In much the same way as the movie’s other groundbreaking novelties, Matt Reeves has a profound reason for why Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader never uses the iconic “I’m Batman” line in The Batman.
The applauded director of the Dark Knight reboot made an appearance on The Treatment podcast and once again went in-depth over the process of bringing this unique version of the DC superhero to life on the big screens. At one point, Reeves also explained why he did away with the clichéd “I’m Batman” line, noting that it just didn’t work for Pattinson’s version of the World’s Greatest Detective.
To me, the arc from the beginning, when I was thinking of the story, moves from a place of him declaring himself, which does come from some of the comics, and from the animated series, this notion that he says, not ‘I’m Batman,’ which is obviously the key Keaton line in the Burton movie, but ‘I’m vengeance.’ And that this was coming from his personal rage and this primal feeling that he had, that’s really just flailing and trying to make sense of his life, and so that he’s not really self-aware
The filmmaker obviously had a good reason to omit that particular instance of the famous “I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman!” line, but even barring that, it’s great to see creatives actively trying to avoid the played-out tropes that have accompanied these stories since forever.
That’s one of the things, too, in the music and the sound of that scene. It kind of builds in a way that you can feel the rage and his heart pounding, pounding, pounding, and then you can feel the sound intent and the music intent at the end of that scene, and even visually is the sense of the adrenaline starting finally to ebb.
Currently playing in theaters, Reeves’ film recently passed Justice League at the global box office to become one of the highest-grossing DC Films to date, but it remains to be seen if Pattinson’s take on the Dark Knight story can dethrone Todd Phillips’ Joker as well, which managed to bag a whopping $1.074 billion by the end of its theatrical run.