Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Batman.
Since Matt Reeves is the fifth director to radically reinvent the Dark Knight’s big-screen adventures with his own unique vision, viewers are naturally comparing his take on the character to that of his predecessors. Robert Pattinson’s nuanced, conflicting, brooding, anti-murder Bruce Wayne is a refreshingly faithful adaptation after Zack Snyder gave the Bat a shotgun and a license to kill.
While Reeves’ reboot is more focused on the Bat’s detective skills than the average Batman movie, the director still squeezed in plenty of explosive action set-pieces. From brutal fights to visceral car chases, The Batman has some of the Caped Crusader’s most spectacular action scenes to date.
Gil Colson’s Collar Bomb
Named after a real-life crooked politician, District Attorney Gil Colson is shown to be a “drophead” who hangs out with mobsters and accepts bribes. He’s kidnapped by the Riddler and fitted with a collar bomb, then sent into the mayor’s memorial service in a speeding car with a note for the Batman strapped to his chest. Colson desperately tries to solve the Riddler’s riddles before the bomb goes off. The suspense in this sequence goes beyond Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table technique with a bomb wrapped around the D.A.’s neck.
The collar bomb is an unnerving sight – it’s like one of Jigsaw’s deadly traps from the Saw films – and the scene ends with a bang as Colson is so afraid to name the Maroni witness that he allows the bomb to go off. The explosion doesn’t kill Batman (he has ironclad plot armor, after all), but it does incapacitate him long enough for Gotham P.D. to bring him in, raising the stakes of the Bat’s tensions with all the non-Jim Gordon cops in the city.
Batman Infiltrates The Iceberg Lounge (The First Time)
Batman’s first attempt to break into the Iceberg Lounge is one of many moments from the film that showcase this Batman’s inexperience. He demands to see the Penguin, takes out the twin bouncers, and beats up every henchman that comes his way.
As this relentless Oldboy-style sequence rages on and more and more goons join the fight from a seemingly endless supply, the Bat struggles to keep up. He’s eventually stopped by the Penguin himself, who agrees to a meeting to break up the fight. It’s an anticlimactic end to the brawl, but a great introduction to Colin Farrell’s “Oz” Cobblepot.
Catwoman Tries To Kill Carmine Falcone
Ahead of The Batman’s big third-act battle sequence, the second act ends with Catwoman confronting her estranged father at gunpoint. The ensuing fight is a tense scene with the two characters constantly switching who has the upper hand, but the action ultimately makes Catwoman seem pretty useless so Falcone can survive the scene.
She misses him a bunch of times with gunshots from a point-blank range, just because the plot requires him to be killed by the Riddler a couple of scenes later instead.
Batman Escapes From The Police Station
Batman’s escape from the police station is a short sequence – but it’s a thrilling one. Jim Gordon uses a private meeting with Batman after his arrest to tell him how to escape from the station. On cue, the Bat punches Gordon, flees down the hallway, and heads to the roof.
Chased by every gun-toting cop in the building, the Bat grapples up the stairwell, deploys a flight suit, jumps off the roof, and glides through the city. He lands less than gracefully when his parachute gets stuck under a bridge (another showcase of this Batman’s inexperience).
The Gotham Square Garden Finale
One of the rigidly defined tropes limiting the storytelling in comic book films is that every movie has to culminate in a big kitchen-sink battle sequence. At the turn of The Batman’s final act, the Riddler blows up the breakwaters around Gotham and floods the entire city – but only waist-deep, so the stakes never feel particularly high. A temporary shelter is set up in the local sports arena, Gotham Square Garden, a suitably grandiose setting that gets all the important characters under one roof for the final showdown.
Up in the rafters, Batman and Catwoman fight the Riddler’s army of sniper-wielding goons. There’s a ton of exciting spectacle in this set-piece, but it’s ultimately too messy to really pull the story together effectively. Still, it provides poignant closure on the Bat’s emotional arc as he leads the survivors with a flare and realizes he’ll serve Gotham better as a symbol of hope than a symbol of vengeance.
Batman Infiltrates The Iceberg Lounge (The Second Time)
While Selina is in Falcone’s office, shooting at him and missing every shot, Batman returns to the club to prevent the murder. Not only would Selina killing Falcone interfere with the Bat’s investigation; doling out eye-for-an-eye punishment and becoming just as monstrous as Falcone would be the worst mistake of Selina’s life.
Thematically, this conflict ties in beautifully with Batman’s journey from a symbol of vengeance to a symbol of hope – and there’s plenty of dazzling action along the way. A dark hallway is lit up by gunfire as bullets bounce off the Batsuit.
The Opening Train Station Fight
Pattinson’s first action scene as Batman is also one of the best in the movie. When some thugs are harassing a commuter in a dark train station, the Bat emerges from the shadows like Donny Donowitz in Inglourious Basterds. The subsequent brawl establishes what a badass this Batman is with a shocking display of brute force. The “I’m vengeance!” smackdown is the trailer moment that won over the naysayers who feared that the star of Twilight couldn’t play Batman convincingly.
But on top of being an awesome fight scene, the rough, brutal, spontaneous nature of the combat establishes that this is a younger, more inexperienced Batman than audiences are used to. He’s still figuring out how to effectively police Gotham as a masked vigilante. He’s an efficient fighter who ably fends off a gang of thugs singlehandedly – but he also takes plenty of punches and relies on his high-tech suit to make up for delayed reactions.
The Penguin Car Chase
The trailers put The Batman’s car chase sequence front and center. Clips from this chase scene drummed up a lot of early hype for the movie – and the full version in the final cut certainly doesn’t disappoint. Batman tracks down the Penguin to a drug deal before Catwoman gives away their location and a gunfight breaks out. As Batman revs up an early version of the Batmobile (then, hilariously, stalls it), the Penguin flees the scene in his car and the Dark Knight takes chase.
These two DC Comics icons drive at breakneck speeds along a highway, swerving in and out of oncoming traffic. The sequence culminates in the glorious trailer moment with the Penguin’s car rolling over and Batman approaching the wreckage in an upside-down wide shot, silhouetted against glowing orange flames.