The Big Picture - ‘The Batman’ Is Here!

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

Holy reaction podcast, Batman! Chris Ryan and Joanna Robinson join Sean to break down ‘The Batman,’ the most-anticipated movie of the year so far (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by ‘The Batman’ director and cowriter Matt Reeves to talk about how and why he made the film (58:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson, and Matt Reeves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Did you know I've had my podcast for 15 years? Do you know that it is the most downloaded sports podcast of all time? Did you know I have guests from the sports world, from the culture world, people who work for The Ringer, people outside The Ringer, celebrities, experts, you name it, it's on my podcast three times a week,

late Sunday night, late Tuesday night, late Thursday night, The Bill Simmons Podcast. Check it out on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Batman. Later in today's show, I will be speaking with the director behind the Batman. His name is Matt Reeves about why and how he made this movie. It's a great and deep conversation. I hope you will stick around for it. But first, we have to discuss the Batman and to do so, the bat and the

cat of the big picture, Joanna Robinson, Chris Ryan. Hi, guys. How are you? Thanks for doing this. Sean, will you say, I am Sean Fennessey again? I'm Sean Fennessey. I am the League of Shadows. I was going to say, Chris is obviously the cat in this scenario, right? No question. Definitely. The feline energy is high.

Such a nimble thief. What I want to do is I want to set the table as much as possible. I want to explain the circumstances of this film. This is going to be a largely non-spoiler conversation about the Batman. We're going to talk through what we liked, maybe some of the things we didn't like, what worked, what did not. But I want to set the table and then I want to be the Riddler. I just want to throw questions your way and I want to get a feel for how you experience this movie. So just as an opening gambit, as I said, this is Reeves' long germinating detective story reboot of Batman.

This is a much more grounded version of the story, a grittier version of the story, a significant change from the way that Zack Snyder saw Batman. A little bit different than the way Christopher Nolan saw Batman. It's heavily inspired by Frank Miller's Year One graphic novel, also by Darwin Cook's Ego run on Batman. Big debt, I think, to the animated film uh batman mask of the phantasm one of chris's favorite movies of all time absolutely got a laser risk there's all kinds of what we what we very gently describe as director bullshit going on here in which the references to films of yore whether they be 1940s noir humphrey bogart films or 70s new hollywood character, or 90s serial killer movies.

You'll find all those little touches and grace points throughout the Batman. And of course, this film stars Robert Pattinson as Batman. It's got a great supporting cast, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell, packed with great performances. The story seems simple on its surface but is quite complex some might even say arcane some might even say incomprehensible uh a masked serial killer is murdering the most powerful people in gotham and leaving riddles to address or leaving riddles addressed to batman to solve so let's begin there joanna yes what'd you think of the Batman? You know that I loved it, that I absolutely loved it. And I went in with pretty low expectations,

not because, I mean, I love Matt Reeves and I'm excited to hear your conversation with him and I'm excited we get to talk about his filmography as we talk about what he did here. But I'm bat exhausted a little, like run on bat fumes coming into this movie. It had been a while since I really enjoyed a bat adventure. And I just absolutely, and you know, the nearly three hour runtime was daunting.

And I just sat down and I just had a ball from start to finish. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happened, but like my critical brain turned off. And even afterwards, when I talked to a couple of critic friends of mine who hated it, and then they brought up some criticisms, I said, I see all of your critiques and I acknowledge that it is not,

it is not stopping me from loving this movie. So that's where I am. Chris Ryan, you and I had a chance to see this movie together. Just bros watching bats. Just a time-tested extravagance. Chris, what did you

think of The Batman? I liked it. I don't think I liked it as much as Joanna. I think I went into it obviously really excited because this is one of the real returns to blockbuster movies that I hope signals a return to this being a staple of my

personal life. It's something I really enjoy doing. It's a little bit of a slog. As Joanna pointed out, it's nearly three hours. If you sit through the entire credits, it's probably three hours and ten minutes. I think I just always

have to remind myself every single time I sit down for a Batman movie that you're not really supposed to have fun. Like, there are fun parts of it. There are things that are exciting. There are things that are entertaining.

