The Batman: Part II has a great chance at building on one of its biggest improvements to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy. Although you wouldn’t know, as nobody ever mentions or complains about it, it’s been a long wait for The Batman 2, which will arrive in October 2027, having been delayed a couple of times (it was originally set for release in 2025). Not much is known about the sequel’s story, though casting has given some clues, with it expected, though not confirmed, that Sebastian Stan will play Harvey Dent, with Scarlett Johansson as his wife, Gilda, and Charles Dance as his father, Christopher.
Director Matt Reeves recently shared a first look at The Batman 2, shedding just a little more light on the movie. The in-camera images featured the Batmobile and, even more notably, snow. The movie will take place during the Winter, but the sight of snow in Gotham is particularly striking and evocative, and isn’t the first time we’ve seen this in a live-action Batman movie: Tim Burton’s Batman Returns did it, with a story set around Christmas, and then Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises did it as well.
With The Dark Knight Rises being the last time we got to see a snowy Gotham on the big screen, then it’ll be interesting to see how The Batman 2‘s version compares – and it’ll likely be rather favorable. Nolan’s trilogy is incredible, and I think a lot of the criticisms aimed at Rises specifically are rather unfair, but one element of his movies that doesn’t really stand out much is Gotham. It is, by design, a more generic big American city a la New York or Chicago, without doing enough to really distinguish it. It works as it needs to for the films, but it’s not memorable.
The best movie version of Gotham for me remains Burton’s, and Batman Returns was a perfect example: it has a unique, richly stylized aesthetic and truly feels like the kind of place where the freaks come out at night, and trouble lurks in every shadow. The snow we saw in Returns complemented this wonderfully, adding to its slightly surreal, gothic vibe and making it look even more atmospheric, moody, and creepy.
The Batman‘s version of Gotham was a big improvement on Nolan’s. It was more grounded than the Burton/Schumacher era, which isn’t a surprise given the more grounded nature of not only the movie itself, but the comic book genre as a whole, thanks in large part to The Dark Knight. And yet it still captured the same weirdness and sense od danger that Nolan’s was lacking, a living, breathing otherness that made it feel like a character in its own right, rather than just where the story happens to take place.
The Batman: Part II having Gotham sequences in the snow should further set it apart from the one we saw in The Dark Knight Trilogy: the visual contrast between the two should be instantly clear and in favor of Reeves’ movie, and it can use that setting to its advantage in a way that makes it entwined with the story, whereas in Rises, it was more incidental. Even just from the brief glimpses shared by Reeves, the Batmobile combined with the snow should look extremely striking, meaning that visually, at least, this will elevate his Gotham above Nolan’s once again.
Besides being set at some point during Winter – and perhaps even technically being a Christmas movie like Batman Returns is, if you want to get into that debate – the snow could also be a clue to The Batman 2‘s villain. Naturally, a lot of the speculation after Reeves posted the image has focused on Mister Freeze: even before this, he seemed like a perfect antagonist, and someone who is due a big-screen return, and the cold setting definitely fits.
The one drawback to that is that Reeves has said the movie’s villain is one who hasn’t appeared in a movie before. That would seemingly leave Victor Fries out in the cold, unless you don’t count Arnold Schwarzenegger’s version as being a true representation of the character. But if he is being put on ice, then, assuming Reeves meant they haven’t been in a live-action movie, there are a couple of other notable candidates.
One possibility is that it’s Holiday, a serial killer who commits murders on a holiday each month, including Christmas. It’s long been theorized that The Batman 2 might adapt elements of the comic book run The Long Halloween, where the character features, and is revealed to be Gilda Dent. Another option would be Calendar Man, whose crimes also correspond with holidays. Of course, the movie doesn’t need a villain that matches its snowy setting, but if that is what Reeves is doing, they would both fit the bill.
The Batman: Part II releases on October 1st, 2027.
