The Batman 4k UHD Review

We reviewed The Batman, Matt Reeves’s (“War for the Planet of the Apes”, “Let Me In”) incarnation of Batman, a while back.

It’s a nice movie, very noir and detective series-esq, but at the time I was struggling to see why we needed it in the first place. Much like Spiderman seems to roll around every year or so, it appears Batman is now following suit.

Anyway, what we have here is The Batman in all its 4k UHD gloriousness. This version, provided by Warner Brothers, is the three-disc edition, so the Blu-Ray is included, with all the extras on they’re very own disc.

The movie itself has, of course, a wonderful transfer to 4k with Dolby Vision and Atmos. Scenes like the car chase come alive, they both look and sound amazing with that nice touch of realism about them too.

The special edition disc features the following special features:

• Looking for Vengeance – The origins of (this) Batman in terms of the fighting, where that comes from, why he does it and plenty of behind the scenes. It’s good, very interesting to hear how the fighting is more ‘raw’ in this version of The Batman and how it came about.
• The Batman: Genesis – discusses how Reeves came about to be directing, how Pattinson and Kravitz came to audition. It also discusses Reeves’ notebook that he made from reading a ton of comic books, including making one for Pattinson. Reeves wanted this Batman to look like Curt Cobain.
• Vengeance Meets Justice – Paul Dano and The Riddler. He sees himself as Justice whilst Batman is vengeance. It’s how the character came about, how Dano sees the character, how Reeves wants you to view the character.
• Becoming Catwoman – Pattinson and Kravitz knew each other already and Reeves liked the chemistry between them. We see lots of them screen testing together. At some points Kravitz had to do video training because of Covid. We also learn that the look of The Batman is from the graphic novel Year One by Frank Miller.
• The Batmobile – The car, obviously. How this early iteration came about, how it was made, this is pre-Batman splashing the cash on expensive toys, this is something he has built himself. Four cars were made in total, completely bespoke, no doner cars were used.
• Anatomy of the Car Chase – behind the scenes of the car chase with the Penguin. Fun to see how they got the rigs to swerve and the ILM LED stage to shoot some of the sections of the chase.
• Anatomy of the Wing Suit Jump – because this version of Batman is more raw, early if you like, they moved away from Batman’s suit being miraculously something else, but made it a wing suit instead. They originally wanted to do an actual wing suit jump, but the pandemic, and other things, put paid to that.
• Vengeance in the Making – nearly an hour long documentary about how Matt Reeves makes this Batman much more noir than perhaps we’ve seen before and it being a detective movie. It’s almost a diary of the whole movie shoot; behind the scenes mixed with talks from people like Reeves, Pattinson etc. Quite a bit of this documentary is cut-up to make the other extras, though this has much more to it. Various camera tests for the various characters with input from them. Even covers the March 13th pandemic shut-down and what Reeves and co. did before it re-started six months later.
• Unpacking the Icons – a look at the clothes and gadgets that each character has in the movie.
• A Transformation: the Penguin – what it took to make Colin Farell unrecognisable as the Penguin. Took three to four hours to put the make-up on.
• Deleted Scenes – two deleted scenes (and you can view them with commentary)

There’s no-doubting this is an extensive set of information about The Batman movie and the UHD version is stunning. A must for fans of The Batman.

The Batman is available on digital download now, also coming to 4k UHD, Blu-Ray, DVD and VD on 13th June 2022.