Only a few characters in cinematic history have captivated the audience as much as Bruce Wayne, an enigmatic billionaire who takes on the role of Batman, a vigilante. There have been numerous cinematic iterations of this character, and each director has managed to offer a fresh perspective. However, Matt Reeves’ approach to The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson ventures into uncharted territories.
Pattinson’s Batman isn’t a charmer like Christian Bale’s or Ben Affleck’s Batman, he comes off as more reserved and brooding in his Bruce Wayne form. Reeves’ has a profound explanation for this artistic choice, and if you love the DC character, the director’s intent will undoubtedly move you.
Matt Reeves on Batman’s Defining Struggles
In an interview on The Treatment, Matt Reeves delved into his creative process behind shaping The Batman and offered profound insights into his unique motivations. The director connected Bruce Wayne’s unrelenting pursuit of justice with the unresolved grief that he holds, fueling his duel life as the protector of Gotham.
In Reeves’ eyes, the story is not about a heroic triumph but Wayne’s internal battle where he attempts to make sense of tragedy in a world that refuses to offer clarity. According to him, the movie is not about a character mastering his inner demons, but how he is constantly in a state of turmoil.
I wouldn’t be the right filmmaker for it if I wasn’t interested in trying to look at how this guy was dealing, basically, with trauma, and trying to make sense of his life in the wake of trauma, and really revisit the events of that trauma night after night in a way that is never going to solve the problem.
He’s never going to be able to reverse what happened to him as a kid, and that will forever haunt him. And so I guess in that way, I am very interested in the scarring events of people’s lives.
He aimed to show Bruce Wayne who still navigating the complexities of his trauma but is trapped in the public gaze, with the burden of carrying on his family’s legacy. Unlike previous portrayals, Reeves’ Batman is not entirely formed, he is still young, lost, and desperate to make sense out of everything.
I was interested in the idea of him being at a stage where he couldn’t bear the weight of the history of being part of the Waynes. I thought he could be kind of like a member of the Kennedy family like American royalty, or what a British royal would be in the wake of a tragedy and how there was a lens being put on you because of a family tragedy that you could never escape.
In his storytelling, the self-discovery aspect of Wayne is necessary, and he was adamant to not go the usual route where the character is close to self-actualization. This resulted in an emotionally raw and sensitive version of Batman that was never seen before.
Matt Reeves Portrays Batman’s Struggle With Identity
A key element in most Batman movies has been the dual lives of Bruce Wayne, where he’s a billionaire playboy by day and a masked crime-fighter by night, and this counterintuitive aspect is inextricably linked to his unresolved trauma.
However, in Reeves’ interpretation, Bruce has not yet understood the power of wielding his public identity. Robert Pattinson’s Batman hasn’t developed his polished and controlled alter-ego.
This idea of not yet understanding even the asset that being Bruce Wayne could be, the way that other iterations of the character have where they realize, oh, I can be Bruce Wayne, and that can be another kind of mask. He’s just not together enough yet to even understand how valuable that’s gonna be.
This achingly beautiful understanding of Batman’s character sets Reeves’ film apart from its predecessors. It is not a film about a superhero’s brave antics and resolution, but a man’s messy and painful process of simply surviving.
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