Robert Pattinson is the latest actor to don the cape and cowl of the Dark Knight in The Batman, and suiting up for the first time was a “powerful” — and historic — experience for Pattinson. In the gritty and grungy reboot from director Matt Reeves, Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is a do-it-yourself tinkerer wearing an industrial-style suit of reinforced armor in his crusade on crime. In an interview with DC Comics, Pattinson recalls putting on the surprisingly sleek Batsuit for the first time and his reaction to seeing himself as the Batman:
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“From getting cast to putting it on the first time, there were probably ten months. So you’ve gone through the whole thing of fan reaction, then your own reaction, then the fan reaction, then trying to prepare for it and reading the most untold number of graphic novels,” Pattinson said with a laugh. “When you finally get to put on the suit, it just suddenly, it makes it real. You suddenly think you can do something totally different with the character. It’s weird, you put it on the first time, and it’s so well designed, it fits so perfectly, you can move in it so well. You just look in the mirror, and you’re like, ‘Oh, shit’ (laughs).”
“It’s incredibly powerful,” Pattinson added. “You can really feel — there’s so much history that’s imbued in the suit and the iconography of it — and you can really feel it when you put it on.”
Before suiting up in his own costume custom-made for Reeves’ Batverse, Pattinson screen tested in the Batsuit worn by Val Kilmer in 1995’s Batman Forever. In a separate interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reeves recalled his reaction to seeing Pattinson step out as Batman:
“Part of the tradition is that when you’re playing Batman at Warner Bros., you don’t just do an audition, you do a screen test and they need to see you in a Batsuit,” Reeves explained. “But they don’t make you a Batsuit because that’s a very involved process. So what you do is you put on an old Batsuit. You put on the one that fits you.”
When Pattinson put on Kilmer’s Batsuit, Reeves said, “You could see Rob transforming immediately. The first thing that you do is you put it on and then he came out and looked at himself in the mirror, and he just turned to me and said, ‘It’s quite transformative.’ I said, ‘Sure is.’ That was an amazing experience.”
“Part of the tradition is that when you’re playing Batman at Warner Bros., you don’t just do an audition, you do a screen test and they need to see you in a Batsuit,” Reeves explained. “But they don’t make you a Batsuit because that’s a very involved process. So what you do is you put on an old Batsuit. You put on the one that fits you.”
Reeves added of Pattinson in Kilmer’s Batsuit, “You could see Rob transforming immediately. The first thing that you do is you put it on and then he came out and looked at himself in the mirror, and he just turned to me and said, ‘It’s quite transformative.’ I said, ‘Sure is.’ That was an amazing experience.”
ComicBook CRAM Presents The Batman:
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- The Bat and the Cat: The History of Batman and Catwoman’s Romance
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Image Courtesy of Warner Bros.
