In Praise Of The New Batmobile, Which Looks Like It F*cking Rules

A new Batman trailer drops and "everyone loses their minds," as the Joker once said. If you've seen the latest DC FanDome trailer for "The Batman" (not to be confused with the one from last year), there are any number of things you might be losing your mind over. One of those is undoubtedly the new Batmobile.

Director Matt Reeves gave us our first look at the new Batmobile way back in March of 2020. At that point, the worst of the pandemic had yet to really hit the U.S., and "The Batman" was still scheduled to open on June 25, 2021.

Obviously, a lot has happened since then. June 2021 has come and gone and we're still waiting for "The Batman" after its release got pushed back to March 2022. But for any fans feeling antsy (or fantsy), this new FanDome trailer should tide you over. It gives us a good look at the Batmobile in action, pursuing the Penguin in a full-on car chase.

Tim Burton's Batmobile was like a rocket on wheels, a salt flat racer with cocoon shielding. If you remember, the Penguin took control of it remotely in "Batman Returns," but Robert Pattinson's Batman is having none of that. He chases Colin Farrell's Penguin through a fireball and rear-ends him, flipping his car so that the Penguin can only gape at him upside-down as the Caped Crusader walks up on him from a now-parked Batmobile with a backdrop of flames.

There have been other Batmobiles, of course, since Burton's. Joel Schumacher's was all glowy, "black and blue ... all over," to paraphrase the Riddler's riddle from the trailer above. Then, there was Christopher Nolan's Tumbler, a more tank-like military prototype from the Applied Sciences division at Wayne Enterprises.

Reeves' Batmobile looks more like a muscle car. It has the classic turbo booster on back of it, but it also looks like it's tricked-out with some kind of sweet new Bat-hydraulics.

This trailer had me at hello, with its opening shot of a "Nighthawks"-esque diner curved around a street corner, where we see police apprehending Paul Dano's Edward Nashton, aka Riddler. It kept me in the palm of its hand all throughout, as it doled out glimpses of tasered clown gang members, sexy Catwoman boots, motorcycles aplenty, a scarred Alfred the butler, and the Penguin saying "sweetheart" in an old-timey gangster accent. But what really sealed the deal, after all of that, was seeing the new Batmobile run the Penguin off the road.

"The Batman" also stars Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Barry Keoghan, and Andy Serkis. It drives into theaters on March 4, 2022.