Robert Pattinson guarantees comic book movie fans will know Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” is unlike any other Batman movie ever made as soon as they see the opening shot. Reeves’ nearly-three hour Caped Crusader epic is inspired by New Hollywood classics from the 1970s, including “Taxi Driver,” “The Conversation” and “Chinatown.” Pattinson told GQ magazine that viewers will feel these inspirations from the movie’s first frame.
“I watched a rough cut of the movie by myself. And the first shot is so jarring from any other Batman movie that it’s just kind of a totally different pace,” Pattinson said. “It was what Matt was saying from the first meeting I had with him: ‘I want to do a ’70s noir detective story, like “The Conversation.”‘ And I kind of assumed that meant the mood board or something, the look of it. But from the first shot, it’s, ‘Oh, this actually is a detective story.’
Pattinson continued, “I feel like an idiot, because I didn’t even know that Batman was ‘the world’s greatest detective’; I hadn’t heard that in my life before—but it really plays. Just ’cause there’s a lot of stuff where he’s in amongst the cops. Normally, when you see Batman he arrives and beats people up. But he’s having conversations, and there are emotional scenes between them, which I don’t think have been in any of the other movies.”
Shooting “The Batman” resulted in Pattinson breaking his wrist and getting COVID. The actor told GQ that by the end of the shoot last year he was “really, really, really dead… I just looked at a photo of myself from April and I looked green.”
Pattinson is joined in “The Batman” by Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gil Colson, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth and Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin.
“The Batman” opens in theaters nationwide March 4 from Warner Bros.