How do you reinvent a character like Batman for the movies? It’s a question filmmakers have grappled with ever since Tim Burton’s glossy, stylised 1989 movie Batman . That picture brought us Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader, a soundtrack by Prince and an outrageous turn by Jack Nicholson as Batman’s arch-nemesis The Joker. It was high-budget, high-camp – and thoroughly entertaining. Ironically, the DC Comics’ character had taken a darker turn just two years earlier with the release of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s graphic novel Batman: Year One . That story arc partly inspired writer-director Matt Reeves as he was putting together The Batman , his epic new three-hour movie that stars Robert Pattinson in the title role. Year One showed the Gotham City crime-fighter in his embryonic form. “He was kind of a drifter, almost like Travis Bickle,” says Reeves, referring to the Vietnam veteran anti-hero played by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver – a film that unquestionably fed into Joker , Todd Phillips’ incendiary 2019 film with Joaquin Phoenix that detailed the origins of that character. While The Batman was already scripted before Joker ’s release, they feel like spiritual cousins. The Batman makes it very clear what song reflects its nihilistic mood: Nirvana’s Something in the Way , from the grunge band’s masterpiece album Nevermind . “That was a breakthrough for me,” says Reeves, who listened to the song while pondering how to depict Batman’s troubled millionaire alter ego. “The Bruce Wayne that I saw was [like Nirvana frontman] Kurt Cobain, but like a fighter – someone who was haunted.” The Batman: Caped Crusader is back with this five-star masterpiece Quite how this led to the casting of 35-year-old Robert Pattinson is intriguing. “I just thought that it should be Rob,” shrugs Reeves, who was influenced by the British actor’s turn as a grimy bank robber in the Safdie Brothers’ 2017 thriller Good Time . Pattinson found global fame with the Twilight vampire series, which ended a decade ago, before he began working with auteurs including David Cronenberg and Claire Denis. “There’s definitely a part of me which thought I wanted to do a big movie [again],” he says. “I don’t know where that feeling really came from.” In 2020, he gingerly re-entered the blockbuster arena with Tenet , the time-bending spy thriller from Christopher Nolan , who was also responsible for bringing Batman into more adult terrain with his own Dark Knight trilogy. “I’m pretty sure it’s unconnected,” Pattinson says with a smile. “But I got [given the role on] Batman the day I started Tenet and then went straight into it as soon as I finished. It was a pretty nice year!” At least it was until filming on The Batman was suspended due to Covid-19, leaving Pattinson in lockdown for months. The Batman ’s release was moved from the summer to the autumn of 2021, and then to March 2022 – when, hopefully, audiences will return in their droves. The cast includes Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman in the comics; Andy Serkis as Bruce Wayne’s faithful aide Alfred Pennyworth; an unrecognisable Colin Farrell as The Penguin; and most significantly, Paul Dano as The Riddler, here refashioned as a maniac who drags Batman into Gotham’s underworld with a series of high-profile killings. The Riddler’s character is far removed from the wacky incarnations of the past; instead, he’s a loner teasing the cops – and Batman – with his pattern of vengeance. Reeves was inspired by the Zodiac Killer, the never-caught murderer who terrorised Northern California in the late 1960s. “I started in thinking about the Zodiac [Killer],” Reeves says. “He left puzzles and ciphers to be solved, he was communicating with reporters and the police in a way that was meant to provoke and I thought, ‘Well, that’s entirely The Riddler.’ It’s a version of The Riddler you’ve never seen.” There are other things thrown into the melting pot too, says actor John Turturro, who features as Carmine Falcone, the gangland boss that Pattinson’s Batman encounters as he goes further into the “cesspit” that is Gotham City. References abound to 1940s film noir, Turturro says, with a story that looks at “the people who were in power behind the people who are in political offices”. Corruption seeps through every pore in The Batman , with Gotham’s finest as morally bankrupt as Falcone and his right-hand man, The Penguin. While Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster epic The Godfather clearly inspired the Falcone character in the original Batman comics, Turturro didn’t want to ape Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone. “I wasn’t going to stuff my jaws with cotton or anything like that,” he laughs, referring to the infamous story about Brando creating his character by placing cotton balls in his mouth. He did, however, find a pair of 1970s-era sunglasses that he wanted to wear in every scene – even inside the dimly lit Iceberg Lounge club he runs. Reeves readily agreed, loving the artistic choice. The studio didn’t interfere. “I thought that was rare for a big-budget film when the director is under so much pressure,” Turturro says. Deploying some exemplary cinematography from Greig Fraser, who also shot the recent sci-fi epic Dune , Reeves clearly had a vision for The Batman – “none more black”, to borrow that famous line from another rock star, Nigel Tufnel, from spoof metal band Spinal Tap. “As soon as you were on the set, it influenced what you did,” says Turturro, impressed by the gloomy backdrops created by production designer James Chinlund, who previously worked on Reeves’ 2017 film War for the Planet of the Apes . “It gave you the right vibe, the right mood. It set the tone, it helped you get lost in that world very easily.” In the midst of it all is Pattinson’s vengeance-seeking vigilante, a character on the fringes – despised by the cops, criminals and even the public. “I think the most he hopes for in this story,” Pattinson says, “is that he starts to believe in himself a little bit and thinks he can actually have an impact on the city, improving the lives of people there but also kind of improving his own life a little bit and hopefully doing it in a slightly healthier way.” Taking over from Ben Affleck, the last actor to wear the cape and cowl, Pattinson’s angst-ridden Batman is defiantly his own take on the character. “It’s a massive honour to follow in the legacy of the people who’ve interpreted it,” he says. “You feel like you’re inheriting a mantle.” The same might be said for Reeves, who now must consider whether to carry on with a sequel. “I can only tell you that I have many stories in my head,” he says. “Here’s the truth of the matter: it all comes down to how the audience connects.” The chances are, they will. 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