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The Batman: Matt Reeves On That Character & A Deleted Scene [SPOILERS]

Published Sat, 05 Mar 2022 07:17:10 -0600

The Batman dropped into theaters this weekend after an uphill battle against changing stars, tone, scripts, directors, and COVID-19. We try to remain as spoiler-free as possible here at Bleeding Cool so you, as a fan, can choose whether or not you'd like to interact with spoilers. So this is your warning that we will be talking about serious spoilers for the end of The Batman. If you haven't seen the movie yet and you want to remain spoiler-free, now is the moment to click off of this article and come back when you've seen the movie. If you don't care about spoilers before you see a movie, please don't be a jerk in the comments or social media posts and ruin this for everyone. When it comes to spoilers, choice is the key here, and we're trying to give people a choice. Final SPOILER WARNING if you don't want to be spoiled, don't look beyond this image.

The Batman: Best Look At The Riddler in 8 New Images, 2 BTS Images — © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics. Caption: PAUL DANO as Edward Nashton/the Riddler in Warner Bros. Pictures' action adventure "THE BATMAN," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

By the end of The Batman, the Riddler's scheme was trying to accomplish only partially works. He blows up the seawall, but Batman thwarts his planned mass shooting. He's upset about it while locked in Arkham Asylum, and we hear the voice of another prisoner. He talks about being a made a clown and eventually says, "riddle me this, what gets stronger the less you have of them? [or something to this extent it's been a week I can't remember the exact riddle]" with the answer being, "a friend." We hear a very distinct manic laugh, and now the movie is teasing the Joker. Barry Keoghan is playing the role, and director Matt Reeves confirmed to IGN that Keoghan is playing what he is calling a "proto-Joker." We never see his face, but apparently, there was a scene with him in it that was cut.

"What's interesting is that the reason that Joker's in the movie is there was actually another scene that was earlier. And because the movie is not an origin tale for Batman, but it's his early days, it really is an origin tale for the Rogue's Gallery's characters," Reeves said. "And for me, I think [it's] this idea that the Joker is not yet the Joker, but they already have this relationship.

"The scene that was not in the movie, the scene that this is really the companion to, which is actually a really cool scene that will release at some point, it's a scene where Batman is so unnerved because the Riddler is writing to him. And he's like, 'Well, why is this guy writing to me?' And he figures he's got to profile this killer," Reeves said. "He goes to see another killer that he's clearly had an experience with in these first two years. And this killer in this story is not yet the character that we come to know, right? So everybody's in their infancy. So in the comics, these characters often declare their alter egos in response to the fact that there's a Batman out there. And so here, we have a Joker who's not yet the Joker."

Reeves explained that we didn't just see Keoghan as the Joker in this scene, but we get a glimpse of what the Joker for The Batman looked like.

"In the scene that you'll see in the future, you'll see that we worked on what he looked like. And he's held in this very suspenseful way, away from you visually. But I wanted to create an iteration of him that felt distinctive and new, but went right back to the roots," Reeves said. "So he's very much out of the Conrad Veidt mold and that idea of the silent film of The Man Who Laughs."

"He's got this congenital disease. He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, 'Well, maybe there's something here where it's not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it's not the Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don't know where they came from. What if this is something that he's been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he's had this very dark reaction to it, and he's had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.'"

"So [it's] this idea of him being very incisive and brilliant and being able to get into your mind and basically having this nihilistic point of view that's like from his inception, from his birth, life has been a cruel joke on him. And this is his response, and he's eventually going to declare himself as a clown, declare himself as the Joker. That was the idea."

The Batman: Matt Reeves On That Character & A Deleted Scene [SPOILERS] — Irish actor Barry Keoghan attends the Irish premiere of his latest film, Dunkirk, at the Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin. Editorial credit: G Holland / Shutterstock.com

Finally, Reeves spoke about how that scene and even the scene with Riddler in the Aslyum was cut from the movie at one point because of how it changes things thematically. There are moments when you think things might be getting better, but that scene hints that things are only going to get worse, as Selina says, and that scene really emphasizes just how worse it's going to get.

"What you're really seeing is a pre-Joker Joker," he said. "And the idea for me, why I kept that scene in the movie, even though I cut the first scene that I'm describing, is because it was important for me at the end. I actually took the scene that's in the movie still out for a brief time. And we tested it, and I realized that for me, on the one hand, it finishes the Riddler's arc, because you know the way his story plays out and you see him in the wake of what's happened and how Batman has been able to thwart what he was doing.

"But it was also this idea that in this moment, now that the stranglehold of Falcone has been broken, it means that there is a moment of not only hope, but it's also the moment of greatest danger in the city in a long time because it means that everyone is going to grab for power. And when Selina [Kyle] is talking to Batman at the end of the movie and they're having their very poignant goodbye because they're always going to be on the opposite sides of things, she says to him, 'You know this place isn't going to change.' And when I took the scene out, the stakes of the scene changed, because that scene shows you that, when she says that, you've just seen it and you see the two of them [Joker and Riddler] next to each other. And that's just one example of how trouble in Gotham is never going to subside. There's always going to be somebody with a plan afoot.

"And so it changed the movie dramatically. So the scene is not meant to be there to say, 'Oh, here's an Easter egg. The next movie is X.' I don't know that the Joker would be in the next movie, but I can tell you that here's what you're seeing, is an early days version of this character, and trouble, as always, is brewing in Gotham."

As someone who has a lot of complex feelings about The Batman, I am interested in seeing what kind of back and forth Keoghan and Robert Pattinson have. There is a pattern now with the second movie in Batman franchises being better than the first, so this hypothetical sequel will likely be greenlit by the end of the month will turn things around for this writer.

From Warner Bros. Pictures comes Matt Reeves' The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson in the dual role of Gotham City's vigilante detective and his alter ego, reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne. Two years of stalking the streets as the Batman (Robert Pattinson), striking fear into the hearts of criminals, has led Bruce Wayne deep into the shadows of Gotham City. With only a few trusted allies—Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright)—amongst the city's corrupt network of officials and high-profile figures, the lone vigilante has established himself as the sole embodiment of vengeance amongst his fellow citizens. When a killer targets Gotham's elite with a series of sadistic machinations, a trail of cryptic clues sends the World's Greatest Detective on an investigation into the underworld, where he encounters such characters as Selina Kyle/aka Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), Oswald Cobblepot/aka the Penguin (Colin Farrell), Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), and Edward Nashton/aka the Riddler (Paul Dano). As the evidence begins to lead closer to home and the scale of the perpetrator's plans becomes clear, Batman must forge new relationships, unmask the culprit, and bring justice to the abuse of power and corruption that has long plagued Gotham City.

Starring alongside Robert Pattinson (Tenet, The Lighthouse) as Gotham's famous and infamous cast of characters are Zoë Kravitz (Big Little Lies, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald); Paul Dano (Love & Mercy, 12 Years a Slave); Jeffrey Wright (No Time to Die, Westworld); John Turturro (the Transformers films, The Plot Against America); Peter Sarsgaard (The Magnificent Seven, Interrogation) as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson; Jayme Lawson (Farewell Amor) as mayoral candidate Bella Reál; with Andy Serkis (the Planet of the Apes films, Black Panther); and Colin Farrell (The Gentlemen, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). The Batman was released on March 4, 2022.