last night i had the pleasure of watching The Batman (2022) and it is now my absolute favourite superhero film ever made, and prob in my top 10 personal favourite films. its not literally perfect, theres some strange cuts and places where scenes felt like they were missing context. but the flick is already three hours long so what are you going to do?
i love my def transmasc sad goth boy bruce blasting emo music while playing with his batarang, but the film's exploration of the purpose of grief and learning to not hold people forced into awful situations by systemic issues to contempt. trying to help those afflicted by the broken system while tearing down said system is itself the point
but i wanna talk about the movie's practical elements. the piece was created to capture any purposeful aesthetic intention of film, even when using digital cameras. they deliberately used lenses tuned to capture the middle of the frame perfectly but smear the edges, and will sometimes blow out or overblur the cityscape backgrounds
the intention here, as far as i see, is to create a reasonable approximation of the idea of Gotham. a massive, dirty, perpetually wet city covered in grime and filthy, with rich CEOs and mobsters controlling everything from overbuilt towers looking down on the poors, always too far in the distance to see clearly, because it wasn't meant for you. illusory, distant, unattainable.
the scratches, gunk and imperfections on the lenses create a dynamic view, most easily observable with intense light focus, like a torch
to illustrate my point, here's a screenshot from deep space 9

the torches being carried cast a light that looks blinding white to the camera. after that an aura falls off into a deep black, blank area of the frame. the occasional camera glare from the light reintroduces some lost colour and depth of the frame.
obviously this isn't a critique of DS9's cinematography, that's not the point, i just needed a control to compare to
now, let's look at a screengrab from The Batman and its imperfect lenses

at first glance, it's very similar to the first image. a source light, an aura, maybe a little bit of glare, falloff, and darkness.
while more easily observable in motion, there is still more going on here. let's bring up the contrast and do some of those funny youtuber circles and arrows

the light from the pig's torch highlights imperfections on the frame. like how you don't realize your glasses are dirty until you stand under fluorescent lights in a movie theatre restroom or whatever.
but rather than just stuff smeared on the frame to show you how gross Gotham is, it also draws your attention right where it belongs. flecks of dirt or scratches will illuminate and dissipate as light travels over the lens, but they create a focus on batman and catwoman, even in the dark. a bright spot bouncing off the lens catches your eyes right next to batman's eyeline. specks of dust or hair or whatever muddy the frame in unimportant parts of the scenery, which serves to further bring your focus to our baddy T4T couple here
and above all: depth. the light is travelling from the back of the neighboring room, to the foreground with our protagonists, to the viewer in the imperfections as close to the audience's eyes as possible without 3D
now, if you're here thinking "wow how innovative and groundbreaking" it's not. plenty of movies have done this or things like this before. just not many superhero movies
because, there is a cheaper post-processing way to accomplish this same effect, that was overused to the point of becoming a trope

LENS FLARE
who needs custom made lenses designed to create depth of frame when you can throw some godrays over the thing and go full RTX ON mode
anyways. the batman is very good. it finds colour in otherwise colourless places, catches of retroreflection or chromatic aberration bringing focus in. how apt for a film about finding hope in hopeless places, about taking dark visages and trying to bring out their hidden purposes
they made the funny bat detective an introspective character study about personal and community trauma, with the look to match. just wish there were less flashing scenes in the club ;~;
disclaimer: i am not a photographer, film student, or any kind of anything. i dropped out of middle school. take everything i say with a grain of salt.
