Matt Reeves confirms key ‘The Batman’ action scene was shot practically

Robert Pattinson’s turn under the cowl in The Batman is succeeding at the box office with its new take on the acclaimed comic book character and now director Matt Reeves has revealed a fight scene shown in the trailers was created with no CGI.

The sequence in question features Pattinson’s caped crusader walking down a dark hallway while taking out a number of goons as the sequence is lit by the muzzle flash from their weapons. Reeves revealed during an interview with the ReelBlend Podcast Friday he was inspired by the idea after doing something similar in War for the Planet of the Apes and knew it would work for The Batman given the character’s tactics and access to certain kinds of equipment.

“The genesis of that … I wrote it in the script … I guess I’m fascinated by that idea because I did it for war with a CG character. The soldier comes into the tunnels when they’re looking for Caesar and Rocket attacks this guy. I thought ‘What if we take that for The Batman? Because we know that Batman can see into the night because he’s wearing these contact lenses and he kills the power. I was talking to Rob Alonso, who was my stunt coordinator and did second unit, he’s responsible for the fighting style because he’s a fighter himself. He got the guys to train and they were really careful with those guns. So, what you’re seeing is actually a scene that was lit with muzzle flashes. We split it into three pieces and did each piece until the piece worked.”

Such dedication to craft seems to have paid off with the final product. The road to getting here began with Ben Affleck, shifted to Reeves, endured several stops and starts due to COVID-19 before reaching the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. As we reported earlier, audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore and with the winning combination of money and praise in place – it feels like a sequel announcement is but a matter of time.