Matt Reeves Reveals If The Batman Will Have a Political Message

One of Matt Reeves‘ conditions for taking on The Batman was the fact he wanted to tell a story he felt was important. That seems to include working today’s current events into the film as necessary — good, bad, or otherwise. On a recent press tour for Tales from the Loop — an Amazon Prime Video series he executive produced — Reeves admitted it’s not particularly possible to avoid discussing politics when The Batman deals with a billionaire that fights crime in his off time.

“You use those surface elements of it, and you explore them in a way that, I feel, they haven’t been explored yet,” Reeves tells the Daily Beast. “Nolan had a brilliant take on them, and so did Burton. Everybody has a particular take. For me, I knew that I would be coming into a history of some pretty great movies. And I didn’t want to just do a Batman film; I wanted to do a Batman film where I was allowed to explore the things that matter to me. I was really lucky that they were very excited about that take.”

The director says those elements won’t be forced; rather, they’ll fit into the film organically and fit well in an overall context.

“The movie that we’re making, which is now on pause, is absolutely made in the context of today,” he adds. “It doesn’t ignore any of that. I think that becomes incredibly exciting. It’s like any great tale that you can keep revisiting though the context of the times, and also through the context of human experience, and find new ways to come at the character that illuminates something that’s meaningful to you, and hopefully meaningful to an audience.”

In the same interview, Reeves revealed the time off from principal photography (due to coronavirus shutdowns) has given him a chance to properly assess how the production is going at this point in time.

“There is that thing too, when you get to push pause. I’ve worked on some other movies where, for various reasons, you have a shutdown—whether it’s an actor gets sick and needs time to recover, or actually one time I got sick and needed time to recover. I do find that any time you’re in the midst of something enormous where you can suddenly stop and take a little stock of where you’re at, that can be a creative gift as well. But I think the hardest thing is just that we lost a beloved crew member. That, to me, is something we’re all still dealing with.”

The Batman is currently set to hit theaters June 25, 2021.