Batman’s previous incarnations, like those portrayed by Ben Affleck and Christian Bale, all modified their voices while playing the Caped Crusader. However, Robert Pattinson’s version of the characters categorically forwent such an acting choice and Matt Reeves has finally revealed why that was the case.
The Batman has been hailed as one of the most authentic interpretations of The Dark Knight, which leans pretty heavily into the detective persona of Batman (as opposed to Nolan’s gizmo nut and Snyder’s Justice League member). Given that the character is going to remain isolated from the wider DCU, this portrayal of Batman should not have any bearing on the DCU’s Batman, due to making his debut in Brave and the Bold.
Batman had long lines of dialogue
Matt Reeves revealed why the character of Batman does not employ some level of voice modulation like that of the Nolanverse or the Snyderverse. The director, as per comicbookmovie.com, revealed:
“I knew I didn’t wanna do a Batman that had been done previously, that had the growl that we’d seen. Because I knew that in this version, if you’re gonna do a detective story, Batman is gonna have a lot of dialogue scenes. Which, when you actually look at all the movies, Bruce may have a lot of long dialogue scenes but Batman’s dialogue scenes, he has dialogue but it’s controlled.”
The idea here was to make it comfortable for Robert Pattinson to perform, while also making it so that fans could relate to Batman, without having to concentrate to decipher what the character was trying to growl. It was perhaps a good choice, given how verbose this Batman is, with his intimidation factor coming from pure skill rather than fear tactics that would be hilarious if taken out of context. It manages to make the character more impactful and grounded, perhaps even more so than what Nolan was able to do.
Another way The Batman grounded the character: adrenaline
There is a scene in The Batman that had gotten fans speculating about the wider world of The Batman after it had been released. In the scene where Bruce is dealing with immense amounts of pain, he produces a vial of green liquid and thrusts it into his thigh, giving him a significant amount of edge. The subsequent ‘hulking out; by the character led a lot of fans to believe that this was a small dose of Venom, something used by Bane, the famed Batman villain, to enhance his abilities.
However, the official art book of the film clarified that the veil had nothing to do with Bane. It was in fact, pure adrenaline, something that kept Bruce going even when he was in severe pain. This not only worked towards making the character seem even more human but was also able to put on display the Caped Crusader’s ingenuity, something that has largely been relegated to science fiction elements in shared universes.
The Batman is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
