dano is pretty great in this one, though, I must say. He doesn’t get too much screen time really, with a lot of what The Riddler does happening either off-camera or from behind a mask where he doesn’t get to make many choices as an actor, aside from what he’s doing with his voice. Still, once that mask does come off, ho-man, Dano leans into crazed punchability, delivering a Riddler performance I don’t think many (if any) other actors could pull off.

Speaking of which, Zoë Kravitz struck me as the absolute perfect actress for Catwoman. Catwoman as a concept just works so well in this film, and a lot of why has to do with the choices that Kravitz makes, the ways she reacts to what’s happening around her, the confidence, and the delivery of lines that could of come across as self-serious (thinking here specifically of calling Batman Vengeance). I know there are plans for a Penguin spinoff and another Arkham Asylum show that might include The Riddler, but what I’d really like to see is more of Kravitz’s Catwoman. (Zack Quaintance)

9. The Slow Walk

Finally, the next time I catch my dog up to some shady #$*@, I’m going to Pattinson-as-Batman slow walk up to him humming the aforementioned piano section from the theme until he stops and scrambles away. Can’t wait. (Zack Quaintance)

Read the Comics Bookcase’s Crew reading list of the Best Batman Comics of All-Time!