Robert Pattinson “obsessively” wanted to play Batman

Back when Robert Pattinson was first announced as the next actor to portray Bruce Wayne on the big screen, in The Batman, people had mixed opinions. After concluding his time as Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga, Pattinson took some time away from blockbuster franchises.  But when the possibility arrived to play a character as seminal and beloved as Batman, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he had to take.

“I was aiming for quite different stuff,” Pattinson told Total Film. “Obviously it’s basically the jewel in the crown of the parts you can really get as an actor. But I’d never really thought I was anywhere close to doing it, and especially with the other parts I was attracted to at the time.”

Despite the clear difference from the roles he was chasing at the time, Pattinson wasn’t going to pass on the chance. In fact, he “obsessively” kept tabs on the role for a year to make sure it wouldn’t evade him. “I just kept obsessively checking up on it for the next year or so. Even my agents were like, ‘Oh, interesting. I thought you only wanted to play total freaks?’ And I was like, ‘He is a freak!'”

"Out of all the comic-book characters and that kind of movie, I’ve seen every single one of the [Batman] movies in the cinema, which I can’t really say I’ve done for any other series. I was always really looking forward to them coming out. There was the combination of just being so attracted to it, but also feeling like it’d had a lot of movies made about it, and none of them are bad movies."

It’s fair to say he knows the character incredibly well, and I’m sure that will shine through in his performance.

The Batman director Matt Reeves discusses Paul Dano’s Riddler

Ah, the Riddler. Most movie fans know him from Batman Forever, when he was played enthusiastically by Jim Carrey. Who can forget that? The Riddler is also the main antagonist of The Batman, but he’s been re-imagined to be much more grounded and gritty.

Speaking to Total Film, director Matt Reeves explained where he got his inspiration for this version of Riddler: “I read Mindhunter. It made me think of the Zodiac killer, and how he actually wore this primitive costume that really is a primitive superhero costume… a rogues’ gallery costume,” Reeves said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s really scary, the idea of people really wearing masks, and withholding their identities, and terrorizing people, and how scary that is.’ And so I started thinking, ‘Well, it could be an origin tale for the Riddler, and it could be an origin tale for some of these other characters.'”

"He’s not just a serial killer. He definitely has a political agenda. There’s a terrorist aspect to him. He’s indicting the city for what it is. And one of the things he’s doing with each of these crimes is, he’s attacking the so-called legitimate pillars of the city."

Are we about to see Batman’s most frightening foe yet?

Will there be a sequel to The Batman?

Finally, both Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz, who plays Catwoman, talked to Total Film about potential for a sequel. “To see a person like Selina really get in touch with her power and become Catwoman? That’s a journey that I’m really interested in exploring,” Kravitz said. “We haven’t quite seen that yet. We usually meet Catwoman, and it’s either a very quick transformation – an overnight thing – or she’s already there. And so to find the emotional journey that brings her to the place where she is making the choice to be this person, is what I’m really excited about.”

As for Pattinson, he’s still focused on this first movie. “When I saw it the first time, even from the first shot, it does feel incredibly different, tonally, to the other movies,” he said. “And it’s so strange, and kind of… It’s sad, and quite touching. It’s a really, really unusual Batman story, and it almost seems harder for me to imagine it being a series afterwards. I mean, they always have that little bit at the end, that’s like: ‘…and coming up!’ But other than that, it feels strangely personal. I think people will be quite shocked at how different it is.”

The Batman premieres on March 4. In the meantime, there’s a mysterious new tie-in website, Rataalada.com, which invites users to solve some riddles in exchange for pieces of media.

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