The Batman director Matt Reeves talks Ben Affleck, Joker, and why Batman's actually really weird
Batman returns. Again. But this time, the Dark Knight's different – more brooding, and with deeper emotional baggage. Director Matt Reeves has done an admiral job re-introducing the iconic character, now played by Robert Pattinson, back into the mainstream with The Batman.
Sitting down with Total Film a week before the movie's cinema release, Reeves spoke about making a Batman movie that features so much more Batman than Bruce Wayne, how his vision was furthered when Ben Affleck (who played Bats in Justice League) left the project, and whether there was any discussion about crossing over with Joaquin Phoenix's Joker. Here's the Q&A, edited for clarity.
TF: Batman in this film is... he's weird. It's the first time it's clicked with me just how fundamentally strange this character is.
Reeves: The very notion of being Batman is weird. A very strange response to [his parents' death]. What I love about the character is that it's incredibly psychological. For so many superheroes, it's about them doing the altruistic thing, right? They're trying to do something to help other people. But really, Batman, he's addicted, at least in this story, to being Batman. It's about making sense of the world, of his life, of what happened to him when he was a kid. In a certain way, he's stuck at being 10. He's never getting over this experience. And so to go out night after night, looking for a fight, looking for crime, is a very particular choice. And it is, I would say, weird is definitely part of it.
TF: This is the first Batman film where we've seen so much more Batman than Bruce Wayne. What went into that decision?
Reeves: I knew that I didn't want to do an origin tale and I didn't want to do a story where you saw Bruce going through
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