Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Batman.
There are many great performances in The Batman, with actors like Colin Farrell and Jeffrey Wright playing grounded takes on iconic DC characters. Zoë Kravitz’s turn as Selina Kyle is a prime example. The Batman’s Selina is a more emotional, more vulnerable, and ultimately more human portrayal of Catwoman than audiences are used to.
Catwoman is more than just a secondary character in The Batman. She’s pretty much a co-lead alongside Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne. Selina is at the center of some of the most memorable scenes in the movie, like the Chinatown-style twist reveal about Carmine Falcone and her triumphant appearance in the final battle.
After Batman follows Catwoman to the mayor’s mansion, she sneaks into the cordoned-off scene of his murder to retrieve her roommate’s stolen passport from his safe. While she’s cracking the safe, she’s confronted by Batman.
The two eventually develop a romance, but their first encounter is a fast-moving fight scene. This Catwoman proves herself to be a competent fighter with agile movements and high-altitude kicks.
Back at Catwoman’s apartment, she drinks a glass of milk. Batman spots all the cats wandering around the place and observes, “You got a lot of cats.” Selina quips back, “I have a thing about strays.”
According to Yahoo!, Kravitz came up with the “thing about strays” line. The line could be a nod to Batman being an orphan, a loner, and a quintessential outsider (in other words, a human stray).
When Batman learns that Catwoman is determined to kill Carmine Falcone, he wants to know why. Eventually, Catwoman snaps and explains it to him: “Because he’s my father!” Falcone is Catwoman’s illegitimate father who killed her mother, so naturally, she wants him dead.
This paternal plot twist is a nod to the shocking revelation about Noah Cross in the neo-noir classic Chinatown. The Batman’s twist isn’t quite as harrowing, but it’s still about the trauma created by a terrible father.
When Batman and Catwoman first team up, he gives her a pretty daunting assignment. He sends her into the belly of the beast – the Penguin’s nightclub, the Iceberg Lounge – to get the inside track on Gotham’s criminal underworld while wearing a contact lens with a camera fitted in it.
With facial recognition technology, this contact lens camera is one of the Bat’s best new gadgets. Catwoman identifies crooked politicians and mafiosos dotted around the club. There’s a real sense of tension in this sequence as Selina tries to I.D. every powerful figure in there without arousing suspicion.
Catwoman is usually depicted as a straightforward villain in Batman movies. The Batman breaks the mold by presenting her as an antihero with as much drive to do good as Batman himself. She’s not a comic book archetype; she’s a human being.
This Catwoman’s vulnerability is established when she hears a heartbreaking voicemail of Falcone brutally murdering her roommate, Annika. She’s still a classic femme fatale, but she’s not immune to emotions.
When the Bat-Signal shines in the sky toward the end of the film’s middle act, Batman and Jim Gordon are surprised to see each other arrive at the abandoned building where the signal is set up, because they each thought it was activated by the other.
As it turns out, the signal is being used by Catwoman. She’s abducted a corrupt cop to interrogate about the Falcone connection. She wants to kill the cop, but Batman stops her in a poignant dramatic moment.
After learning that Falcone murdered Annika, a distraught Catwoman rides her motorcycle down to the Iceberg Lounge to confront him at gunpoint in his office. Batman turns out the lights at the wrong moment and her first shots miss the sadistic mob boss.
This leads to a brutal fight between Falcone and his illegitimate daughter. They keep switching who has the upper hand. Falcone doesn’t pull his punches and neither does Selina.
At the end of The Batman’s second act, Batman races down to the Iceberg Lounge to prevent Selina from killing Falcone. He understands why she wants him dead, but he also insists that killing him won’t solve anything.
Eye-for-an-eye punishment just makes the punisher as monstrous and guilty as the punishee. Batman himself needs to hear this as much as Selina does, as the movie charts his journey from a symbol of vengeance to a symbol of hope.
Matt Reeves avoided a lot of conventional trappings of the comic book movie genre with his work on The Batman. But, like most other superhero epics, it still culminates in a big climactic battle sequence.
After being caught in the flood and stranded at Gotham Square Garden, Selina triumphantly shows up to help Batman fend off an army of sniper-wielding Riddler footsoldiers up in the rafters.
Catwoman’s final scene in The Batman might have set her up for a solo adventure. Selina bids farewell to Bruce at her mother’s graveside as she determines that Gotham is beyond saving and leaves to find a new place to live.
After saying their goodbyes at Maria Kyle’s grave, the Bat and the Cat leave on motorcycles and go different ways. In the film’s final shot, a forlorn Batman watches Catwoman’s departure in his wing mirror.
