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Matt Reeves Hints at Bruce Wayne’s Mindset in The Batman, Hopes to Give The Film Emotional Stakes

April 10, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Robert Pattinson The Batman Image Credit: Warner Bros./DC Comics

The Batman is stuck on hold like all films during the current pandemic, but Matt Reeves has provided a hint as to what kind of film it will be in new interviews. Reeves, who wrote and is directing the Robert Pattinson-starring film, discussed the project with The New York Times while promoting Tales From the Loop and talked about how he’s trying to make the film more than just an cape-filled action flick.

“Of course these things have to be mined in a way that can make these companies money,” Reeves said. “You never know whether the people in charge of those IPs are going to be open to your vision. But if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have done Batman. I was like, look, there have been some great Batman films and I don’t want to just make a Batman film. I want to do something that has some emotional stakes. My ambition is for it to be incredibly personal using the metaphors of that world. It feels like this really odd throwback to the movies I came up on from the ’70s, like Klute or Chinatown. I’m not saying we’re achieving anything like that. Those are masterpieces. But that’s the ambition.”

Reeves also discussed where Bruce Wayne is at at the point of the film with Nerdist, saying, “I wanted to do not an origin tale, but a tale that would still acknowledge his origins, in that it formed who he is. Like this guy, he’s majorly struggling, and this is how he’s trying to rise above that struggle, but that doesn’t mean that he even fully understands, you know. It’s that whole idea of the shadow self and what’s driving you, and how much of that you can incorporate, and how much of it you’re doing that you’re unaware of. There’s something in there that feels very psychological, very emotional, and it felt like there was a way of exploring that along with the corruption in this place, Gotham. That feels very current. I think it always does. There’s almost no time when you can’t do a story about corruption. But today, it still seems incredibly resonant and maybe, from my perspective, maybe more so than maybe at other time.”

The Batman stars Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Colin Farrell as Penguin, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, and Peter Sarsgaard as DA Gil Colson. It is set to release on June 25, 2021 assuming no release date move due to the production delay.

article topics :

Matt Reeves, The Batman, Jeremy Thomas