The Batman: the surprise of the film explained by director Matt Reeves


In the absence of a post-credits scene, “The Batman” offers us a moment that is likely to make fans talk. And its director Matt Reeves decrypts it at length for us – SPOILERS ALERT

WARNING – The article below contains spoilers for “The Batman”, insofar as it returns to one of its surprises, with supporting comments from the director. So please go your way if you haven’t seen it yet, to better come back later.

If many superhero movies hide a bonus in the middle or at the end of their credits, The Batman breaks the rule, with a simple “?” in the shape of a snub that refers to the Riddler at the end of the credits. But Matt Reeves’ film does have what comes close to a post-credits scene, and it’s set just before the epilogue.

WHAT IS HAPPENING ?

Imprisoned in Arkham, the Riddler (Paul Dano) watched his plan fail from his cell window. As he mopes, another prisoner makes his voice heard and tries to console him by letting him know that he will be a friend to him, and that he could help him make a sensational return to the front of the stage. like Gotham loves it.

Before concluding the dialogue with a laugh that is no more misleading than his use of the word clown a little earlier: in the universe set up by Matt Reeves, the Joker already seems to exist, and he is behind bars when we meet him. A few shots even allow us to see his particularly marked (or lacerated?) face, but not necessarily to recognize his interpreter, who is none other than Barry Keoghan.

The Walt Disney Pictures

Barry Keoghan, from Marvel to DC in the space of a few months?

Revealed by Killing the Sacred Deer alongside Colin Farrell, who plays the Penguin here, the young Irishman had been announced in the casting, but under the name of Stanley Merkel. A police officer and colleague of James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), who meets a doom in the comic book “Bitter Victory” (Following “A Long Halloween”which partly inspired The Batman), as a victim of the Hangman Killer.

A few months before the release, while the actor distinguished himself at Marvel with The Eternals, a rumor began to circulate on the Web: the name of Stanley Merkel actually hid a famous adversary of the Bat Man. And the absence of Barry Keoghan in the photos and videos revealed did not help to dispel the doubt.

While he had shouted from the rooftops (and Twitter) his desire to play Robin, thanks to videos in which he showed his physical abilities, Barry Keoghan therefore embodies the nemesis of the Bat Man, even if he is for now credited as “Invisible Prisoner of Arkham”.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN ?

If The Batman is enough on its own, Matt Reeves manages to expand the universe he has set up thanks to this little exchange between Paul Dano and Barry Keoghan, which is reminiscent of the end of Batman Begins, when a playing card announced the Joker’s presence in what would become The Dark Knight. Is this the idea of ​​the director of this reboot worn by Robert Pattinson? Does he already have ideas? Rather than theorizing in a vacuum, we asked him the question, and he answered it at great length.

“Does the film introduce us to the main antagonist of the next film? No, that was not the intention”says Matt Reeves to our microphone. “I don’t know who will be the villain of the sequel. The character was originally supposed to appear earlier, in another scene, but it’s all a matter of context: I didn’t want to do a Batman origin story, because I I felt it had been done, and very well, in several other films.”

“Instead, I wanted to show him in his younger years as a vigilante. Like a ‘Batman: Year Two’ [en référence au comic book ‘Année Un’ de Frank Miller et David Mazzuchelli, qui revient sur la transformation de Bruce Wayne en Batman, ndlr]. And as I delved into the comic books, I discovered that a lot of his enemies emerged as a reaction to the presence of this masked individual called Batman in Gotham, and I realized that’s where their origin story lay. “

I don’t know yet who will be the villain of the sequel.

“This character in Arkham goes back to the Joker before he was the Joker. He hasn’t decided to claim that concept yet. But I wanted to make him someone that Batman met in his first year, and that he had him locked up because he was a killer. And because Batman was disturbed by the Riddler writing to him, he had to go to Arkham to try to establish his profile, see if he could succeed in entering his state of mind to understand the reasons for these letters.”

“When he goes to the asylum, the Joker who is locked up – but who is not the Joker because there is none – manages to read in Batman: ‘Why do you wonder why he wants you? written? You are exactly the same, both masked vigilantes.’ He draws a comparison between the two, and Batman is so pissed off by the idea that he rejects it.”

“The scene was originally in the movie, and Barry Keoghan was great, as was Robert Pattinson. But seeing how big the movie is, I ended up realizing she didn’t need to be there. I still kept his second scene. Because it marked the end of the Riddler arc, but also because it showed that more trouble was brewing.”


Warner Bros. Pictures

Around which adversary will Batman and Catwoman find themselves?

“When Selina tells Bruce in the epilogue that the town will never change, removing the scene [avec le futur Joker] changed the issue. Because you didn’t have the feeling that something was already brewing. Even if the goal was not to say: ‘This is where the next film will go!’ The idea was more to give context to this world, and to show that even if the grip of corruption has been broken to some degree, trouble is not going to stop brewing.”

“And that explains in part why Bruce doesn’t go with Selina. Why he can’t. He is forced to do what he does, and that’s why I saved this scene. Anyway, all this to say He’s the character you’re thinking of, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be the next movie’s villain.”

The bets are therefore open to know who will be the antagonist of a sequel. And how his future Joker will manifest himself there. What if Matt Reeves dared to leave him locked up until the end of the arc worn by Robert Pattinson, by only involving him in the stories in small touches?

Interview by Maximilien Pierrette in Paris on February 21, 2022

“The Batman” as seen by Matt Reeves:



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