Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson reinvented the Dark Knight for the big screen earlier this year, with the debut of the acclaimed DC film The Batman. With Pattinson taking on the role of Bruce Wayne, Reeves aimed to tell a kind of Batman story that hadn’t been seen in movies before, focusing on the character’s skills as a detective and having him track down a terrifying serial killer. It was a massive departure from the Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder takes on Batman, but it was met with love from both critics and fans, as well as success at the box office.
Videos by ComicBook.com
It turns out, the folks involved with those previous Bruce Wayne iterations also enjoyed what Reeves brought to the table with The Batman. David S. Goyer, who wrote Batman Begins, praised Reeves’ vision for bringing out the detective in Bruce and doing something totally different.
“I think Matt Reeves is a very good filmmaker,” Goyer told IGN. “I had no idea what I would think of [Robert] Pattinson but I liked him. And I was like, I buy it. He’s a different take on it. But I buy it. I thought the chemistry with Zoë [Kravitz] was amazing. I liked how Noir it was and I liked that they went in the detective angle and I liked what they did with Riddler. I liked it.”
Goyer went on to compare all the different visions for live-action Batman movies to the way the comics have worked for years. Each little iteration or franchise can be viewed the same way as different comic book runs. That idea continues to work as long as the new versions find a way to be different than the ones that came before.
“When you read comic books… you read like so and so’s run or like, Ed Brubaker’s run on Daredevil,” Goyer continued. “And even after [Brian Michael] Bendis’ and they’re different where you’re like, Oh, I like that one. Oh, I like that one.”
Bringing wildly different version of Batman to the big screen allows all sorts of different fans to be invested in the character at some level. Whenever Reeves and Pattinson are finished, the next team to tackle the character will probably do something that feels like a total 180 from their take.
What did you think of Reeves’ vision for The Batman? Let us know in the comments!