The Batman: How Robert Pattinson’s take on the character is different from the rest

With less than a month to go before the release of The Batman, audiences are anxiously awaiting the latest incarnation of the Dark Knight played by Robert Pattinson. Each actor who has played Batman has attempted to put their own stamp on the character, but just how different will Robert Pattinson’s take on the character be?

Robert Pattinson is featured on GQ this month and teased how his Batman is different from the ones that came before. The film takes place during Bruce Wayne’s second year as Batman but his war on crime isn’t going nearly as well as he would have hoped; in fact, Pattinson told GQ that things n Gotham have actually gotten worse.

In all the other movies, Bruce goes away, trains, and returns to Gotham believing in himself, thinking, I’m gonna change things here. But in this, it’s sort of implied that he’s had a bit of a breakdown. But this thing he’s doing, it’s not even working. Like, it’s two years into it, and the crime has gotten worse since Bruce started being Batman. The people of Gotham think that he’s just another symptom of how shit everything is. There’s this scene where he’s beating everyone up on this train platform, and I just love that there’s a bit in the script where the guy he’s saving is also just like: Ahh! It’s worse! You’re either being mugged by some gang members, or a monster comes and, like, fucking beats everybody up! The guy has no idea that Batman’s come to save him. It just looks like this werewolf.

The Batman finds Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne entirely devoted to his Batman persona to the point where it’s become an obsession. “There’s a moment when Alfred asks Bruce what his family would think of him tarnishing the family legacy with his new side hustle,” Pattinson said. “And Bruce says: ‘This is my family legacy. If I don’t do this, then there’s nothing else for me.’ I always read that as not like, ‘There’s nothing else,’ like, ‘I don’t have a purpose.’ But like: ‘I’m checking out.’ And I think that makes it a lot sadder. Like, it’s a sad movie. It’s kind of about him trying to find some element of hope, in himself, and not just the city. Normally, Bruce never questions his own ability; he questions the city’s ability to change. But I mean, it’s kind of such an insane thing to do: The only way I can live is to dress up as a bat.”

The actor has previously teased that fans will be shocked at how different The Batman is and told GQ that one of the big differences will be just how much the film embraces the detective aspect of the character. Matt Reeves had told him from day one that he wanted to do a ’70s noir detective story in the vein of The Conversation, and it seems he’s succeeded. “From the first shot, it’s, ‘Oh, this actually is a detective story,’” Pattinson explained. “And I feel like an idiot, because I didn’t even know that Batman was ‘the world’s greatest detective’; I hadn’t heard that in my life before—but it really plays. Just ’cause there’s a lot of stuff where he’s in amongst the cops. Normally, when you see Batman he arrives and beats people up. But he’s having conversations, and there are emotional scenes between them, which I don’t think have been in any of the other movies.” The Batman is set to hit theaters on March 4, 2022.