Anybody can play Batman, it’s just a case of throwing on the suit, but the key to going down in the history books as a memorable one is striking the right balance between billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne and his costumed alter ego, which is a lot harder to pull off than it looks.
Michael Keaton arguably did it best, establishing his manic and potentially deranged Bruce as a completely different beast to his stoic and imposing Dark Knight, whereas George Clooney played both sides in almost exactly the same way, not even attempting to scratch the surface of what possesses a traumatized orphan to dress up as a bat and beat criminals to a pulp with his bare hands.
The latest trailer for The Batman showed that the dichotomy between Bruce and Batman is set to be the linchpin of Robert Pattinson’s entire performance, with the actor revealing that he viewed the character’s public persona as a little unusual.
“He doesn’t have as much control over his personality, like the delineation between when he’s Batman and when he’s Bruce is not so clear and other kind of iterations of it, you know, he really knows what he’s doing when he’s putting on the cowl. And I kind of really like this idea of it’s a little bit out of control. He hasn’t completely defined what Batman is. I mean, it’s kind of, he gets lost in it. Whenever he’s putting on every night. And it’s kind of, you know, basically, he’s not sleeping and he’s becoming this quite sort of odd creature.”
Blurring the lines between Bruce Wayne and his other half is something we haven’t seen explored on the big screen before, with previous iterations all establishing clear differences between the two, which is another reason why The Batman promises to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen from the comic book icon before.
