I think Hollywood knows who their audience are for these things, when I was younger I saw "Batman" and it was quite Gothic but my dad and my brothers LOVED it, but for me the movie had and showed signs the sequel would be more uplifting... Dear God I was wrong, I was terrified by the next one, Batman Returns... I don't think I finished watching it until I was 16 years old. It's frightening and the hero is killing the bad guys and the Penguin was biting peoples noses off and vomiting black... YUCK!There’s a small hint of hope in the closing VO where Patman says (and I forget the exact wording) that his approach so far, reclusive, ‘I am vengeance’ etc is not the way and he needs to find a better one.
That VO and the bits where he’s very clearly empathising with the sons of Riddler’s victims and almost palpably wants to reach out to them to reassure them makes me think that if there are sequels, we’ll see Patman leaning more into what he can do as Bruce Wayne in the community and, possibly, Robin. That’s the vibe I got.
I could be completely wrong, but if The Long Halloween was the inspiration here, maybe they’ll look to Dark Victory as part of the inspiration for the follow up.
Of course that VO was the 30 second coda to a 3 hour film and I finally got the detective film I’ve been hoping for for years, maybe I’m being too hopeful that a lighter tone is also coming. But it seemed at least hinted at
The other two movies were dark but had a more sexual undertones in there which fit the weirdness I thought, and then came BB. A movie where Bruce Wayne goes into a court room and wants to shoot the killer of his parents and then be trained by bad guys??? I heard the same hope the movies would take a different path but Hollywood never does, we got Zack Snyder's Batman where he kills people like Jason Voorhees and in his JL movie he says something like "skull f'ing the Joker" OMG, it is what it is and I personally doubt they'll ever go in a direction I find faithful to the character.
At least I have TAS, the Brave & the Bold, Adam West, and the new Caped Crusader coming out this Fall on HBOMAX. I honestly hope you're right because it would be interesting to see the character clean up New York and pay the light bill for the streets.