Over the franchise’s many movies, everyone generally plays Batman the same way — tough, stolid, gravel-voiced, angry — but what of Bruce Wayne? Michael Keaton portrayed the Caped Crusader’s real self as a reluctant socialite, though one who still got dates. In the hands of Christian Bale, he was a fake trust fund douchebag, pretending to be a dumb drunk to throw people off his scent. Ben Affleck was older but still a Gotham (and Metropolis) scene fixture.
Then there’s Robert Pattinson’s take. In The Batman — that is the one that finally cast Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman — Wayne’s face is almost never seen. And when it is, he’s, if anything, moodier than his besuited alter ego. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t paint the town red. He only hooks up with Kravitz’s Selena Kyle, and then only in uniform. When he appears at a big time funeral, everyone makes a show of him showing his face at all, because he never does.
Well, there’s a solid reason for that. In a recent group chat with most of the film’s main players for Entertainment Weekly, Pattinson discussed the reason he and the The Batman team decided to lose the rakish playboy side of Wayne entirely:
“When you think about Bruce Wayne, you kind of think he’s a playboy, and then that’s how he disguises himself, so no one knows he’s Batman. As soon as you take that away, it made the character almost make more sense … There’s something about a person who would be able to delineate three incredibly distinct personalities, and then just being able to switch them as an outfit at will. That’s really way more sociopathic than someone who doesn’t really have much more control over it and is compelled to put this suit on. It’s kind of out of his control a little bit.”
There was another reason for skipping that side of Bruce. “Also, it made more sense with the grieving process as well if he hasn’t gotten over being the 10-year-old boy who, in his mind, let his parents die,” Pattinson continued. “What he feels is himself, he thinks is an incredibly weak and vulnerable child, and he needs to have an entirely different alter ego to survive himself, let alone fight all the criminals of Gotham.”
And that’s why you don’t see Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne gallivanting about with Gotham’s most beautiful. Then again, he could always have a change of heart in the sequel. Or one of its spinoffs.
(Via EW)
