Matt Reeves Is Still Aiming For A Grounded ‘The Batman’ Trilogy, Which Means No Gentleman Ghost
The fluctuating future of the DCU means plans will be subject to change going into 2025, and maybe beyond it. But this is not deterring Matt Reeves who still wants to turn his Batman arc into a trilogy.
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And that will happen, he says, despite the delays and the time that has passed. “Yes, that is still the plan. I mean, it’s sticking very closely to the path we envisioned,” Reeves told Collider.
However, he acknowledges there was a reshuffling of priorities, which is where Penguin came in. “Things kind of shifted. So, when we came up with the idea to do The Penguin, that was something where I had always intended to continue Penguin’s story, and wanted to tell this story of his beginning of rise to power,” Reeves explained.
He went further, “Because we know that he’s introduced in The Batman as a kind of mid-level, sort of overlooked, mocked figure, who’s not yet in anyone’s eyes the kingpin we come to know him as in the lore.”
He continued, “And so, that was deliberate because I wanted – whereas it wasn’t Batman’s origin story, I wanted the origin stories of these other characters, of the Rogues Gallery and that story was originally going to be the entrée into the next movie.”
Reeves has quite a few Rogues to build up since he is juggling a lot of them. That includes a barely glimpsed Joker played by Barry Keoghan. There are and have been a few Clown Princes over the years and Keoghan’s might develop more in the next film whether fans care to see him or not.
Whatever part, big or small, he plays, Reeves will develop it realistically, meaning Joker nor anyone else is dabbling in magic. This is good for consistency in the Bat-Verse, but it also means Reeves might leave out villains people actually want.
“What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world,” Reeves said when speaking to SFX Magazine via Variety.
“We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It’s meant to feel quite grounded,” he added. “It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love. That’s exactly what we want to do.”
Reeves concluded, “Gentleman Ghost is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”
These remarks could imply there is a chance this spirit will go bump in the night, but there probably isn’t in The Batman’s corner of the Multiverse. Gentleman Ghost devotees might have more luck in The Brave and The Bold, a DCU film to be directed by Andy Muschietti.
Gentleman Ghost has always had a following since his first appearance in the 1970s. He even made it onto The Super Friends cartoon, but that was ages ago. Thanks to more contemporary appearances on Batman: The Brave and The Bold and Batman: Caped Crusader, the character’s undergoing renewed popularity.
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