In several live adaptations, the character Batman’s speaking voice has had a deep growl to it, but in the 2022 blockbuster, The Batman, not only does the titular superhero have a lot of dialogue scenes, he speaks without a growl. Turns out, it was an intentional move from the director, Matt Reeves.
As the film is now streaming on HBO Max, fans can enjoy bonus footage, and new director commentary on the film, which includes Reeves explaining his decision not to change Robert Pattinson’s voice, keeping in mind the emotional component of having Batman speak the way he did.
“I knew I didn’t wanna do a Batman that had been done previously, that had the growl that we’d seen. Because I knew that in this version, if you’re gonna do a detective story, Batman is gonna have a lot of dialogue scenes. Which, when you actually look at all the movies, Bruce may have a lot of long dialogue scenes but Batman’s dialogue scenes, he has dialogue but it’s controlled. This, by literally the necessity of solving this crime, was going to require him to have to have long dialogue scenes in that suit and some of them are very emotional. If he was growling, we wouldn’t be able to connect to him emotionally. So there was a real exploration to figure out how to make that work.”
Reeves’ reasoning does make sense here as The Batman focuses on the early days of the hero. This means that there is still a vulnerability to the character, especially as he is still in the process of growing and embodying the character we are all familiar with. Fans can catch the movie on the streaming platform for some film extras, but they also have the option of watching it in theaters.