For the longest time, we’ve been under the impression that The Batman would be set in the 1990s. Originally, this was because Matt Reeves’ relaunch of the Dark Knight in the DCEU was to operate as a vague prequel to the Ben Affleck movies, allowing for a young actor to effectively play a younger version of the same character. Even as things evolved away from that, though, and Robert Pattinson landed the role, it still looked to take place in that decade. However, shooting has finally begun on the film this week, and it looks like we can categorically say that The Batman won’t be set in the 90s.
Production has taken place on the streets of the UK over the past couple of days, meaning a lot of snaps from the set have leaked online. Chiefly, these have featured a bunch of Gotham City police cars and news vans, teasing the reaction to some event going on that Batman will no doubt be involved in. In all the excitement, though, you might have overlooked the importance of the van with “Gotham Action News 4” written on the side. It also features an advertisement for “HD Live.”
As the filmmakers wouldn’t let a major blunder like that slip through, this surely rules out the idea that The Batman occurs in the 90s, as HD TV didn’t come around until the mid -to-late 2000s. So, will the whole movie be set in that decade instead? It’s possible, though the scenes being filmed in this block of shooting may well be a prelude to the main bulk of the story. You see, fans have noted that a masked man on a motorcycle is Pattinson himself. Bruce Wayne appears to be at a pre-cape and cowl stage in his vigilante career in this sequence.
Remember, The Batman will come at an early point in Bruce’s life as Batman, though it won’t be another origins story. And while it won’t be set in that period after all, Reeves is still drawing inspiration from a classic storyline from the 1990s – Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween. As such, expect a Batman movie to actually depict the hero as the World’s Greatest Detective at last.
