Thus far, Robert Pattinson has had a mix of a whirlwind and slow-burn experience being part of The Batman. It all started when Pattinson did a screen test right before jumping on the set of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. The movie took over a year to film, but now that the movie has finished filming and is coming up this March, the suit that Battinson first put on has been revealed and it’s an awesome bat suit we’ve seen on screen before.
Writer/director Matt Reeves, Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz were in attendance at the DC Fandome event, which was packed with massive reveals for upcoming movies and TV shows from the comic book universe. Ahead of revealing the jaw-dropping second trailer for the film, Reeves recalled how he tested Pattinson to be the next Bruce Wayne. In his words:
When Rob and I first got together, we’d had all these conversations and then just by virtue of what it is, it’s Batman, the studio said well, ‘We always do a screen test.’ Kind of like [Rob and Zoe Kravitz did], Rob did first by himself and literally was wearing, I believe Val Kilmer’s bat suit, which by the way, the moment you put it on, it was a crazy moment.
Warner Bros must have had Val Kilmer’s Batman suit (or one of them anyway) lying around for Robert Pattinson to try on for the screen test. There’s a lot of suits for Batman over the years, including for Michael Keaton, George Clooney and more recently through the Dark Knight trilogy, Christian Bale, but it so happened to be Kilmer's. It’s kind of perfect considering Batman Forever and the upcoming The Batman both have Riddler as a villain.
Robert Pattinson continued the story by sharing his own experience being in the bat suit for the first time. Here’s what he said during DC Fandome:
It was crazy, but I remember putting it on and thinking this is impossible. This is going to be absolutely impossible. I remember you saying, because I guess just trying to move, I mean wearing a two-inch thick rubber or latex suit and being incredibly nervous and full of adrenaline all the time, I remember we did like two takes and you were saying ‘What can we do about this sweat?’ And I was like ‘Nothing, there’s nothing that can be done.’ I have to be drained of liquid.
If I was about to play Batman and was wearing Val Kilmer’s bat suit, I’d be sweating buckets too! It sounds like it’s a funny situation looking back, but at the time Robert Pattinson was seriously nervous. Matt Reeves gushed about how he knew he wanted to cast the actor to play the role of the Caped Crusader in his version as well:
At the end of that costume test, you put on that eye makeup and began that transformation. That moment for me, that was when I was like ‘Oh my god,” it is so you. I remember you saying afterwards to me, ‘I don’t know what I just did’. It was amazing, it was really, really cool. I really did think, oh my god, this version of this character, this guy who’s sort of almost like if you think about Bruce Wayne as almost like a reckless rockstar in a decaying manner.
Robert Pattinson went on to share that he was really intrigued by the idea of a Batman not being able to juggle being Batman and Bruce Wayne swiftly. This Batman is a younger version of the hero, who has yet to really figure out how to balance being the vigilante. You can check out the latest trailer here:
The Batman is the next DC movie in the lineup. The film is set to hit theaters on March 5, 2022. Now that we know Robert Pattinson donned Val Kilmer's suit, we need to see how he looked in his screen test. Release the pics, Matt Reeves!
