The streets are paved with gold in Gotham City after a bat-tastic weekend at the box office. The Batman, the Robert Pattinson-led take on the Dark Knight detective, scored a whopping $128.5 million at the domestic box office, according to Variety.
This is the biggest opening weekend of 2022, and also the second-largest since COVID-19 disrupted moviegoing (and, more importantly, the rest of society) two years ago. It is also, as Deadline noted, the biggest opening for director Matt Reeves, whose Dawn of the Planet of the Apes scored a strong $73 million first weekend back in 2014.
For a certain strain of comic book fan—perhaps the sort prone to mashing up all their action figures into one raging romp regardless of their corporate provenance—one can take the news as confirmation that, yes, Spider-Man can beat up Batman.
Indeed, the third entry in Tom Holland’s trilogy portraying the spider-powered high schooler Peter Parker held Pattinson’s moody zillionaire Bruce Wayne back in his sticky web. Spider-Man: No Way Home debuted to $260 million domestically in its opening weekend in December. Since then, the Marvel film continued as a record-breaker, even surpassing Avatar as the third-biggest movie in North American history.
Will The Batman have those kinds of legs? Well, spiders, after all, have eight of ’em. But bats have wings—aren’t those better than legs?! I’ll need to put all this into the Batcomputer for more research and get back to you.
The Batman has a 175-minute running time, which is often a hurdle for theaters looking to maximize profits. Fitting in as many screenings during peak hours can be a problem, but luckily for DC and Warner Bros., there is not too much competition out there right now. Also, while “wait, three hours?!” may seem like a negative for some, the target audience, accustomed to streaming and looking for added incentive get off their duffs and into a cinema, will likely feel that they are “getting their money’s worth” with a longer movie. The reviews for The Batman are strong, with a solid 72 on Metacritic and an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Cinemascore, which polls outgoing ticket buyers, awarded the film an A-. It’s also got this ending.
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