Matt Reeves’ The Batman was a 90s movie for Gen-Z

Generation X were ironic about serious things. Gen-Z are serious about ironic things

Generation X were the last generation who could afford to buy a house, but they didn’t want one. Gen-X were the Slacker generation, who were so terrified of having absolute job security, pensions and affordable healthcare that they decided the answer was to drop out and become a bum.

Gen-Z are in a pitched deathmatch for the few remaining salaried jobs. Millennials have got student debt, mortage debt, credit card debt, and were told interest rates would stay low forever…but they won’t. Basically, Gens M and Z have been given the lifelong task of paying off the debts of the Boomers and Slackers who racked them up. Oh and climate change means the world is ending.

So it’s not surprising that Gen-Z look back at the 90s with the kind of longing that my generation looked at the 60s, as a better time when people could be free. Which is why Matt Reeves THE BATMAN is so in debt to the style and music of the 1990s.

And why Gen-Z think The Batman is a masterpiece.

The Batman isn’t a masterpiece. It’s a strange film, a mash up of 90s movies The Crow and Se7en, with a soundtrack from iconic 90s band Nirvana. It’s not as good as either of those movies, and neither were great. And Nirvana, always a whiny annoying band, are twice as whiny and annoying thirty years later. The Batman also just doesn’t look as good as it thinks it does. Its cinematography is one-tone grungy and if the overlong camera shots had all been cut the movie might actually come in at a reasonable runtime.

But it looks like the 90s, and for Gen-Z who didn’t see the 90s, that makes The Batman a masterpiece.

It isn’t. But The Batman has a theme. A theme that really appeals to Gen-Z. At least to some of Gen-Z. Ok, mostly just to incels, who it seems are a big constituent of Gen-Z.

The Batman is a movie that takes incels, and the pain of incels, and how difficult it is to be an incel, very VERY seriously. Which is interesting because in the 90s the plight of young nerdy dudes would have been a topic of utmost irony. But now it’s serious. That seems to be the major difference between the generations. Gen-X were ironic about serious things. Gen-Z are serious about ironic things.

WATCH THE BATMAN VIDEO ESSAY HERE -