The Batman is actually a perfect Halloween movie

“This must be your favorite night of the year, huh, pal? Happy fuckin’ Halloween.” —Commissioner Pete Savage in Batman

Batman was made for Halloween. You really can’t get more Halloween-y than someone who dresses up like a bat and runs around in the streets, fighting a rogues’ gallery that includes a scary clown and a woman in a sexy cat costume. Tim Burton was aware of this when he created the story of Batman Returns during Christmas, to contrast his hero against Gotham City’s distinctly gothic backdrop. Matt Reeves saw it in his dark superhero reboot BatmanThe film was specifically scheduled for the last of October. COVID-19 delayed Reeves’ film by It took nearly two years for it to finally reach theaters, with an unfavorable release date of March 1. But now that it’s available on streaming, we can finally watch Batman in October — the time of year it was always designed and intended for.

The congruence of Batman and Halloween has seen the holiday stylistically infused into many Batman stories. Batman: Arkham KnightArkham: The Final Episode. This is one of the visually appealing mashups. Batman: Haunted KnightA selection of Legends of the Dark Knight comics that all take place on or around the holiday, and see villains like Scarecrow getting into the spirit of things by defacing the Bat-Signal to project a giant jack-o’-lantern into the sky. The comics were written by Jeph Loeb (one of Reeves’ screenwriting teachers at the University of Southern California), who went on to create one of the most influential Batman graphic novels of all time: Halloween Long. But until BatmanYou can see that the holiday is absent in the majority of Batman’s major films.

Warner Bros.

Films that incorporate holidays into their stories are typically meant to tap into a collective seasonal feeling, with the narrative’s biggest impact arriving while the real-life festivities are at their crest. Films like these are popular with people who love them. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at Christmas may still find it funny in June, but it doesn’t hit the same way it does for people who are actively in the midst of stressing out about buying presents and spending time with extended family.

That principle still holds true BatmanThe film’s entire first act is set on Halloween. Reeves and co-writer Peter Craig use the holiday to reinforce the entire film’s eerie-but-exciting tone. The weather’s starting to chill. People are seen out in face and mask paint late at night, getting into trouble. One idiot even killed the mayor. Everybody in Gotham feels restless. In October, those same vibes are already in the air for the audience before they even start watching, adding a layer of fun and immersion that’s certainly less distracting than 3D glasses.

Warner Bros. announced the news in late January 2019. Batman would come out in June 2021, no one had any idea what a Robert Pattinson Batman film might look like, so a summer release wasn’t surprising. Every solo Batman film — even the campy 1966 movie — had come out in June or July, when action-packed blockbusters were poised to make their biggest returns.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck, and then production was cut. Batmanam on hiatus. Andrew Jack is a Star Wars actor. Batman’s veteran dialect coach, was among those who died of COVID. He is the movie’s dedicate. It took half a year for the cameras to start rolling again — and then they were shut down again, after Pattinson reportedly also contracted the disease.

At that point, the film’s release date was pushed back to the first weekend of October 2021. JokerThe Warner Bros. had released another film, ‘The Eerie Autumnal,’ two years earlier on the same weekend. This movie received a half-billion dollars, 11 Academy Award nominations and a pair win. It seemed that the studio wanted to replicate this success. Batman by pushing its release to a month that wasn’t traditionally reserved for comic book properties of this stature, a weekend it had already dominated with an analogous release. The October release date took on another dimension of excitement when the first footage was screened at the 2020 DC FanDome, and a brief glimpse of a Halloween-themed greeting card teased the film’s setting.

Warner Bros.

This was the first Batman movie to incorporate Halloween briefly into its tale. Batman ForeverIt features Two-Face, played by Tommy Lee Jones (Tom Carrey), and Riddler (Jim Carrey), who pretend to trick-or treaters in an attempt to enter Wayne Manor. But the film’s tone is well established before the holiday arrives in the movie’s final act, and it’s only there to give an unsuspecting Alfred (Michael Gough) an excuse to open the front door for the bad guys as he hands out candy.

Batman goes much further, with Reeves maintaining a death grip on the holiday by infusing his opening sequences with imagery of pumpkins, creepy masks, Halloween greeting cards, a costumed child ready for trick-or-treating, and a TV newscaster describing the night as “dark and stormy.” But in this film, Halloween continues well after Oct. 31. The deaths of the city’s corrupt leaders at the Riddler’s hands have created a power vacuum that will intensify Gotham’s decay. Penguin and other flamboyantly-dressed troublemakers will soon be swooping in, hoping to create more chaos. Barry Keoghan’s end-film cameo as Joker suggests that more costumed tricksters and killers like Riddler are on the way. Batman believes that Halloween’s traditions and vibes are eternal. Halloween Long has come and gone.

All this thematic underlining would have hit harder if the pandemic hadn’t delayed the movie until March. Now, we’ve finally circled back to Batman’s appropriate season. We can finally watch the film the way Reeves always intended us to: while tapped into the Halloween spirit and the season’s dark and eerie vibes, with a much clearer idea of just how cold all that rain is supposed to be.

BatmanIt is Streaming on MaxIt is also available to rent out or buy. Amazon, VuduOther digital platforms.