Warning: The following article contains major spoilers for The Batman
Film director Matt Reeves has revealed more details for scene he originally shot for The Batman featuring Barry Keoghan that never made it to the final version.
In an interview with Variety, Reeves shares that an earlier cut of The Batman included a sequence illustrating a moment of apprehension for the Dark Knight in his quest to bring The Riddler to justice.
Reeves, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Peter Craig, explains that he envisioned Batman (Robert Pattinson) as experiencing feelings of insecurity in the wake of The Riddler’s rampage in Gotham City. He felt it would make sense for the Dark Knight to try to gather information and use it to understand his opponent’s mindset.
With this in mind, he filmed a scene depicting Batman making a stealthy entry into Arkham Asylum to seek out a prisoner with in-depth knowledge of his adversary. The prisoner turns out to be none other than The Joker, played by Barry Keoghan.
Reeves describes the details of the scene:
[The Joker] says, ‘It’s almost our anniversary, isn’t it?’ “You realize that they have a relationship and that this guy obviously did something, and Batman somehow got him into Arkham.
The writer/director shot a tense verbal exchange between the two characters in which Batman asks Joker to brief him about The Riddler’s way of thinking.
Reeves says that Joker answers Batman’s question with a question of his own, “What do you mean, you want to know how he thinks? You guys think the same.”
He wanted to give the audience a glimpse of Joker’s unique ability to set mental traps and masterfully manipulate the hero of Gotham City with Batman on the defensive, fighting to maintain his psychological boundaries.
So how did a powerful scene between Batman and Joker end up on the cutting room floor? Reeves made the difficult decision not to include it for purposes of continuity. He was facing the very challenging task of telling a story that was already very intricate. In his view, he felt that including the scene would disrupt the flow of the film
However, Reeves is very proud of it and reveals he plans to release it to the public for fans to enjoy at a future date. He enthusiastically described some of the elements of the lost scene that he thinks moviegoers appreciate most:
It’s a really creepy, cool scene. That was the scene that was meant to introduce this guy and just to tease the audience to go like, ‘Oh my god, he’s here too? And he’s not yet The Joker — what’s this going to be?’
Reeves is adamant that The Joker’s appearance in The Batman is not necessarily a setup for the character to appear in any of the franchise’s future films. When and if this will happen remains unclear.
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