Rumor: Matt Reeves’ The Batman Is So Dark It Made Warner Bros. Executives Leery

JB Augustine |

Sep 17, 2021

A new rumor claims that Matt Reeves’ upcoming The Batman film starring Robert Pattinson is so dark, especially with how it handles the Riddler, that it made Warner Bros. executives leery about releasing the film.

Before we get to that specific rumor, The Batman’s Commissioner Gordon, Jeffrey Wright hinted at what that darkness might look like while describing the film’s Gotham city.

In an interview with IndieWire, Wright described amazedly a city that is more real-world and grounded than before, supposedly even more than Christopher Nolan’s take. “It’s unlike Gothams we’d seen before,” he said. “It was a Gotham we could touch.”

Wright added the new Batmobile will also reflect a practical reality you could see blazing down a street today. “The way the Batmobile was described, I understood the aesthetic we were going for was something really palpable,” he said. “If you squint your eyes in some backstreet of New York, you could see it appear.”

He also said director Matt Reeves combines “themes around corruption and class tensions” and “fiction into non-fiction in a way that’s really balanced and cool.”

That sounds like a further tease of the humanist social commentary Reeves wants to inject into this world, but one person sees it differently. Mr. H Reviews over at YouTube thinks Gotham in The Batman might look truer to the comics.

On the other hand, the filmmaker and commentator is concerned there will be a “Trumpian” character in a commentary that could date the film.

“Having timeless points of class structure really works,” he says. A Brit, Mr. H lets his viewers know he doesn’t have a dog in American political divisions so he tries not to let it influence his judgment.

There is bound to be some quibbling with his assessment and stance but most will agree with where his judgment lands on the best Gotham ever – Batman: The Animated Series – although he thinks a movie couldn’t duplicate the scale of the beloved cartoon.

In other news going to a more tenebrous place than the cityscape of BTAS, Mr. H reports a source of his confirms The Batman was screened for a small group at Warner Bros. They also confirm “the tone is like nothing you’ve ever seen from a Batman film.”

It’s added the Warner representatives were “on the fence” about some of the content, especially where Riddler was involved, and felt it bordered on a horror picture that could be an uncomfortable release.

Mr. H is encouraged by this and loves the idea of a Riddler so dark and compelling it scares the studio. For him, it’s a good sign The Batman will push all kinds of boundaries.

Robert Pattinson might narrate the film partially in flashbacks or in some other way, but H is reassured by the accounts telling everyone The Batman is going to be one gloomy and perturbing journey.