Robert Pattinson and Matt Reeves Say The Heaviness of 'The Batman' Is A Reflection of How Heavy The World Has Gotten
For Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson, the Covid-19 pandemic will likely be linked inextricably, in their minds, with The Batman.
That's not just because they had to pause filming numerous times for Covid-related issues either - Pattinson contracted it shortly after that first quarantine ended, shutting down shooting for even longer than intended - No, they'll remember it that way because, by accident or coincidence, so much of the film itself ended up feeling eerily similar.
They talked about these similarities in a recent interview with the LA Times: For Pattinson, it was the experience of being in the Batsuit.
"There's a weird pleasure to spending long amounts of time in the suit and in the dark. You're quite sealed off from everybody else when you're inside the cowl, and it's quite meditative. You're alone a lot of the time. No one is chatting with you because you've got the mask on and you can't hear. It allows you to slip into this quite Zen state.
"There was so much chaos going on in real life every single day, as soon as you got out of that studio and looked at your phone, you had to really silence a lot of that stuff to even focus on what you were doing in the first place. The same as Bruce putting on the suit, you go into this kind of strangely simplistic state where you can really just focus on one thing.
"You're just thinking, 'If there's still a world after we finish this movie there's still going to be Batman fans in it, so you'd better not mess this up.'"
This sort of echoes the experience of putting on a mask to go outside and do something essential during the height of the pandemic - you focus on what you need to do, you don't linger, you don't connect with anyone. The isolation is part of what's shielding you, both physically and mentally.
Then there's the film itself and its overall feel, which was more of a direct result of the world around it, as director Matt Reeves explained:
"The whole idea was to make Gotham a heightened version. Then as we were making the movie, there was so much going on in the world that there were moments where the world felt more heightened than Gotham. And we thought, 'Wow, is this movie going to be too light?'"
Indeed, Reeves ended up creating some eerie similarities he did not quite intend - including ones to the January 6th Insurrection, which he says was pure coincidence (he was basing a lot of his ideas on Watergate.)
"I remember shooting the scene where Jayme Lawson [who plays a Gotham mayoral candidate] is giving that speech about how we need to rebuild not just our city but our faith in institutions and each other. At that moment, these things just suddenly seemed to resonate in a way that I never intended that directly."
If you want to see for yourself just how eerily familiar a feeling this fantastic new film gives you, we highly reccommend grabbing a ticket to see The Batman, in theaters now.
