Batman has become Bat-ubiquitous. Gotham’s protector is rarely far away from the screen; this year alone, there is the return of Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne, the cinematic debut of Batgirl, and the animated DC League Of Super-Pets, which features Ace the Bat-hound, Batman’s pet dog. He is everywhere. An icon. The challenge for The Batman’s writer-director Matt Reeves: how to make a totemic, mythic figure of pop culture feel new.

Reeves’ approach, it seems, is evolution rather than revolution. Comparisons with Christopher Nolan’s era-defining Batman trilogy are unavoidable but the difference to, say, Batman Begins is that this is emphatically not an origin story. There is, gratifyingly, no new recreation of Bruce Wayne’s parents being murdered. Like Spider-Man: Homecoming, this is ‘post-origins’: a superhero still in his early years, grappling with youthful naivety and what his masked identity actually means.

So, in Robert Pattinson, we get a very different Bruce Wayne. Where Christian Bale and Ben Affleck embraced the macho side of the character, Pattinson looks like a boyish vampire, his skin tone only a shade warmer than in Twilight. His is the first screen Batman to be fully seen wearing the eyeshadow required of the character’s costume. In the suit he’s methodical and muscular; out of it, he’s racked with insecurity and self-doubt.

As a new direction, it makes total sense for this most brooding of superheroes. And though the humourlessness sometimes flirts with self-parody – Pattinson’s narration, delivered like Rorschach’s journal, grumbles mainly about vengeance, fear, justice, the usual stuff – the mood is justified by a believably dark bad guy. In a crowded rogues’ gallery, this is the Riddler’s show, anchored by a chilling Paul Dano performance. He’s a bespectacled terrorist of the Trump era, driven by an incel’s misplaced sense of injustice and a love of fiendish puzzles.

Fully embracing the “world’s greatest detective” comics reputation that cinematic Batmen often forget, Reeves thus plays things out like a twisty David Fincher-esque thriller. Occasionally the knottiness of the plotting will leave you feeling that near-three-hour runtime, but it is never boring, the narrative propelled by a series of grisly conundrums through Gotham’s seedy underbelly.

Matt Reeves’ arrival in the Bat-verse is a gripping, beautifully shot, neo-noir take on an age-old character. Though not a totally radical refit of the Nolan/Snyder era, it establishes a Gotham City we would keenly want a return visit to.