The Batman Part II (movie trailer).
The first teaser for The Batman: Part II has crept out of the Warner Bros cave, blinking suspiciously at the daylight before informing us that the film will arrive in cinemas on 18th February 2028. Presumably Batman is taking the scenic route.
It is a teaser in the traditional sense, meaning it shows almost nothing while encouraging several million people to examine Robert Pattinson’s ears. The new cowl has longer points, perhaps allowing Bruce Wayne to detect criminal activity, police corruption and approaching release-date changes from several boroughs away.
Pattinson stands in the rain, turns towards the camera and looks thoroughly unhappy. This confirms that he is still playing Batman.
Gotham City, meanwhile, appears to have entered winter following the catastrophic flooding seen at the end of The Batman. This is probably an improvement. The streets may be full of frozen sewage, displaced citizens and armed criminals, but at least nobody needs to water the municipal flowerbeds.
The story is expected to continue shortly after the events of The Penguin, the television series in which Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb climbed Gotham’s criminal ladder by applying the traditional corporate skills of strategic networking, ruthless restructuring and murdering anyone likely to raise an objection at the quarterly review.
Farrell returns for the sequel, although it remains unclear whether the Penguin will be the chief villain, a secondary menace or merely the man who owns every functioning snowplough in Gotham. Jeffrey Wright is also back as Jim Gordon, Andy Serkis returns as Alfred and Robert Pattinson will once again attempt to save the city while looking as though he has recently been informed that the family washing machine has eaten another black sock.
The new arrivals include Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Charles Dance, Brian Tyree Henry and Sebastian Koch. Their exact roles have largely been kept inside one of the more secure filing cabinets beneath Wayne Manor.
This has naturally encouraged online speculation, which is what happens when Batman fans are given eight seconds of footage and two years to fill.
Rumoured possibilities have included Harvey Dent, Victor Zsasz and the Court of Owls, Gotham’s secret society of wealthy masked conspirators. The Court would be particularly well suited to Matt Reeves’ version of the city. Gotham already seems to be run by a sinister cabal of property developers, hereditary millionaires and people who believe public transport is something their servants use.
Reeves has said that the main villain is someone who has not really been tackled in a Batman film before. That would appear to rule out the Joker, unless the new interpretation has him working quietly in accounts and expressing his criminal insanity through an aggressive expenses policy.
The first The Batman took the Caped Crusader back towards his detective roots, giving us a rain-soaked crime thriller in which the Riddler reimagined social media activism as an elaborate series of murders. Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne was less a charming billionaire playboy and more a haunted attic ornament occasionally persuaded downstairs by Alfred.
It worked because Reeves treated Gotham as something more than a collection of gothic rooftops awaiting a fist fight. The city was diseased from underneath, with corruption flowing through its institutions, foundations and storm drains. Batman could punch individual villains, but punching municipal governance proved more complicated.
The sequel reportedly intends to dig further into Bruce Wayne’s psychology and the history of Gotham. This is probably wise, since Bruce’s current approach to emotional wellbeing consists largely of putting on armour and driving dangerously through roadworks.
There will also be the small matter of Batman’s changing public role. At the end of the first film, he realised that being a terrifying nocturnal shape was not quite enough. Gotham needed hope rather than another traumatised masked man looming out of the fog, especially when the city already had the Riddler and probably several independent candidates for mayor.
The wintry setting could make The Batman: Part II visually distinct from its predecessor. The first film seemed to take place beneath one permanent rain cloud hired exclusively by the production. Snow gives Reeves an entirely new substance through which to make Gotham look cold, miserable and impossible to insure.
The less welcome news is the wait. By the time The Batman: Part II reaches cinemas, almost six years will have passed since the original. A child born after seeing The Batman may be old enough to ask why Bruce Wayne has not simply used his billions to repair Gotham’s drainage system.
Still, the teaser suggests Reeves is not abandoning the sombre crime-noir atmosphere that made the first film stand apart from the increasingly crowded superhero marketplace. There are no portals, alien armies or multiversal versions of Batman arriving from realities where he wears a blue hat. There is only Robert Pattinson, some rain, a pair of newly extended ears and the growing suspicion that Gotham Council has once again misplaced the regeneration budget.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we remain cautiously intrigued. The Batman: Part II may not be arriving quickly, but Batman has always understood the importance of making an entrance. Even when that entrance requires the audience to keep its cinema vouchers somewhere safe until 2028.
