Despite The Batman's title declaring a singular star at the film's centre, Matt Reeves version of the caped crusader aims to be more of an ensemble flick than ever before, examining not just the inner life of Batman, but also of Jim Gordon, the Riddler, and Catwoman, the latter two of which are frequently identified by their real names to further underline the attempts to tell a story about people rather than characters. Jeffrey Wright, Paul Dano, and Zoe Kravtiz (the stars behind the aforementioned characters) recently sat down with the media to discuss their characters and methodology. Batman himself Robert Pattinson was also in attendance, and you can read our interview with Pattinson here.
As Jeffrey Wright puts it, The Batman aims to tell a new, modern story, but one that is acutely aware of the history of each character. "I think every film that's come before our film has been done in its own way. It's been a film for then, and what really excited me about this script and Matt [Reeves, the director]'s vision was that he was making a Batman for now, and really honouring the history of the franchise from 1939 until today, and infusing this film with a relevance to 21st century Gotham that I think is really exciting. I think it's going to be thrilling for fans because it's modern, it's now, but it's also based on the origins of the characters, which is around mystery and detective work and all of that good stuff."
It does, however, take some creative liberties. While Paul Dano jokes that he wore green question mark underwear on set, his character is very different from the typical Riddler, looking far more realistic and unsettling than the top hat and cane we've seen before. "Matt gave us a gift with an incredibly beautiful, fully realised singular script," Dano says. "That was the foundation. He's offering us the chance to do something that's maybe a bit more real and grounded - more personal and emotional and psychological, while also fulfilling the archetypal duty that you have when you are entering a mythology. Somehow those two things have been married together. That was certainly the hope with this Riddler that any contact with reality might actually make him more scary. But also still, it's Gotham and he's the Riddler. So even if Matt referenced the Zodiac Killer or something, I was always like, okay, but you know, he's the Riddler. It was a challenge but a pleasure and I feel relieved that we're getting to release the film now, because I love it. And I think I'll be sad in a few weeks when I guess I move on with my life."
While Dano wanted to tap into the classic Riddler despite such a fresh interpretation, Kravitz's methods were almost the opposite. For her, the biggest challenge was "forgetting that these are iconic characters," and instead playing them as real people, the people behind the mask, the badge, the trench coat, that the movie wanted to examine. "In order to really honour who these characters are, and play them as three-dimensional people, you can't think of them as Catwoman," she explains. "You can't think of them as someone iconic. You just have to play a human being in a situation and hope that it all flows together. I think that's what this film did. We stripped away the Batman, Catwoman, Riddler and everyone had their real name."
Whatever costume the actors were exploring to find the person behind, they're the opposite of the usual stylised designs of the Batman universe to capture the feeling of homemade authenticity. While the idea is that we believe a single person sat alone in their home and made these costumes, Dano says the way they came together was through the art of collaboration. "There was a lot there on the page," he tells the press. "Matt certainly had some real life influences, like the Zodiac Killer. But what was cool about it is when you see the film, with Edward Ashton maybe not having the same resources to make his costume. Finding the right mask allows somebody who was totally powerless to be able to feel powerful, but also for me, it allows something to come through that I don't know if the same thing would without the mask. And then we tried this thing with the cling wrap because I thought I didn't want to shave all the hair off my body, because he should still be able to go out in the world and have his own Bruce Wayne, some invisible guy. I was just trying to cover all these homegrown details without the resources. I think it's an effective costume. I think it's fairly upsetting."
Jeffrey Wright's character is left out of this homemade ideal - he's a regular cop, and therefore wears regular clothes rather than an outfit he designed himself. As a result, he has a different perspective on the designs in the universe. "I think one of the questions that we asked at the beginning, and we asked the audience to ask, is ‘why this cape and cowl’? We don't assume it's brave and heroic, we don't assume that it represents all of these things that we've come, over time, to know Batman to be, but we see it as odd. And that relationship as well, between Gordon and Batman, there's an oddness. The scene that we shot on the first day of the two of them walking into this crime scene filled with cops. They're looking at him through a strange lens and wondering not only who he is, but Gordon, why are you with him? Immediately, they're isolated together out of a type of desperation. We drive on from there through this detective work, which goes back to the origins of Detective Comics, and is what Matt wanted to celebrate. Which is Batman as the world's greatest detective and in this case, Gordon as a cop in the street."
One of Batman's many nicknames is the World's Greatest Detective, but the action-packed movies haven't always made time for this amongst the car chases and beatdowns. While The Batman features both of those high octane tropes, Wright emphasises that it makes time for Batman the detective as much as anything else. "It's a Batman film, there's all that kinetic energy," he says." But [Reeves] really wanted to make a film that was layered and plot driven and focused on mystery. This detective work being centred allowed him to do that and also to pay homage to the films that he mentioned, the films that he first loved. He and I are similar ages that I first fell in love with the Sidney Lumet stuff, [and] The French Connection, All the President's Men, that golden age of American cinema in the '70s. I wouldn't say that Gordon has more depth, but I think he does certainly have more to do in partnership with Batman in this film, which was exciting for me. And it serves the interests of the character, but I think also the interests of the film. And also, it really goes back to the core of what DC is about."
Speaking of kinetic energy, for Kravitz, the physicality of the character was perhaps even more important than the look, but thankfully she had a familiar face with her. "It's rare to have a character whose physicality is equally as important as anything else," she says. "We had an incredible stunt choreographer named Rob Alonzo who was so interested in who these people were, and where they were emotionally. He found really interesting ways to infuse that into the stunt choreography. I did watch plenty of cat videos, feline videos, and I loved the mystery behind the way they moved and their smoothness and really wanting to find ways to just bring that elegance and that confidence to the character. He was my taekwondo teacher when I was eight years old. When I got the job, Matt called me and he said, 'I think you know our stunt choreographer, I think he taught you taekwondo'. I was like, 'that's impossible. I haven't done taekwondo since I was eight.' I have a photo of Rob holding up something for me to hit and I'm like a tiny little thing. It's surreal that he was teaching children taekwondo, and now we're doing Batman."
The Batman is in cinemas March 4.