The Batman Story: Everything We Know About The Movie’s Plot

It’s time to light up the bat signal once again, as Bruce Wayne is set to return to the big screen in Matt Reeves’ reboot The Batman, which stars Robert Pattinson in the titular role. Though production is currently on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, casting news and hints from Reeves have slowly begun to reveal some of what The Batman‘s story will be.

The Batman has changed a lot from Warner Bros.’ early plans, which were to have Ben Affleck direct and reprise his role from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. In stark contrast to the older, jaded Batman that appeared in those movies, Pattinson will be playing a much younger version of the caped crusader. The screenplay for The Batman was co-written by Romanian filmmaker Mattson Tomlin and Reeves himself. The latter is best known for directing the last two films in the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy and the found footage monster movie Cloverfield.

With the release of The Batman, there will have been three different big screen versions of Gotham City’s protector in the space of a decade. Christian Bale closed out his take on the role with The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, and Affleck took on the character for the first phase of the DC Extended Universe. Will Reeves manage to bring a take that still feels fresh and interesting? Here’s everything we know about The Batman‘s story so far.

Robert Pattinson’s Batman is in His Second Year

Batman’s origin story has been told many times before – if not in full detail, like Batman Begins, then in opening movie montages. Reeves has wisely decided not to do yet another origin story. The Batman will instead be set in Bruce Wayne’s second year of having a secret life as the caped vigilante. Reeves explained that “I wanted to do not an origin tale, but a tale that would still acknowledge his origins, in that it formed who he is.” Part of acknowledging Bruce’s origins will also include addressing his billionaire status in a world increasingly critical of billionaires and what they do (and don’t do) with their fortunes. Because this version of Bruce Wayne is young, he is not yet the world’s greatest detective that he will eventually become, and we’re likely to see him still making a lot of mistakes.

It’s a Detective Story

“DC” stands for the comic publisher’s original name, Detective Comics, and Batman is as much a detective as he is a superhero. Even before Reeves come onboard, when Affleck was still set to direct, The Batman was being planned as a detective story – in contrast to the world-ending stakes of Justice League and Batman V Superman. Those plans survived the change of screenwriter and director, and in 2017 Reeves laid out his idea for what The Batman would be:

“I think there’s a chance to do an almost noir-driven, detective version of Batman that is point of view driven in a very, very powerful way that is hopefully going to connect you to what’s going inside of his head, and inside of his heart.”

A leaked set photo showed a murder scene that appeared to have been perpetrated by the Riddler, which suggests a tone of pitting Bruce Wayne’s fledgling detective against Gotham City’s violent serial killers. Other set photos showed Bruce Wayne being beset by gang members with sinister painted faces. The Batman will be drawing some inspiration from the Arkham games, which blended Batman’s brawling action with his detective skills. There were reportedly plans at one point to have the entire movie set inside Arkham Asylum, like the first of the Arkham games was. That idea didn’t pan out, but The Batman will have some scenes set in Arkham Asylum.

The District Attorney Has Trouble Telling the Truth

The casting of Peter Sarsgaard as a district attorney in The Batman immediately led to speculation that he would be playing Harvey Dent a.k.a. Two-Face. However, Sarsgaard says that he’s playing a new character created for the movie, Gil Colson, who is very unlike the high-minded Harvey Dent that Aaron Eckhart played in The Dark Knight. “I’m basically a politician that has trouble telling the truth,” was how Sarsgaard described his character, adding that his DA is “a pretty distasteful person.” Corruption among politicians and police is a common theme in portrayals of Gotham City, and indeed part of the justification for Batman’s existence. After all, if the justice system isn’t willing or able to bring criminals and crime bosses to justice, then someone else has to do it.

Batman Will Face Multiple Villains

Gotham City is rank with crime and supervillains, and Pattinson’s Batman will have to face off against multiple bad guys. John Turturro has been cast as mob boss Carmine Falcone, Colin Farrell will play the Penguin, and Paul Dano will play the Riddler. While this may sound like The Batman is running the risk of turning into Spider-Man 3 and having simply too many villains to contend with, they won’t all have the same amount of prominence. Farrell has said that he doesn’t actually have too many scenes as the Penguin, and Carmine Falcone is usually more of a third-string villain or part of the overall tapestry of corruption in Gotham, rather than being a supervillain in his own right. With that in mind, it looks like the Riddler will be the primary villain of The Batman – which definitely fits with the idea of this being a detective story.

Catwoman’s Role

One of the most mysterious elements of The Batman is the role of Catwoman, who will be played by Zoë Kravitz. Set photos and videos showed Batman and Catwoman riding side-by-side on motorcycles, and Kravitz has been required to train very hard and stay in shape for the role, so we’re likely going to see a great deal of Catwoman in action as a fighter with catlike acrobatic reflexes. The video of the pair on motorcycles ends with Batman falling off his ride in a rather undignified manner (possibly as a result of sabotage from Catwoman). The two characters have a long and complicated history in comics, given that Batman fights crime and Catwoman is a criminal, but the likelihood of a romantic (or at the very least, flirtatious) relationship between the two of them in The Batman is high. If Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle team up, as the set videos suggest, it may be because he enlists her help in tracking down a greater evil: the Riddler.

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Putting all of the pieces together, it looks like Reeves is bringing Batman back down to street level after the last two movies saw him fighting aliens and stopping the end of the world. There’s no indication yet that The Batman will have any sci-fi or fantasy elements, beyond the basic concept of superheroes existing. Even the Dark Knight trilogy, the most grounded big-screen adaptation of Batman to date, still featured a lot of globe-trotting and the threat of a nuclear bomb blowing up Gotham City. Meanwhile, Reeves has described his film as being a much more intimate portrayal that could be closer in spirit to Todd Phillips’ Joker. The Batman is hoping to resume filming this summer – at which point we can expect set photos to drop even more clues.

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Hannah Shaw-Williams
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Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

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