THE BATMAN Writer Mattson Tomlin on The Immense Pressure of Bringing The Dark Knight To The Big Screen... Again
When dealing with Batman, one of the most popular superhero characters of all time, any filmmaker who chooses to take it on is going to be feeling a crazy amount of pressure. This is a character that has been envisioned for the big screen several times over the years by different filmmakers. Most have been great, but there are a couple that have been disappointments.
Fans are really hoping that Matt Reeves’ The Batman is going to be one of the great ones. We still don’t know what to expect from it, but we will know a lot more this coming weekend during the film’s panel at the DC FanDome event. While we wait for that, The Batman co-writer Mattson Tomlin, who also wrote the upcoming film Project Power, opened up about the immense pressure of bringing this character to the big screen… again.
“I now have such an appreciation for both ends of the spectrum as you say. With The Batman, there is this immense pressure because people love the character. I love that character and he means a tremendous, tremendous deal to me. And you want people to like what you’re doing. You want people to come back and see this new version and with something like Project Power, you want people to engage for the very first time, because they don’t know what it is. So the pressure of the expectation is off, but there’s a new pressure in trying to invite people to come to the new party.”
Well, we’ll eventually know whether or not that he and Reeves were able to pull it off and if fans are going to want to keep coming back to the new Batman party.
Tomlin previously teased how the film will explore Bruce Wayne’s traumatic past and how it will do that in fun and exciting ways.
"I think that really looking at Batman as somebody who has gone through this trauma, and then everything that he's doing is then a reaction to that, rather than shy away from that, I think this film leans into that in some very fun and surprising ways.”
The Batman will be a noir-style film that will lean into Batman in his detective mode. The director said that it’s going to tell a deep and psychological story and confirmed that the movie will not be an origin story. However, it will acknowledge his origin and how it’s still something that he’s “majorly struggling” with.
It’s also been said that this is a character-driven story that will put a focus on the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth.
The film stars Robert Pattinson as Batman, Andy Serkis as Alfred, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/The Riddler, Jayme Lawson as Bella Reál, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone and Peter Sarsgaard as Gil Colson. Gil Perez-Abraham (Orange is the New Black), Charlie Carver (Teen Wolf), and Max Carver have also been cast in undisclosed roles.
The Batman is now scheduled to hit theaters on October 1, 2021. I imagine we’ll be seeing a first trailer for The Batman this weekend.
Source: Discussing Film