Realsitic grounded Batman, bomb goes off in his face,
I did like this movie, apart from one or two things that pulled me out.
I was really into it until the bomb goes off with his face inches away, and we see the explosion in slow motion it only knocks batman into the air and back a bit. At least have him run at the last second, and use the cape as cover. His face would be mush, and there wasn't a scratch on him.
Also when Batman has the cool moment of gliding off the top of a building, some great shots flying between the buildings, like a Bat. Then it turns into a cartoon as he hits the subway bridge FACE FIRST, bouncing around as if he's made of rubber. Did they really need to include that chin hit into the bridge? I can suspend disbelief enough if he ejected and rolled. Not witnessing a certain death smashing into steel girders at speed with his face then dropping on the floor. Less is more, just because you can CGI Batman getting smashed, doesn't mean you should do it.
I assumed this was a smart Batman film, then it insults your intelligence like that. I understand it's a comic book movie, but after being all gritty and realistic, it was just jarring. The thing with Batman is, he's just a man. He's not a super soldier with adamantium for bones. Even Tim Burton's Batman kept it somewhat grounded with the damage he could sustain.
Same with the Alfred explosion. A couple of scratches on his face and beard still intact after the room is filled with fire. But as anybody with an ounce of intelligence knows that an explosion is not just fire, there is something called blast pressure which will do more damage than the fire, and destroy anything within the radius. There's no way that wooden desk saved him with that blast. It would be splinters, with a red goo all over the walls. He literally tossed the package a few feet away and the whole room exploded.
Another annoyance was Catwoman leaving the fridge door open for no reason and ignoring it while she talked to Batts in her apartment. I was more surprised that Batman wasn't distracted by it, paused her for a sec to lean over and shut the fridge door, then let her continue. Not even children leave fridge doors open. The script mustn't have told Zoë Kravitz to shut the door while she was trying to act like a human being.
At the end in the cemetery, her bike is fixed and drained of water. Good luck finding a garage when the city has been submerged in water. That wasn't my main annoyance, what got me was the cat. She chose one of her 3 cats to put in a box on the back of the bike, to only get it out for 2 minutes, hold it to remind us that she's catwoman, then chuck it back into the box to scare the life out of it riding a very loud motorcycle at speed around corners.
Other things of annoyance were the unneeded expositional dialogue like when Catwoman is entering the secret club, and the corrupt cop is on the door with a bandage on his nose. Batman reminds us that this is a guy he beat up earlier. Ok, some people may not remember the face, so the writers jogged our memory. The next line "Looks like I broke his nose", no shit Sherlock, world's greatest detective at work right there. I think we got that after we saw the bandage on his nose and black eyes. Was that line ADR'd in after a studio note reminding the writers that people are dumb?
It wasn't even a good line, a nothing line which could have been replced and bettered, or nothing at all. Then Catwoman meets the DEA who has the hots for her. Without much prompting, he opens up within seconds, talking about things that will get him and others hearing it killed, as he's just a paid stooge, and not untouchable. Even the Russian girl says, "hearing this will get me killed", and he continues to spill his guts to tell us the plot. The script says we need to learn more information about the story, I guess. The scene was handled poorly by the end.
Another uneeded line was Batman explaining that the first Riddler kill had his finger cut off while he was still alive. That explains the amount of blood from the finger then Bats, great work. I'm sure the forensic guy was very impressed. The writers must have been patting themselves on the back, showing us how smart Batman is.
These unneeded, unnatural exposition lines kept happening throughout. Have some faith in your audience.
Other than that, I liked it, it looked great, some good action, I loved the atmosphere, the score. But marked it down because of these problems. There's only so much I can suspend my disbelief with.