Oh thank god, Matt Reeves confirms The Batman won't be an origin story
We’ve been getting little bits of information here and there for some time on the next big-screen installment of the caped crusader, Matt Reeves’ The Batman. And while we’ve all had a good time making our little jokes about his pointy new outfit and that sexy, sexy Batmobile, the most important issue of all has now been put to rest: It’s not going to be another damn origin story.
In a new interview with Nerdist, co-writer and director Reeves confirms that, at the very least, we’re not going to have to spend half the movie waiting around for Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne to become Batman: “I wanted to do not an origin tale, but a tale that would still acknowledge his origins, in that it formed who he is,” Reeves explains. “Like this guy, he’s majorly struggling, and this is how he’s trying to rise above that struggle. But that doesn’t mean that he even fully understands, you know. It’s that whole idea of the shadow self and what’s driving you, and how much of that you can incorporate, and how much of it you’re doing that you’re unaware of.” This is sounding a half-step away from the film opening with a quote from Carl Jung, but we’re okay with that.
Reeves also said his version of a Batman story involves giving the hero a “humanist bent,” which is also a refreshing change of pace after several films in which the Dark Knight drove around unloading millions of bullets into everything that moved. And he ends by explaining that a key theme of the film’s narrative will deal with corruption:
There’s something in there that feels very psychological, very emotional, and it felt like there was a way of exploring that along with the corruption in this place, Gotham. That feels very current. I think it always does. There’s almost no time when you can’t do a story about corruption. But today, it still seems incredibly resonant and maybe, from my perspective, maybe more so than maybe at other time.
Why, what’s timely now about corruption in the highest offices of power where we live? Anyway, it’s heartening to see Reeves saying promising things about his iteration of the superhero—now let’s just make sure we don’t have to put up with seeing Thomas and Martha Wayne gunned down outside the theater for the umpteenth time. That is an unnecessary flashback at this point, so just stop with it already. How about a flashback to the first time Bruce Wayne walked into a glass door by accident, like we all have? We’d love to see that in a Batman film.