Directed by Matt Reeves, the dark action-adventure flick is set to arrive later this year and will follow the Defender of Gotham at the beginning of his journey with vigilantism.
When the trailer dropped last fall, a lot of people LOL'd a bit at how, well, EMO R. Patz looked once the bat mask came off.
But according to Matt, the eyeliner — and brooding character — is super intentional. In an interview with Esquire, he said this Batman's tortured persona is directly inspired by the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain.
“Early on, when I was writing, I started listening to Nirvana, and there was something about [Nevermind song] ‘Something in the Way,’ which is in the first trailer, which is part of the voice of that character."
"When I considered, ‘How do you do Bruce Wayne in a way that hasn’t been seen before?’ I started thinking, ‘What if some tragedy happened [ie: Wayne sees his parents murdered] and this guy becomes so reclusive, we don’t know what he’s doing? Is this guy some kind of wayward, reckless, drug addict?’ And the truth is that he is a kind of drug addict. His drug is his addiction to this drive for revenge. He’s like a Batman Kurt Cobain."
And as for the smudgy eyeliner? "You can’t wear a cowl and not wear that," Matt said. "All of the Batmen wear that. I just loved the idea of taking off [the mask] and under that there’s the sweating and the dripping and the whole theatricality of becoming this character."
This wouldn't be the first time Matt has talked about the rock star quality to Robert's Batman. "I really did think, 'Oh my god, this version of this character, this guy who sort of almost like — if you think of Bruce Wayne as like a reckless rock star in a decaying manner — there's this part of me that saw you as that, and I had no idea that you [Robert] would be interested in playing the role at all," the filmmaker said at a virtual panel for DC FanDome last October.
Matt has also repeatedly talked about being worried that Robert wouldn't WANT to be Batman. "I thought, What if Rob doesn't want to play Batman? This will be a disaster," he said to Robert during the panel last fall. "And then it turned out that you completely on your own had a whole path to the same thing, which is that you had been obsessed with Batman for years. And when you found out that we were doing this version, you were very interested."
Likewise, in 2019, the Twilight actor talked to Variety about how he was drawn to the "struggling" and "troubled" masked crusader. "I was very, very focused on it, and I don’t know why. It just kind of kept coming back into my head." He also revealed how he kept "prodding" Matt about the role.
The movie — set to come out in theaters March 4 — also stars Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle (Catwoman), Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Paul Dano as the Riddler, and Colin Farrell as the Penguin.
