Most Batman film adaptations usually portray the vigilante's Bruce Wayne alter-ego as a suave playboy billionaire, but for 2022's The Batman, director Matt Reeves and actor Robert Pattinson have gone in an entirely different direction. Speaking to Empire, Reeves revealed how Nirvana's "Something In The Way"--which was also used in the 2020 trailer for the film--influenced the direction that the filmmaker took with this grungier incarnation of the character.

"When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana's 'Something In The Way,'" Reeves said. "That's when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we've seen before, there's another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant's Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor."

Pattinson was the ideal actor to embody this look and emotion, according to Reeves, as his performance in the Safdie Brothers' Good Time combined with his Kurt Cobain energy convinced the director that he had found the perfect recluse to portray a more haunted version of Bruce Wayne. Pattinson's Batman has already spent time on the streets of Gotham facing off against the criminal underworld by the time the film starts, and he has the scars to prove it.

"Bruce has been hiding away," Pattinson said. "He's not really a socialite at all. He's building all these little contraptions and things, just with Alfred. And even Alfred thinks he's gone insane! He's been out every single night for two years, getting beaten up and shot and stabbed and burnt, and it shows. There's a bullet graze on the cowl, right at the beginning. I don't think that's been done before."

The Batman arrives on March 4, 2022 and also stars John Turturro as crime boss Carmine Falcone, Andy Serkis as Alfred, Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle AKA Catwoman, Paul Dano as Eddie Nygma AKA The Riddler, and Jeffery Wright as Commissioner Gordon. In case you missed it, the DC Fandome trailer for The Batman showed off Gotham City, the Dark Knight's war on crime, and the Riddler's schemes in explosive detail back in October.