BAT WITH A VENGEANGE
There are few pop-culture characters as malleable to reinvention as Batman. With a comic-book career spanning more than 80 years, billionaire orphan Bruce Wayne’s crime-fighting Caped Crusader alter ego has been consistently popular on the big screen. Thus far, interpretations have varied from campy to gothic to reality-grounded and back again, with various animated interludes including a Lego movie.
Directors like Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder have put their own stamp on the Bat. Up next is Matt Reeves, whose films have retained a certain groundedness and soul, even as his budgets and ambitions have expanded. After making Cloverfield and horror remake Let Me In, he took over the new Planet Of The Apes series, directing Dawn Of… and War For….
“I’ve loved [Batman] since I was a kid, and I was introduced to the character through the Adam West TV series,” Reeves tells TF. “The show came out the same year I was born.” Having enjoyed all iterations throughout the years, Reeves never really pictured himself making a Batman movie. “Every time that the movies came out, I was a huge fan. I just never thought that the opportunity would come my way.”
In just the last 10 years, audiences have had the end of Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy starring Christian Bale, as well as Ben Affleck’s older, grizzled take on the character in the DCEU. In fact, in one multiverse, Affleck’s Batman isn’t even done yet, as he’ll feature in some capacity alongside Michael Keaton’s Dark Knight in 2022’s The Flash.
When Reeves first became involved in the project, The Batman was set to be a spin-off movie for Affleck. Deep in post-production on War For The Planet Of The Apes, Reeves postponed what he thought was a general meeting with Warner Bros, until he found out it was a Batman project. Although he didn’t connect to that version of the script. “It was very much connected to the DC Universe in a way that had other characters in it from the DC Universe, and it was this whole thing,” Reeves explains. “I thought it was a totally valid version of that story – it just wasn’t one that I could see myself making.”
Telling the execs that
