Robert Pattinson has described his upcoming film ‘The Batman’ as “a sad movie” and his character, Bruce Wayne, as a “kind of a weirdo” in a wide ranging new interview with GQ.
It sounds like we’re going to get an introspective and tortured look at Bruce Wayne and Batman, when Robert Pattinson’s depiction of the iconic superhero arrives on the big screen on March 4th.
We already knew it would be long – the running time is listed as two hours and 47-minutes – and now it seems that over those 167 minutes will see Batman battle his own demons, as well as Gotham’s.
The film has had a long and arduous road through production, hampered by a couple of major setbacks. The first of these came when Pattinson – who is making his debut in the role – broke his wrist while doing a stunt, soon after filming began in late 2019. The second, and far more major for a giant blockbuster like this, was the arrival of a worldwide pandemic. Over the course of such a long and troubled shoot, the end product was never going to be all sunshine and roses.
“It’s a sad movie,” he explained. “It’s kind of about [Wayne] 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.’”
“[Batman is] kind of a weirdo as Bruce and a weirdo as Batman,” Pattinson continued. “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.” How wonderfully nihilistic.
The difficult filming conditions affected Pattinson personally, as well as his character. He told GQ that he experienced a “bit of a breakdown” while on set, amid endless days of shooting at nighttime and living in the isolation of COVID-19 protocols in different filming locations. “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.”
To help Pattinson during the difficult shoot, the film’s production built him a little tent off to the side of the set, where he could decompress. In perhaps the best quote from the entire GQ interview, Pattinson recalled, “I’d be in the tent just making ambient electronic music in the suit, looking over the cowl.” What a glorious image.
