Most Batman films are about a hero. The Batman (2022) is about a guy playing a character.
That's the quiet, strange thing Matt Reeves does with Robert Pattinson's version. This Batman keeps a journal. He narrates his own life in voiceover, in a heavy, stylized, film-noir register — "they think I'm hiding in the shadows... I am the shadows." He's two years into being Batman and he's still performing Batman, the way someone performs a character they've decided to become.
And the film slowly, deliberately reveals the problem with that: the character he's performing is vengeance. He literally introduces himself that way — "I'm vengeance." He built the role out of his own grief and a set of borrowed images of what a dark avenger is supposed to be. And the role is failing. Gotham isn't getting better. He's just an angrier, more isolated version of a script.
The turn of the film — the actual character arc — is the moment Batman realizes the script he's been performing is the wrong one. That "vengeance" was a part he assigned himself, not who he has to be. By the end, he's pulling people out of floodwater, holding a flare, leading. He's stopped performing the character he borrowed and started doing the actual job.
I wrote a chapter on this film in my book Blame Yourself: How Radical Responsibility Transforms Everything titled "This Was TV Stuff." This essay is the standalone version.
Whose script are you performing?
Here's the uncomfortable thing the film is pointing at: a lot of how you understand yourself is borrowed.
You have a story about who you are — and a startling amount of it came from somewhere external. Movies. TV. The role you got assigned in your family at age seven. A label a teacher gave you. A narrative your friend group runs. A character type you absorbed so early you've never examined whether it's actually yours.
- "I'm the responsible one." Borrowed — probably from a family system that needed you to be.
- "I'm not a math person." Borrowed — probably from a single bad year and a teacher's offhand comment.
- "I'm the funny one / the screwup / the strong one / the one who doesn't need anything." Borrowed.
- "I'm just a realist." Often borrowed — a character that lets you pre-lose so you can't be disappointed.
Pattinson's Batman is performing "vengeance" because grief plus pop-culture imagery handed him that script and he never asked whether it was the right one. He's not evil. He's not even wrong to grieve. He's just performing a character he didn't write, and the character is keeping him from doing the actual work.
The difference between the character and the job
The film draws a clean line, and it's the most useful thing in it.
The character is vengeance. The voiceover. The pose. The journal. The aesthetic of being a dark avenger. It feels meaningful. It feels like identity. It accomplishes almost nothing.
The job is: get people out of the water. Lead. Build trust with Gordon. Actually reduce the harm in the city. Unglamorous, unphotogenic, no voiceover.
For two years, Batman did the character and called it the job. The arc is him realizing they were never the same thing — and that the character was actually in the way of the job.
You have a version of this. The character you perform — the realist, the responsible one, the screwup, the tough one — feels like who you are. The job — the actual, specific, unglamorous thing your life needs you to do — is something else. And the character is often the thing standing between you and the job.
The Mirror Moment exercise tied to The Batman
In Blame Yourself, every chapter ends with a five-minute Mirror Moment. Here's the Batman version:
Step 1. Write down the one-sentence character you perform most. The role. "I'm the one who holds it all together." "I'm not a creative person." "I'm just brutally honest." "I'm the strong one."
Step 2. Ask: where did this script actually come from? Trace it. Almost always it traces to something external and old — a family system, a single formative event, a label, a piece of media, a group you needed to belong to. Name the source.
Step 3. Ask the hard one: is this character currently helping me do the job — or is it in the way of the job? Pattinson's Batman had to admit "vengeance" was in the way. You might have to admit "the strong one who doesn't need anything" is in the way of asking for help, or "the realist" is in the way of starting something.
Step 4. Identify one small thing the job needs that the character would never do. Then do that thing today. The strong one asks for help. The realist starts the thing. The responsible one takes a break. The funny one says something serious. One action, off-script.
"This was TV stuff"
The title of the chapter — and the spirit of the film — comes from the recognition that the dramatic, narrated, aesthetic version of your life is TV stuff. It's the version with a voiceover and a score. It feels important.
The actual life is the floodwater and the flare. It's the unglamorous job. It doesn't come with narration.
The Batman is two and a half hours of a man figuring out that the character he built isn't the same as the work he's needed for — and that growing up means putting down the borrowed script and picking up the actual flare.
Whose script have you been performing? And what would you do today if you put it down?
If this hit, the full Batman chapter — plus nineteen other films decoded the same way — is in Blame Yourself. 100 pages. Free on Kindle Unlimited.
Put down the borrowed script. Pick up the flare. That's the practice.
*Bobby Morong is the author of Blame Yourself: How Radical Responsibility Transforms Everything and co-host of the Slept-On Cinema podcast. He taught Physical Education and Special Education for 20 years in the Boston area before relocating to San Diego in 2022 to commercialize Training Ties.*