The great cinematic bombshell of what we have been in 2022, ‘The Batman’, the new vision of the mythical DC character of almost three hours, premieres on HBO Max with which Matt Reeves has managed to make us forget the fiascos of the snyderversowhich seems more and more like a past stumble for Warner, after having managed to distance himself from the Marvel rivalry by doing just what they have made disappear, the diversity of views thanks to giving space to its creators.
The most powerful voice to reach the company has been Reeves, the name behind ‘Monstrous’ (Cloverfield, 2007), ‘Let Me In’ (Let Me In, 2011) and the masterful final installments of the trilogy ‘The origin of the planet of the apes’, both ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 2014) and ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ (2017). His version of the Gotham hero is endowed with a great personality and confirms its versatility to make any new version, sequel, adaptation its own or visit a known genre.
Cinephile passion and work
Its sieve means that any pre-existing franchise that passes through its hands is returned in the form of an intelligent film that offers all the guarantees of success that the demands of a large studio on its millionaire investments have turned into a mold for the current blockbuster, but without taking by stupid viewers and forcing age rating limitations to offer adult tone movies with a very marked signature stamp, with nothing to envy to others like Denis Villeneuve or Christopher Nolan.
However, Reeves’ films are less reluctant than others to remain connected to his wildest side, with a career closely linked to genre films, series B and the dynamics of horror, science fiction, or thrillers. It is a cinephile filmmaker who has received advice from greats like Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppolaand is a fan of creator commentary on home editions, a passionate who turned his love of movies into a trade at a young age, churning out amateur 8mm shorts inspired by ‘Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Star Wars’.
Even met longtime friend and collaborator JJ Abrams when they were both 13 and submitting work for a local local public access exhibition, so it wouldn’t be surprising if his film ‘Super 8’ (2011) was inspired by those days of home shooting. Reeves first came to the attention of the industry with his award-winning short film ‘Mr. Petrified Forrest’ after graduating from the prestigious USC film school. He got his start in Hollywood when a script he wrote in college with his classmate Richard Hatem was bought by Warner Bros.
embracing the dark
Reeves had no intention of making movies about monsters and superheroes, in fact his directorial debut was the romantic comedy ‘Mi unknown friend‘ (The Pallbearer, 1996), starring David Schwimmer Y Gwyneth Paltrowand was even one of the creators of the popular television series ‘Felicity’, acting as director and executive producer with his old partner and co-creator JJ Abrams, who would be the definitive architect of his rise to fame in the cinema when he facilitated the direction of the acclaimed success of horror and science fiction ‘Monstrous’ (Cloverfield, 2007).
This amazing mix of found footage and kaiju, which was still their own remake of ‘Godzilla’, was really an independent film that the pair released in theaters through Paramount. It was made very quickly, but its mid-range budget of $30 million set a national record for a January release and it grossed more than 175 worldwide. This opened a new path for him, and if the film itself is a romantic comedy “perverted” by the irruption of a creature, his career would also go from that same genre to another.
His next film was even darker. A chilling remake of the Swedish vampire movie ‘Let me in‘ what managed to make it muddier than the original, as unnecessary as it was. Set in a wintry Los Alamos of 1983, it lives up to the art and essay tone of the first, focusing its plot more on a commercial but more sordid dynamism, also with the murder of the swimming pool as the final climax, but more defined within the arc of the protagonist, as John Ajvide Lindqvist’s original novel had even more detail about the boy’s painful and humiliating childhood.
A visionary saga
For Reeves, the important part is the boy’s life, which is why he talked a lot with Lindqvist, who told him that the book was inspired by his own traumatic childhood, with which he wanted to transfer that trance to an oppression that turns his existence into a story. of horror, leaving the first nuances of connection with his ‘The Batman’, the film he would be in charge of when Ben Affleck left his project. For the director it was not the first time, since replaced Rupert Wyatt as director of the sequel to ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ on Fox.
It was in this saga where Reeves really proved his stature in Hollywood by leading ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ to equal box office and commercial success, leading the trilogy centered on Caesar (Andy Serkis) towards an amalgamation of classic cinema from the 60s and 70s with religious connotationsturning the monkey trail into a true sci-fi epic as war against desperate humans rages through the streets of San Francisco in the not-too-distant future.
Reeves collaborated with Serkis and Weta Digital, changing the way in which virtual actor cinema can be integrated into storytelling, preventing the “special effect” from being a tool to be thrown onto the screen, and more an element that interacts with the story, which made good his general quest for as much realism as possible, to draw a world in which clashes between two peoples trying to occupy the same piece of land, and the armed nationalist campaigns, in conflicts over shared terrain, reflected the politics of the time.
Moral duality and the conflict of revenge
A struggle of oppressed minorities at risk of becoming oppressive minorities, the presence of military weapons deployed in the middle of an American city, while its streets burn, or the construction of a wall by a populist madman by “the others”. Immigration, cages with children and visionary themes that defined a moment in history that was taking place right after it had been shot. Not to mention the idea of a fictitious flu that destroys human communities, creating a breeding ground for fascism.
But the themes of Reeves’ two ape movies also had a lot to do with the journey of the new Bruce Wayne. It is displayed at all times the battle within each character between violence and their attempt to indulge in it or navigate towards empathyjust as Batman struggles between his thirst for revenge, his incarnation of darkness or the light that guides all the people of Gotham, just as César becomes the bassinet of his own, after managing to overcome the instinct that makes him animal , Koba’s desire for revenge that makes him break the law of “monkey does not kill monkey”.
That temptation towards evil of its protagonists is also already in Owen from ‘Let Me In’, who fantasizes about killing his goons. Gray morale extends to his Enigma, an extremist with good intentions, but whose ultimate motivation is not so much to create a fairer Gotham free of petty politicians, but to perpetuate his personal revenge and carry out his megalomaniacal plan to the last consequences. The entire visual range of darkness, rain and blind corners accompanies that uniform vision in all of his films.
Smart life in today’s blockbuster
Reeves does not yet have a work that appears from an idea of his own, or a personal choice that has been consensual in collaboration with a studio, but he has managed to consolidate a career by emerging as an author within a grid system, accumulating blockbusters that have never been an impediment to offering great cinema that does not run away from reality, from politics, and tries to express deep ideas through a unique voice and a conceptual and visual talent that has not strayed from excellence at any time.
There are projects in the air like his vampire movie ‘The Passage’which was going to offer a look similar to the line of those infected in ’28 days later’ (28 Days Later, 2002) and an original sci-fi project called ‘The Invisible Woman’which had nothing to do with invisibility, but rather a character study about a former beauty queen who turns to crime to protect her family, which the director has wanted to do for many years and has defined as “ Hitchcockian”.
At the moment his future is up in the air, although everything indicates that he will return to Gotham for a sequel to his success, at least in his project with JJ Abrams, a new Batman animated series with Bruce Timm. In any case, Matt Reeves is today one of the most important and rebellious directors of great studio cinema, one of the few called to give dignity and strength to the concept of contemporary blockbustereven if it is from within the problem of superheroic monotony that it has been having in the last decade.