A series of flops have left the caped crusader at his lowest ebb for decades. The hero needs – and deserves – a revamp, but can the likely new director offer one?

How many times has Batman saved the city? The caped crusader’s ability to stay one step ahead of his enemies, no matter how dastardly their schemes, is a running joke in the excellent Lego Batman Movie. When the Joker hijacks a plane above Gotham, he is aghast when the pilot appears unmoved. Bats will be along any minute to sort out the mess, predicts the sanguine victim. The dark knight always saves the day and the bad guys always end up in Arkham Asylum, confined to straitjackets and doomed to live off prison rations until it’s crisis time again.

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In fact it’s arguable that Christopher Nolan is the only film-maker who convinced us that it could go any other way. His version of Batman cleaved as close as possible to reality, by showing us – in 2005’s Batman Begins – Bruce Wayne’s early failures , embarrassing injuries and hapless brushes with death. Nolan never shied away from the character’s crazed desperation, presenting Wayne’s endeavours as a frantic, rabid, most-likely-doomed quest for justice and revenge. Throughout the Dark Knight trilogy, we always felt Batman’s failure was at least as likely as his triumph.

Nevertheless, Nolan’s is not the only way to frame the caped crusader and the news that Matt Reeves is being sought by Warner Bros to direct The Batman, the first solo outing for the character since The Dark Knight Rises, means that we’ll soon see a new vision be implemented. Given the state his predecessors Zack Snyder (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and David Ayer (Suicide Squad) have left Batman in, Reeves faces a daunting task in reviving the dark knight’s big-screen fortunes.

So poisoned a chalice is The Batman that Ben Affleck himself took a long look at the movie and decided against directing it last month. The logical assumption is that Affleck opted not to put all his eggs in one basket: his acting career might just cope with the ignominy of starring in the worst Batman movie since Joel Schumacher’s execrable Batman & Robin, but his directing career might not survive the same. His misgivings do not bode well.

The DC expanded universe, Warners’ attempt to mimic the success of the Marvel movies, is in a complete mess. Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad were both subjected to the critical equivalent of a blast in the face from one of the Joker’s acid-squirting lapel flowers, while at least two forthcoming movies, Wonder Woman and The Flash, have lost their original directors. Even if this year’s Justice League manages to defy expectations and endear itself to fans, Reeves will still find himself in picking-up-pieces mode.

Part of the problem is that we don’t really know who this new Batman is. Is he the raging, vindictive Wayne of Dawn of Justice or the Harley Quinn-kissing character seen in Suicide Squad? Perhaps he’s the more considerate, open-hearted caped crusader seen in the trailers for Justice League? Nobody really knows.

Why? Because Warners opted for the box office returns guaranteed by setting the dark knight against the man of steel, rather than the solo Batman outing required to establish a shift away from the Nolan era. Reeves will therefore be working with a semi-formed caped crusader, a fledgling half-knight. Moreover, he will not even be able to take the easy option, a prequel origins story, to revive The Batman – unless Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio’s current efforts take a radically different direction to previous iterations of the script.

It’s not all gothic misery, however. Reeves has the advantage of setting his film in Gotham, where the caped crusader – surrounded by his traditional gallery of enemies and cloaked in the city’s misty noir – has had most success. Wayne is most comfortable working alone, so dispensing with those unwieldy Justice League responsibilities should suit him down to the ground.

In addition, Reeves is exactly the kind of director – as shown by his hugely effective shepherding of the new Planet of the Apes saga – to produce a movie that works within the boundaries of the expanded universe vision. In many ways he is the opposite kind of film-maker to the one Warners previously used. The studio prides itself on being director-driven but has found that a cinematic universe is by its very nature a producer-driven contrivance, requiring an approach closer to TV than traditional film-making. Simply handing the reigns of individual films to different directors and expecting them to work their magic without regard to other movies in the saga is a recipe for disaster, as Suicide Squad proved.

We should not forget that when Nolan took on Batman he faced the task of reviving the dark knight’s fortunes following the high camp of the Schumacher years. Let’s hope Reeves, if he agrees to take the job, can pull off a similar miracle. Because this time, it’s not the city of Gotham that needs saving. It’s Batman himself.