But the ultimate story underneath of Batman is pretty dramatic. It's pretty dark. And it's going to feel a little bit like eating your bat vegetables sometimes. You know, it's not like aspirational the way Superman or Spider-Man might be.

It's not colorful. It's not, at least it hasn't been since Tim Burton left. So I think once I kind of like reoriented myself to being in Gotham, I was like, oh, yeah, I know these streets. We can do this. But initially, and like and I think my initial reaction was kind of like, that was real gloomy.

And as you know, I can get down with the gloom. And I don't mind watching people fight for hours on end. But that hard cap PG-13 that I think lowers a little bit of what Reeves can necessarily do with the genres that he's playing with

got to me occasionally. But ultimately, I thought it was a really, really impressive accomplishment. So you're right, Chris, that this is I think it's fair to say that the darkest of the Batman films, the most brooding I've seen the word emo thrown around quite a bit here, in part because of the way that Robert Pattinson is sty is styled you know a little bit of like my cam influence i see in his bruce wayne and this sort of like the emotionality of the bruce wayne character and the maybe some of the depressive qualities that he exhibits which is a little bit of a different stripe here than what we're used to seeing even from someone like christian bale who's quite serious but seems a little bit psychotic at times as Batman. And that's not really what Pattinson is after.

So Pattinson was, I think, amongst cinephiles, it was roundly celebrated when he was cast because he's basically spent the last 10 years post-Twilight making really cool movies with Indio tours. And so there was a sense this guy's got great taste. He's really got his acting chops up over time. Joanna, what'd you think about Rob's role's role as a bruce wayne batman i thought it was fantastic i think he's they you know both matt reeves who was listening to nirvana when he wrote this and

pattinson has referenced you know thinking about kurt cobain and his performance i think though that's that's a grunge batman and not an emo Batman. I think that emotionality, the eye makeup running down his face when he takes the cowl off, all that stuff is definitely there. I loved it. And I think what's true, I mean, I know we're definitely not doing spoilers, but I think I can generally say that usually in a Bat performance, you're looking for that balance, that double life. That's not really what this year two batman is concerned with like i think this is the least bruce wayne that we get

in any bat movie yes and so um so rob isn't doing the double act that you that we would usually use to assess someone and so and i liked that it's one of the many things that set this apart from the same bat narrative we've seen again and again and uh yeah so i i thought it was incredible i thought um you know you sean you and i just recorded an episode of the ringer verse we were talking about the like the chemistry between zoe kravitz and robert pattinson that wasinson. That sexual spark is there, not to be confused with the sparkle of a Twilight vampire.

And yeah, I thought he was fantastic. CR, are you a Pattinson guy? I am, and I really agree with Joanna. It's actually, I wonder whether or not there will be a bifurcation of Batman fans who are like, that's not the Bruce Wayne that I know and love to some extent when they see this movie.

Because this one was, I found it easiest to kind of wrap my arms around the character as a whole because this is a insomniac Batman. This is a Batman who looks like he's been listening to Downward Spiral a lot. This is a Batman who's letting his company go to seed this is a batman who has like chronic injuries from his now whatever year two years of of being on the streets and i like that better than i'm a vigilante by night and then a playboy a billionaire playboy by day like Like I think that this version of it and Pattinson's sort of depiction of this character might be my favorite, honestly.

Like I think that I have like a soft spot for Keaton because it's the first one that I saw on screen. I like Bale a lot because that was just such a great trilogy to experience in real time. But this might be the one where I'm like, that feels the truest, to me at least. Yeah, so I kind of was withholding my thoughts on the movie at large

while you guys were talking because I feel like it's very much related to Pattinson and how I feel like Pattinson is the first person to nail the Batman part of Batman. I felt like Christian Bale was by far the Bruce Wayne, the best Bruce Wayne we've ever seen

because he's almost doing like a riff on Patrick Bateman where he was like extremely glamorous, but also extremely like kind of strange and untrustworthy. And that that was, he was almost trying to throw people so actively off the scent of his true identity. Whereas Pattinson is almost entirely playing Batman to Joanna's point.

