Robert Pattinson is sharing his sentiments about playing the caped crusader.
In his cover story for GQ’s March issue, the 35-year-old actor spoke about suiting up for The Batman.
Of his experience filming the movie, Rob candidly admitted that he felt “very much alone”, stating:
“I broke my wrist at the beginning of it all, doing a stunt, even before COVID. So the whole first section was trying to keep working out — looking like a penguin.
I remember when that seemed like the worst thing that could go wrong.”
Filming for The Batman started at the latter part of 2019, and continued as the pandemic waged on. Rob himself tested positive for the virus in September 2020. Filming eventually started up again, which led to an 18-month-long shoot:
“The nature of the shoot was so kind of insular, always shooting at night, just really dark all the time, and I felt very much alone.
Even just being in the suit all the time. You’re not really allowed out of the studio with the suit on, so I barely knew what was going on at all outside.”
He shared that despite the loneliness and uncertainty he felt, he always had something to hold on to:
“I just always had this anchor of Batman. Rather than thinking you’re flotsam to the news, you could feel engaged without being paralyzed by it. Everyone I know, if you had a little momentum going in your career or your life, then stopping, you had to have a reckoning with yourself.
Whereas I was so incredibly busy the whole time, doing something that was also super high pressure, by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done… I was still playing Batman at the end of the day, even though the world might end.
…Even if the world burns down, I’ve just got to get this f**king thing out!!!
Rob also spoke about watching a rough cut of The Batman, reflecting:
“The first shot is so jarring from any other Batman movie that it’s just kind of a totally different pace. It was what [director] Matt [Reeves] was saying from the first meeting I had with him: ‘I want to do a ’70s noir detective story, like The Conversation.’ And I kind of assumed that meant the mood board or something, the look of it. But from the first shot, it’s, ‘Oh, this actually is a detective story.’
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.”
And when asked what fans can expect from the movie, Rob said “it’s a sad movie,” adding:
“It’s kind of about him trying to find some element of hope, in himself, and not just the city. Normally, Bruce [Wayne] 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.
DC is the kind of emo comic. There’s a nihilistic side to it. Even the artwork is really, really different. So hopefully there are a lot of sad people in the world.:
So does he feel nerves about how the film will be received by fans?
“It all depends. If people like the movie, it’s great. All of it.
You never really know until it happens.”
