It’s almost a rite of passage for any actor cast as Batman to suffer from at least a little bit of backlash, with Christian Bale arguably the only star that was unanimously well received by fans, insiders and analysts alike.
Thousands of letters were sent to Warner Bros. headquarters in the late 1980s to protest Michael Keaton playing the Caped Crusader, while Ben Affleck’s publicity-heavy past and string of disappointing duds also saw him come under fire. Robert Pattinson, meanwhile, the latest incumbent of the cape and cowl, starred in The Twilight Saga a decade ago, and some folks still can’t let it slide.
There’ve been a ton of rumors and speculation swirling around The Batman ever since cameras first started rolling in January of last year, some of it plausible and some of it ludicrously far-fetched to the point of being nonsensical. Pattinson will be keen to prove every single one of his doubters wrong when the reboot hits theaters next year, though, and tipster Mikey Sutton is now claiming that the studio brass are so high on the actor’s performance and the world he inhabits, that comparisons are already being made to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.
Bale’s trio of blockbusters are generally held up as the benchmark for not just Batman in live-action but the superhero genre in general, and the sheer volume of titles that have tried to emulate either the Batman Begins or The Dark Knight formula continue to prove their influence well over a decade later.
If Reeves and Pattinson can come close to Nolan’s first two modern classics, then The Batman will definitely be something special to witness, regardless of how dark and bleak the tone may reportedly be.
