Robert Pattinson’s ‘The Batman’ Is Not an Origin Story

New footage of The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattinson as the superhero, debuted during CinemaCon on Tuesday. The first trailer of the movie dropped last August at the DC Fandome event but after several delays, the movie got pushed to a 2022 release. The new clip gave an insight into the movie with cuts from videos of the cast and Reeves talking about the movie, Entertainment Weekly reported. 

The director, Reeves spoke about the inspiration behind the movie and what made it more than an origin story.

Inspired from Frank Miller’s ‘Batman: Year One’

Reeves said that the movie was partially inspired by the DC comic arc Batman: Year One. Frank Miller wrote the arc and David Mazzucchelli illustrated it. While the comics came out in 1987, it was adapted into an animated film by the same name in 2011. 

The comic is set in Bruce Wayne’s first year as the black-caped superhero. Further, the story also gives deeper look into James Gordon, then a Gotham police detective, and his life. Both characters grapple with the reality of Gotham city’s criminal world and their own truths, eventually leading up to their alliance to stop crime in the city. 

Since the comic arc portrayed Wayne in his very first year as Batman, his character was raw and exposed. His persona as the dark knight had not taken the shape it eventually would in stories like The Dark Knight or The Dark Knight Rises. For this reason many consider Year One to be Batman’s origin story.

But ‘The Batman’ is not an origin story, Reeves says

Despite giving a closer look into the beginnings of Batman’s journey, Reeves maintains that the movie only refers to his origin. 

“I felt that we’ve seen lots of origin stories. It seems things go further and further into fantasy, and I thought, well, one place we haven’t been is grounding it in the way that Year One does, to come right in to a young Batman, not being an origin tale, but referring to his origins and shaking him to his core,” Reeves said in the clip played at CinemaCon.

Since the movie is set in the early phases of Wayne’s transformation into Batman, it also shows the superhero’s imperfect and vulnerable side.

“You can have it be very practical,” Reeves said. “But I also thought it could be the most emotional Batman movie ever made.”

What else do we know from the CinemaCon footage?

The footage also gave a glimpse into the dark aesthetic of the movie which portrays Gotham city where crime, corruption, and chaos reign supreme. The clip further gives a peek into more members of the cast: Jeffrey Wright, who plays James Gordon, the police detective; Zoe Kravitz, who stars as Catwoman or Selina Kyle; Paul Dano as Riddler or Edward Nashton and Colling Farrell as Penguin/ Oswald Cobblepot.

And obviously, we see Robert Pattinson, with his black-painted eyes as a broody Batman. Talking about how special the character of Batman is to him and so many people globally, Pattinson said that this iteration of the character was not the same as others.

“From the first conversation I had with Matt about it, I just knew that there was something radically different [here],” Pattinson said.

The Batman is now slated to release on March 4, 2022.