How many times have we seen Thomas and Martha Wayne been gunned down in a dark alley while their young son Bruce watches helplessly, marking the moment where he begins his transformation from a distraught orphan into a masked vigilante who terrorizes the criminal and clown communities alike for decades on end?
I don’t know exactly, but it’s been a lot.
It’s got to be the most well-known origin story in comics, and now that Robert Pattinson is stepping into the cowl previously occupied by Ben Affleck (and Christian Bale, and Kevin Conroy, and Michael Keaton, and…) there’s a chance we could see it again in The Batman, which is currently on a shooting hiatus while the world deals with this whole coronavirus thing.
Happily, director Matt Reeves made it sound like we’re going to side-step that angle when speaking to Nerdist, or at least I think he did. Judge for yourself:
"I wanted to do not an origin tale, but a tale that would still acknowledge his origins, in that it formed who he is. Like this guy, he’s majorly struggling, and this is how he’s trying to rise above that struggle. But that doesn’t mean that he even fully understands, you know. It’s that whole idea of the shadow self and what’s driving you, and how much of that you can incorporate, and how much of it you’re doing that you’re unaware of."
Deep.
Okay, so he wants to “do not an origin tale,” but the movie will still “acknowledge his origins.” If I had to guess, I’d say that means that we’ll pick up with Batman in the middle of his career, but we’ll probably still have a flashback to “the moment” at some point. I suppose I can live with that.
Per Reeves, The Batman will also deal with the problem of corroption:
"There’s something in there that feels very psychological, very emotional, and it felt like there was a way of exploring that along with the corruption in this place, Gotham. That feels very current. I think it always does. There’s almost no time when you can’t do a story about corruption. But today, it still seems incredibly resonant and maybe, from my perspective, maybe more so than maybe at other time."
No comment about how a story about corruption at the highest levels may resonate with the lives of many people today. Nope nope nope.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 20: Jeffrey Wright speaks at the “Westworld III” Panel during 2019 Comic-Con International at San Diego Convention Center on July 20, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images)
The Batman has a big cast, with Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as the Riddler, Colin Farrell as the Penguin (okay) and Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, who may or may not be the commissioner by this point.
Wright is a very talented actor with credits stretching from Angels in American all the way to Westworld, where he’s currently starring as the do-gooding, often-confused robot Bernard Lowe. Like Batman, Jim Gordon has played by many different actors over the years — Gary Oldman’s take in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy comes to mind — but as much as Wright admires those performances, he told Collider he doesn’t think there’s much point in comparing them:
"[W]hat I do is going to be very specific to Matt Reeves’ vision of Gotham, and it’s going to be reflective of what Robert Pattinson’s Batman is going to be. To pluck one character out of the whole, is a forced idea. All of us are working together to create a tone and a language and an energy and a vibe that is specific to our film. That’s what we were in the middle of doing when the alarm sounded that at least we Americans needed to get the hell out of there, so that we could get back home. That’s where we are right now, very much in the middle of things."
The signs are all looking pretty good for this movie. Now let’s just hope it can hit its June 25, 2021 release date.
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