The Batman Movie Inspirations & DC Comics Influences

screenrant.com:

The Batman presents a vision of the Caped Crusader and Gotham City influenced by a variety of movie and comic book inspirations. After three decades of steadily released Batman movies and multiple versions of characters like Catwoman and Jim Gordon, The Batman has assembled a unique combination of influences to create a new cinematic vision of the Dark Knight. While The Batman is a unique interpretation of the character for the big screen, exploring its influences can increase the appreciation of what it accomplishes.

At nearly three hours, The Batman allows for its title hero to engage in a procedural investigation like never before seen in any of his theatrical incarnations. As the first movie in its continuity, The Batman is unburdened by the usual sequel-teasing and callbacks to earlier movies. Instead, it is able to make subtle references to both non-superhero movies and its comic book influences alike.

Related: All 19 DC Movies Releasing After The Batman

In addition to the movie borrowing stories from a few Batman comics that focus on the Caped Crusader’s early years, The Batman has landed on a new source of inspiration from non-superhero movies to show the World’s Greatest Detective at work. Although political corruption is a hallmark of Batman stories going back decades, Matt Reeves’s depiction of Gotham’s amoral leaders owes a lot to the neo-noir movies of the 1970s. This is the perfect setting for Batman’s detective work and a great way to portray the many twists and turns Batman’s investigation takes as he pursues the Riddler.

Iconic movies of the seventies like Chinatown showed a distrust of authority, and the detectives and private investigators of the era often uncovered disturbing truths about corruption