It's Rob Zombie's Halloween in the Batman Universe

Rating: 5/10 (11 October 2019)

I'm not a big super hero movie fan at all. And I really can't stand the ridiculous Marvel cross-over movies with 72 story lines and 55 Avengers running around. But this sounded different and intriguing and there was lots of buzz. Sadly, it falls pretty flat for me. The performances were preachy and predictable, but not necessarily bad. Just not that engaging. The moral here is simple. Don't be a jerk to people, no matter their socio-economic or mental state. Fine, I get that. Despite what people have said, I'm not sure it's really glorifying violence, though pretty much all the characters in the film are d-bags and seem to have it coming. But my real problem is that so little happens. I don't need tons of explosions or CGI, but the basic backstory could have been handled in 45 minutes, then move into some actual crime or something.
This really reminded me of Rob Zombie's remake of the Halloween movie. On the one hand I appreciate doing something different. On the other hand it starts to creep into preachy pretentiousness. And do we really need our psychotic killers to all be sympathetic? At one point I was wishing for Jared Leto's Joker to show up and wisk me away. So I appreciate the effort, but this won't be the definitive Joker film for me.