It can be incredibly tempting to watch an exceedingly well-made film — even a big-budget blockbuster about one of the most popular comic book characters of all time — and chalk up every aspect of it to a sole author. On one hand, viewers who have followed director Matt Reeves' career can tell just how successfully he infused "The Batman" with his distinctive filmmaking trademarks. Look no further than his similar approach to the latter two "Planet of the Apes" movies, with "War for the Planet of the Apes" specifically boasting many of the same Biblical-scale concerns that "The Batman" would eventually cover.

But as appealing as auteur theory can be, the truth is oftentimes much more complicated. Though a few significant individuals may receive the lion's share of credit in marketing and publicity, it truly takes an army spread throughout every level of the filmmaking process to bring a movie like "The Batman" across the finish line.

If that fact didn't already ring true simply by watching (the Oscar-winning) Greig Fraser's gorgeous cinematography, listening to Michael Giacchino's impeccable score, or gawking at production designer James Chinlund's hellish realization of Gotham City throughout the actual movie, it became abundantly clear during the course of my recent conversation with Visual Effects Supervisor Anders Langlands. The New Zealand-based VFX artist has a storied and widely respected legacy, having worked for Wētā FX — the groundbreaking VFX company that was founded by Peter Jackson and revolutionized the industry with "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy — on recent movies such as "Ad Astra," "Mulan," and "Zack Snyder's Justice League." All of that experience (and more) was put to the test in "The Batman," allowing Wētā to accomplish the impossible: Uniting us in near-universal praise over a modern superhero movie's excellent VFX work.

Now that the dust has settled after the initial release of "The Batman" in early March, I was able to pick Langlands' brain and talk about the value of his prior work with Matt Reeves on "Apes," the challenges of putting together the Batmobile chase sequence, the question of whether Stagecraft truly is "the next big thing," and even his thoughts on that never-ending "CGI vs practical effects" debate.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

'It really feels like a filmmaking company more than a visual effects company'

I remember watching "The Lord of the Rings" and all those behind-the-scenes breakdowns of everything Wētā contributed to it. I'm curious: Do you get the same sense of legacy, working with a company as genuinely historic as Wētā?

I definitely get a sense of the history and the legacy. Yeah. All our internal tools ... puns are named after [laughs] "The Lord of the Rings" quite often. It's really cool. I remember clearly first arriving there and particularly in Manuka Street, which was sort of the central office at the time. There's a whole bunch of props, you've got the [Witch King's] armor, just standing there in reception. You can't escape it down here at all. Even Wellington airport, when you first actually fly in, there's Gandalf riding a giant Eagle hovering over the arrivals lounge. So there's definitely a sense of that everywhere here.

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