“I am vengeance,” Batman said, kicking down the last of the low level criminals in Gotham’s subway station. The audience oooh’s and aaah’s, settling in for the greatness and thrills of director Matt Reeves’s behemoth of a movie. In a time where “only in theaters” is tagged onto the end of movie trailers so viewers know they have to drag themselves out to see the film, “The Batman” created quite a stir. The theater was filled with moviegoers anxious to see Robert Pattinson in eye shadow on Sunday night at 9 p.m., and although the film didn’t end until 15 minutes past midnight, everyone stayed to watch, transfixed.

I went into “The Batman” excited for Pattinson, but what I wasn’t expecting was to fall in love with the rest of the cast. Zoe Kravitz embodied the role of Catwoman: slinky, smart and strong. Paul Dano’s Riddler sent chills up my spine with his line delivery. Jeffery Wright was truly a treat to watch as James Gordon. His good cop routine could have easily gotten old with another actor, but Wright played it right. Watching him try to diffuse the tension between Batman and the police was endearing, and the way he humanized Batman by calling him “man” made their friendship believable.

After so many adaptations of Batman, it’s hard to find a niche to fill when filming a new movie. Or decide how to play the characters. “The Batman” was written by Mattson Tomlin, Peter Craig and Matt Reeves. Instead of taking Bruce Wayne into the playboy direction like the comics, viewers see a more secluded, isolated protagonist. While this might not be true to the comics, I found this more realistic than the social butterfly Bruce Wayne is in other Batman films. There was a disconnect between Batman and Bruce in other films (i.e Christian Bale’s Batman), but in this film, viewers see a brooding vigilante with and without the mask.

Reeves also took the liberty of starting “The Batman” two years into Wayne’s journey as a masked vigilante. This cut out tedious backstory that is common knowledge for viewers at this point, such as the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents and his relationship with Alfred. It also allows viewers to see the long-term effect Batman had on Gotham, and his relationship with the police further down the line.

“The Batman” doesn’t play cops as the good guys which, in a time in which Marvel movies are funded by the military, is refreshing. It would have been easy for Reeves to fall into the copaganda pipeline, but instead of glorifying the whole police force, he makes James Gordon and Batman the ones to root for.

Audiences responded well to the film, with it raking up an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 4.3 stars out of five on Letterboxd. Fans did have some minor gripes, citing the long run-time and allocation of screen time as cons to the movie. “…[t]here were some characters that had more screen time than I thought was needed,” Letterboxd user Joe A. wrote in a review. “Paul Dano and Serkis were great in their respective roles and I wish we had more.”

Batman films are notoriously plagued with this problem: villains so enthralling that the audience wished they had more screen time. Dano’s Riddler was quietly unhinged, and I appreciated that Reeves brought in the internet to his villain arc. The use of a streaming platform similar to Twitch brought a whole new Redditor-outcast-4chan layer of complexity to the Riddler which both modernized the film and made him more believable, therefore creepier. The scene where Gotham PD raided the Riddler’s hideout that reeked of stale Doritos and Mountain Dew, tying the Riddler to an outcast archetype seen in the modern day.

I have high hopes for the future of Robert Pattinson’s Batman. The film teased a second movie, with the Riddler making a new friend in an adjacent prison cell. Fans have speculated over who this mysterious new villain, played by Barry Keoghan, could be. Although all signs point to the Joker, I’m desperately hoping that won’t come to be. Every Joker performance will rise and fall in the shadow of Heath Ledger’s in “The Dark Knight” and fail miserably in comparison; hopefully, Reeves is smart enough not to condemn Keoghan to that fate.

I think “The Batman” has something in it for everyone who watches it. You don’t have to be an action fan or DC comics buff to watch and enjoy the film. If you’re committed enough to sit through 176 minutes of super-noir Gotham and grunge Robert Pattinson, I think you’ll enjoy “The Batman.”