Robert Pattinson plays an all-new incarnation of Bruce Wayne with no connections to any other movie in The Batman. These days, it’s become a bit rare for new superhero projects to come without any ties to any other cinematic universes, and there’s no denying that this approach has heavily paid off. There’s still a place for superhero movies with standalone stories, however, as Reeves insisted when he took the reins of The Batman.
Initially, The Batman entered development as an extension of the DCEU. It was to bring back Ben Affleck as his version of the Dark Knight that he previously played in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. The project underwent many changes as it spun its wheels in development hell, and Affleck would eventually depart the project altogether. When Matt Reeves was brought in to direct the feature, it was important to the filmmaker that The Batman reintroduce the Caped Crusader in a world without any other previously-established superheroes.
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“Warner Bros. has a multiverse where they’re exploring different ways to use the character,” producer Dylan Clark tells Empire, per Slash Film. “We don’t get involved in that. Matt is interested in pushing this character to his emotional depths and shaking him to his core.”
Arguing to keep his Batman outside of the DCEU, Matt Reeves also “emphasized to Affleck and Warner Bros. that he would ’need to be able to create an iteration with a personal aspect to it,’ which wasn’t obliged to ‘connect with all these other things’ in the DCEU.” Going this way also means Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight will have to face the dastardly villains of Gotham alone, unable to call his friends from the Justice League to help identify the masked murderer killing people in gruesome ways in Gotham City.
“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way.’ 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,” Reeves also told Empire. “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.”
Revealing how Kurt Cobain and Nirvana heavily influenced this take on Bruce Wayne, Reeves added, “In that movie you could really feel his vulnerability and desperation, but you could also feel his power. 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.”
The Batman also stars Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, and Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot. There are also plans for Penguin to get his own spinoff series on HBO Max. Meanwhile, The Batman will be premiering in theaters on March 4, 2022.
