Matt Reeves explains why Robert Pattinson’s Batman doesn’t “growl”
By Ashley Hurst
Robert Pattinson’s performance as Bruce Wayne in Matt Reeves’ The Batman will no doubt go down as one of the finest interpretations of the character ever on the big screen. Dark and gritty, it sometimes felt like a love letter to the comics. However, at times, it was evident that Reeves changed some important aspects of the character, from Bruce Wayne’s playboy disguise to Batman’s growly voice. While some creative decisions may seem dubious, Reeves has a good reason for everything.
If we cast our minds back to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, with Christian Bale playing the titular hero, you’ll remember that Batman’s voice is about as growly as it can be. It’s vastly different from how Bruce Wayne talks in his day-to-day life.
Compare that to Robert Pattinson’s Batman, who doesn’t make any attempt to disguise his voice. As Reeves explains, there’s a simple explanation for this: “I knew I didn’t wanna do a Batman that had been done previously, that had the growl that we’d seen,” the director told ComicBookMovie.
Moreover, given that Batman was naturally going to speak more in The Batman — solving all the riddles and whatnot — Reeves figured that it would be best to give him a clear, distinguishable voice. “I knew that in this version, if you’re gonna do a detective story, Batman is gonna have a lot of dialogue scenes. Which, when you actually look at all the movies, Bruce may have a lot of long dialogue scenes but Batman’s dialogue scenes, he has dialogue but it’s controlled.”
And he had one more reason: “If he was growling, we wouldn’t be able to connect to him emotionally. There was a real exploration to figure out how to make that work.”
One of the best things about the movie was how much fans connected with the character on his journey to take down the Riddler. So on that front, keeping his voice natural was absolutely the right idea. With a sequel officially on the way and perhaps even more movies down the line, we may see an older and grumpier Batman decide to adopt the growl.
Robert Pattinson wanted to make his Batman whisper
Funnily enough, Robert Pattinson also didn’t want to put on rough gravely voice for the character. He had a whole different idea.
“Everyone does this kind of gruff, gravelly thing, and I’m like, ‘I’m going to do the opposite, I’m gonna go really whispery’,” he said during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I tried to do it for the first two weeks, and it just looked absolutely atrocious, and they told me to stop doing it.”
I really hope we one day get to hear his atrocious whispers in a blooper reel. The Batman is currently streaming on HBO Max!
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