Earlier this week, HBO Max released The Batman, director Matt Reeves’ newest take on the caped crusader. It’s a dark, gritty, detective noir-style Batman movie that’s completely different from the previous Christopher Nolan-led movies. One of the highlights of the movie is its car chase scene, which features Robert Pattinson’s Batman chasing down the Penguin (played by a prosthetics-hidden Colin Farrell) and it’s one of the very best car chase sequences I’ve seen in years.
HBO Max recently released the car chases on YouTube to give you a taste of Reeves’ three-hour superhero epic before watching it.
What makes this chase sequence so great is just how messy and chaotic it is. It’s so frustrating when you watch a car chase scene in a movie and traffic moves so perfectly out of the protagonist’s way. In most action movies, cars in chase scenes expertly weave through perfectly timed gaps in traffic but not here, not in The Batman. Instead, Batman and Penguin bump, spin, and even crash into other cars throughout the entire scene. Penguin literally gets stuck in traffic at one point. The only other car chase scene I can think of that can match The Batman’s is the one from Mission Impossible: Fallout, which features similarly chaotic driving.
It’s also frantic, with a real sense of panic from Farrell’s Penguin, as he sees an almost psychotically determined Batman violently chasing him down, like a predator chasing its prey. Pattinson’s Batman has little regard for the destruction he leaves in his wake, concerned only with catching one of Gotham’s slimiest villains.
Much has been said about Pattinson’s Batmobile and for good reason—it’s awesome. It looks like a muscle car he built himself in his Batcave. It’s big, imposing, and far more utilitarian-looking than any other Batmobile before it. Don’t worry, though, it still spits flames when it engages its rear thruster, giving Batman that extra boost of speed to catch his prey. The designer who created this new Batmobile, Ash Thorp, did an incredible job making the car seem powerful and damn-near indestructible but in a realistic way.
Not only is the scene thrilling, but it’s also gorgeous. Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser crafted a beautifully violent-looking chase, in which you can feel the impacts of every crash. The final shot of the chase is the best and one of the coolest looking shots of any action movie I’ve seen in a long time. If you have HBO Max, it’s well worth watching The Batman in 4K on your TV. But if you can’t, check out one of the best car chase scenes in years below.
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