Batman/Bruce Wayne has had more iterations than perhaps any other comic book superhero, from campy (Adam West) to brooding (Christian Bale) to somewhere in between (the Joel Schumacher diptych). When we see the latest iteration, played by Robert Pattinson, in next year’s The Batman — which we already know will be super emotional — he’ll definitely be brooding. But, it seems, he’ll perhaps be the broodiest of them all.
In an interview with Empire, The Batman director Matt Reeves discussed how his take on Wayne/Batman was heavily influenced by a major rock star of the ‘90s.
“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’,” Reeves told Empire. “That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before, there’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.” (Last Days, which came out in 2005, stars Michael Pitt as a Cobain-esque musician.)
There was another major inspiration, and it happened to be another film starring Pattison: 2017’s indie thriller Good Time. “In that movie you could really feel his vulnerability and desperation, but you could also feel his power,” Reeves said. “I thought that was a great mix. He’s also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse.”
Pattinson himself also described to Empire how Wayne really isn’t a party guy, even if only to throw people off the scent that he’s a latex-suited crime fighter. “Bruce has been hiding away,” Pattinson said. “He’s not really a socialite at all. He’s building all these little contraptions and things, just with Alfred. And even Alfred thinks he’s gone insane!”
The Batman is scheduled to be released in theaters on March 4, 2022. You can watch the latest trailer here. Meanwhile, another former Caped Crusader is about re-don his outfit for another, presumably less emotional comic book movie.
(Via Empire)
