The Batman Director Calls Reboot “The Scariest Batman That’s Been Done”

After scaring up alien monsters and vampires in Cloverfield and Let Me In, director Matt Reeves unleashes a terrifying take on the Dark Knight in The Batman. In year two of a younger Bruce Wayne’s (Robert Pattinson) costumed crime-fighting career, Pattinson’s creature of the night stalks the streets and strikes fear into the hearts of criminals like Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) and the Penguin (Colin Farrell). But when a trail of cryptic clues draws Batman into an underworld littered with corruption and conspiracy, he’ll have to unmask the culprit behind a series of sadistic attacks on Gotham’s elite: the Zodiac Killer-esque Riddler (Paul Dano). 

“This movie, I think, is probably the scariest Batman that’s been done,” Reeves says in the latest print issue of Total Film Magazine, “because the idea of what Batman’s doing – it’s scary.” 

Christopher Nolan’s rebooted Batman Begins pit that Dark Knight (Christian Bale) against the fear-stoking Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), but Reeves’ Riddler is “very scary” and the most dangerous threat yet to the Gotham City protected by Pattinson’s Batman. 

Anger and vengeance personified, Batman has “never been done in quite this way,” added first-time DC director Reeves. “It’s a detective story, it’s an action movie, and it’s a psychological thriller.” 

Motivated by the senseless murders of his parents, Reeves’ reclusive Bruce is “a reckless rockstar” and an “odd creature,” according to Pattinson, drawn to the reboot because “there was something radically different from anything with the Batman movies before.” 

The gritty and noir-influenced The Batman is not an adaptation of the classic origin story Year One or any other Bat-beginning tale, but the film follows a rookie caped crusader dispensing his own justice — and punishment — as he fights to save the crime-ridden Gotham City. 

“He doesn’t have as much control over his personality, like the delineation between when he’s Batman and when he’s Bruce is not so clear and other kinds of iterations of it where he really knows what he’s doing when he’s putting on the cowl,” Pattinson said at FanDome. “And I kind of really like this idea of it’s a little bit out of control. He hasn’t completely defined what Batman is. I mean, he gets lost in it whenever he’s putting on [Batman] every night. He’s not sleeping and he’s becoming this quite sort of odd creature.” 

Starring Robert Pattinson as Batman, Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as the Riddler, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Colin Farrell as Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobblepot, and Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, The Batman opens in theaters on March 4.