Published Date: 23/02/2022

All you need to know about The Batman

Batman uncovers corruption in Gotham City connecting to his own family, while facing a serial killer known as the Riddler.

So what do we know about the forthcoming reinvention of Batman hitting Showcase Cinemas in March? Well we have scoured various interviews with the man tasked with bringing Batman back to our screens, director Matt Reeves. Here are some sound-bites to increase the excitement levels.

On being a fan of Batman:

“I’ve always felt that the Batman story was a very special story. He’s not really a superhero. He’s someone who’s driven by the pain of his past. He’s trying to find some way to make sense of his life. It’s a very psychological story. This is the character I relate to most.”

On his personal take on the Batman story:

“I wanted the main character in the story to be a Batman who was a year in and still trying to figure out how to do this, how to be effective, and he’s not necessarily succeeding. He’s broken and driven. He’d like to think that he is doing the right thing, that there’s another part of him that’s struggling right up against the limits. I think his biggest weakness is not realising the extent to which the person that he’s fighting is himself.”

How Nirvana influenced his screenplay:

“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. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”

On why Robert Pattinson was the right choice to play Batman: 

“The thing about Robert Pattinson is he’s an incredible actor. I feel like the work that he’s done in the last, I don’t know, six years has been incredible… he’s just such a gifted actor. And he’s been working on his craft in this really incredible way. And he also happens to be a tremendous, passionate sort of fan of Batman, the way that I am. And so it was an incredible thing to be able to connect with him and to share our excitement about the character and to work with him. I mean, you know, he looks like Batman, but more than anything, he has the soul of someone, I think, that can play a Batman.”

On Paul Dano’s The Riddler:

“We have Paul Dano, who plays a version of the Riddler that no one ever seen before. And it’s really exciting. He’s such an incredibly creative actor. And so what he is doing, I think is going to blow people’s minds.” 

On Zoe Kravitz’s Batman journey:

“Zoe Kravitz, her iteration of Selina Kyle, like to me, that’s incredibly exciting. You have an iteration that you’ve never seen of what she’s doing, but it touches on all these kind of iconic sort of things that people know from the comics. So, it’s always about trying to square what you sort of know with what also is new. And that is really part of, I think the exciting sort of process of making the Batman movie, which is to find a way to make it your own and to find a way for the actors to make it their own, and yet still connect to all these things that people also go, “Oh, that’s my, that’s my Selina. I know who that is.” I guess the one thing about the Rogues’ Gallery is that it actually, in a weird way, is the origins of a lot of our Rogues’ Gallery characters. So, like, Selina isn’t Catwoman yet—that’s actually part of the journey.”

On his wish to continue with the Batman series:

“There’s no question it’s going to continue on long after this. It’s great, because it’s a great myth. It allows itself to almost endless reinterpretation. There’s been so many iterations, and what was important for me, critical for me, was I could not go into doing this one without feeling like we would have something definitive to stay to say about this myth.”

Sources: Esquire Middle East; DC FanDome and Empire Magazine     

The Batman opens at Showcase Cinemas on March 4

Batman uncovers corruption in Gotham City connecting to his own family, while facing a serial killer known as the Riddler.

So what do we know about the forthcoming reinvention of Batman hitting Showcase Cinemas in March? Well we have scoured various interviews with the man tasked with bringing Batman back to our screens, director Matt Reeves. Here are some sound-bites to increase the excitement levels.

On being a fan of Batman:

“I’ve always felt that the Batman story was a very special story. He’s not really a superhero. He’s someone who’s driven by the pain of his past. He’s trying to find some way to make sense of his life. It’s a very psychological story. This is the character I relate to most.”

On his personal take on the Batman story:

“I wanted the main character in the story to be a Batman who was a year in and still trying to figure out how to do this, how to be effective, and he’s not necessarily succeeding. He’s broken and driven. He’d like to think that he is doing the right thing, that there’s another part of him that’s struggling right up against the limits. I think his biggest weakness is not realising the extent to which the person that he’s fighting is himself.”

How Nirvana influenced his screenplay:

“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. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”

On why Robert Pattinson was the right choice to play Batman: 

“The thing about Robert Pattinson is he’s an incredible actor. I feel like the work that he’s done in the last, I don’t know, six years has been incredible… he’s just such a gifted actor. And he’s been working on his craft in this really incredible way. And he also happens to be a tremendous, passionate sort of fan of Batman, the way that I am. And so it was an incredible thing to be able to connect with him and to share our excitement about the character and to work with him. I mean, you know, he looks like Batman, but more than anything, he has the soul of someone, I think, that can play a Batman.”

On Paul Dano’s The Riddler:

“We have Paul Dano, who plays a version of the Riddler that no one ever seen before. And it’s really exciting. He’s such an incredibly creative actor. And so what he is doing, I think is going to blow people’s minds.” 

On Zoe Kravitz’s Batman journey:

“Zoe Kravitz, her iteration of Selina Kyle, like to me, that’s incredibly exciting. You have an iteration that you’ve never seen of what she’s doing, but it touches on all these kind of iconic sort of things that people know from the comics. So, it’s always about trying to square what you sort of know with what also is new. And that is really part of, I think the exciting sort of process of making the Batman movie, which is to find a way to make it your own and to find a way for the actors to make it their own, and yet still connect to all these things that people also go, “Oh, that’s my, that’s my Selina. I know who that is.” I guess the one thing about the Rogues’ Gallery is that it actually, in a weird way, is the origins of a lot of our Rogues’ Gallery characters. So, like, Selina isn’t Catwoman yet—that’s actually part of the journey.”

On his wish to continue with the Batman series:

“There’s no question it’s going to continue on long after this. It’s great, because it’s a great myth. It allows itself to almost endless reinterpretation. There’s been so many iterations, and what was important for me, critical for me, was I could not go into doing this one without feeling like we would have something definitive to stay to say about this myth.”

Sources: Esquire Middle East; DC FanDome and Empire Magazine     

 Prepare to witness vengeance in action

The Batman opens 4 March

Book your tickets