If there’s one thing audiences could really do without seeing unfold on the big screen ever again, it’s the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. You’d have to travel very far to find anybody who couldn’t tell you Batman’s origin story from memory, and the married couple getting gunned down in Crime Alley has ironically been done to death.
Thankfully, Matt Reeves is fully aware of this fact, and decided to have The Batman focus on the title hero’s sophomore year defending the streets of Gotham City. That means we don’t need to watch his origins play out for the umpteenth time, but Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight is still a relative rookie when it comes to nocturnal vigilantism.
During the movie’s DC FanDome panel that acted as a prelude to the trailer, the Planet of the Apes director explained why he wasn’t interested in retreading familiar ground, and instead wanted to take a more grounded and realistic approach to the comic book legend.
“I felt that we’d seen lots of origin stories. We’d seen things go further and further into fantasy, and I thought, well, one place we haven’t been is grounding it the way that Year One does to come right in to a young Batman. Not be an origin tale, but refer to his origins and shake him to his core.”
Looking at the trailer, we can say that Reeves stripped-down version of the mythos was a smart move, promising an altogether different spin on the Caped Crusader than we’ve been used to. The Batman has got the entire online community buzzing, which is no surprise when the trailer was always engrossing and frequently astonishing.