‘The Batman’: Robert Pattinson says character won’t be a straight-up hero

DC Comics fans are counting down the days until Matt Reeves’ The Batman hits theaters worldwide. Robert Pattinson, the latest actor to adopt an on-screen persona as the ‘Caped Crusader,’ has starred in globally successful franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight. But Pattinson assures that the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to portray Bruce Wayne — the billionaire by day and brooding vigilante by night — trumps all other roles thus far.

“It’s like nothing like I’ve ever done before,” he told the Daily Record. “It was such a fun experience. It’s one of the big characters in 21st-century fiction. It’s a massive honor to play him.”

The Batman will wipe the slate clean of all previous performances, including Ben Affleck — who most recently assumed the role as Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017). Reeves’ rendition promises to be truly unlike any other. “This movie, I think, is probably the scariest Batman that’s been done,” Matt Reeves, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mattson Tomlin, told Total Film. Before signing on to continue the legacy of The Bat, Matt Reeves directed Cloverfield (2008), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). 

Similar to Todd Phillips’ stand-alone supervillain origin Joker (2019), Reeves’ The Batman ignores canonicity and dances to the beat of its own drum; it picks up with Bruce Wayne after several years of protecting Gotham City as The Batman — hot on the trail of Paul Dano’s Riddler.

In addition to Pattinson’s Batman and Dano’s Riddler, The Batman co-stars Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Penguin, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, and Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Jim Gordon.

Further commenting on the culturally influential role, Pattinson briefly discussed the concept of The Batman and how the storytelling differs from any other version — particularly in terms of Batman’s questionable status as a ‘hero.’

There were times in filming that I caught glimpses of myself in the reflection of something – and it was a reminder that ‘wow this is crazy I am actually Batman’. Anybody who has played such an iconic superhero remembers the first time they put on their suit – and yeah it was pretty special. The suit does a lot of work for you in fight scenes but it’s not always the easiest thing to wear.

I needed to know about as much of the history of the character as possible to see what hadn’t really been done

People see Batman as this straight-up heroic character but in our story it really questions what the nature of a hero is and it gives a lot of different angles to it.

Robert Pattinson via the Daily Record

To see Pattinson in action as Gotham’s savior, The Batman arrives in theaters on March 4, 2022.