A review by neilrcoulter
The Art of The Batman by James Field

5.0

It was great fun to get this behind-the-scenes look at what I regard as the greatest Batman movie. “Art of” books can be all kinds of different things—sometimes literally just the concept artwork and production sketches, sometimes an illustrated screenplay, and occasionally a more robust look at the making of the film. The Art of The Batman is the latter category: it’s not just the art, but also a fair amount of text taken from interviews with the crew and cast of the film, explaining the thought process in designing the characters, locations, and vehicles. I really enjoyed learning more about the film, and I like the ways the creators took influences from various graphic novel sources and crafted a film that feels like an original graphic novel story. Artwork is integrated into the text throughout, but the book ends with several full-page spreads of concept art, all of which is beautiful—very Blade Runner-y and evocative.

Hopefully they’ll just leave this movie alone to be its own perfect thing and not spin it off into a thousand other movies and TV series. I mean . . . it’s possible, right?