The Batman: Matt Reeves Teases How Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne Will Develop Playboy Persona

After Justice League, Warner Bros. wanted to go a different route for the Bruce Wayne/Batman character. The studio parted ways with Ben Affleck and brought on Matt Reeves to direct an entirely new take on the Caped Crusader. Reeves cast Robert Pattinson as a much younger version of the character who’s also in his second year of being the iconic vigilante. The Batman focuses primarily on the Dark Knight and puts Bruce Wayne on the back burner, and fans want to know if Pattinson’s take on the character will ever get his playboy persona. According to this new interview with KCRW, the film’s director teases that he will.

“One of the things that was interesting to me was to focus on not an origin tale because we’d seen Burton had done that so well, and Nolan did it so well,” Reeves told the podcast. “I wanted to do an early years “Batman” and Bruce Wayne. And it was important to me that while it wasn’t an origin story, he was, in the early years of what he was doing, and was still trying to make sense of himself, was still a young man trying to put himself together and find a way to function. This idea of not yet understanding even the asset that being Bruce Wayne could be, the way that other iterations of the character have where they realize, oh, I can be Bruce Wayne, and that can be another kind of mask. He’s just not together enough yet to even understand how valuable that’s gonna be.”

The Batman is definitely more Batman heavy than Bruce Wayne. Pattinson doesn’t really get to explore the duality of the character as much as previous actors, but it really works in the films favor. Reeves wanted his film to put Batman at the forefront and leave Bruce Wayne with room for growth. The director previously revealed to Total Film why The Batman is more Batman and less Bruce Wayne. 

“I knew that I didn’t want to do an origin tale and I didn’t want to do a story where you saw Bruce going through the trauma and then becoming Batman because that has been done brilliantly many times. But I still wanted to make sure that we had Batman at the center, whose story was the main story, so that it was his character arc, but he had not already mastered himself,” Reeves explained. “And so you could see him evolve, and we could see him rise to the challenge. In doing that, I wanted to lean into the idea of making this a ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ thriller. That meant putting Batman more than Bruce Wayne right at the center, because that’s the person who would be trying to solve this mystery.”

Directed by Matt Reves, The Batman stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as GCPD’s James Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson, Jayme Lawson as mayoral candidate Bella Reál, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and Colin Farrell as Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot. The film is exclusively in theaters now.

Do you think Robert Pattinson will become the billionaire playboy we all know and love? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @NateBrail up on Twitter!