You know, we just don't see a ton of Bruce. This is not really a movie about Bruce. Reeves has gone to great pains to avoid repeating some of the origin story. He revises and redefines some of the origin story here

around Bruce's parents and the history of Gotham. And that's a big part of the story that maybe we can get into a little bit. But I think the movie really rises and falls on Pattinson. And I thought he was really great. I thought he movie really rises and falls on Pattinson. And I thought

he was really great. I thought he was really great because he was physical but vulnerable. You know, Ben Affleck, when he played Batman, he didn't seem very vulnerable. Even though he was a little bit older, he's wearing this kind of like Mecca granite suit. And there was something kind of indestructible about his version. All the Schumacher movies, you know, there's something so like rubbery and form fitting about it. And it just seems sort of otherworldly. One of the great things about Batman, he's just a guy. He's just a dude who put on some tights and he's like, I got a, I have fists and I, but I don't have a gun. I have stuff in a belt, but I'm not going to shoot you in the face. You know, I'm just, I'm going to fight you until you stop committing crimes. And the movie, even though it does have some fantastical elements and it does

have a couple of really big action set pieces, it's mostly about a really weird guy who just goes out at night and punches people. And then he gets thrust into this criminal underworld. And so it's kind of strange that they've never done a movie like this, but they haven't really ever done a movie like this. And that's really ever done a movie like this and that's really what the story is so when it comes to that approach i just thought it was like so obvious as to be perfect i don't i um i don't want to get too english major about this but i think if you if you trace batman back like the origins are in the scarlet pimpernel and then through zoro and then into batman origins are in the Scarlet Pimpernel and then through Zorro and then into Batman, right? And in the case of Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro,

that alter ego, that billionaire playboy alter ego is so much a part of the deflection. You know what I mean? Like that whole act is an important part of it. And I think, you know, what's possible since I know Matt Reeves, you know, a sequel isn't promised for this film. But if it does well, like Matt Reeves is interested in playing this role. Well, I think we could see this as an origin story for that. It's not that he's disinterested in it. It's just like we're this is a Bruce, a traumatized Bruce who's's still figuring all of his arsenal out, I guess, if that makes sense. The thing that both of you were sort of hitting on, and Joanna explicitly, is this idea that this is the first film in a new imagining or reimagining of the character, but it feels like it's the second or third film in a series. It kind of does away with a lot of the parent, but it feels like it's the second or third film in a series. It kind of does away with a lot of the parent stuff, obviously, although that stuff looms very heavily over it. But I think even in the story it chooses to tell, for the most part, feels very much

like the second movie. You know what I mean? It is a case that he is trying to solve. It has somewhat apocalyptic overtones, but it definitely felt free of feeling like it had to either start something or end something, which I guess is the one benefit among others of this kind of, hey, there's not really going to be a continuity across DC. We're going to fire off a couple of different Batmans, a couple of different Jokers. Todd Phillips can do this, and then the Joker can also show up here. We can do this. And maybe this is the best, maybe this is really the benefit of all of that. Yeah. I wanted to ask you guys specifically about that year two decision and how we feel about the way that Bruce and Batman are kind of introduced because I don't think it's a spoiler

to say if you've watched the trailer, you see that there's a sequence in which Batman enters a crime scene and he's surrounded by police officers and he's looking at a murder victim and he's had a riddle addressed to him by the Riddler. And so he's a known quantity in Gotham when the movie starts. He's considered a bit of like he's an outsider vigilante and not really trusted by the establishment at this point. But there's not a ton of like he's an outsider vigilante and not really trusted by the establishment at this point but there's not a ton of throat clearing i would say about like how he got here and why he's doing this he does have this kind of journaling sequence where we see him kind of writing in his diary and explaining some of his feelings about the choices he's made and the city that he occupies. Yeah. I mean, Chris, as a journaler,

you know sometimes when you've spent your whole night saving a city, you gotta get some stuff off your chest. Just gotta get my book of rhymes out.

Joanna. Yeah. Do you think that it was right to basically cut out that first year, the first 365 days of Batman? Yeah. Because, you know, obviously Reeves is relying on us understanding the Batman mythology, but I think at this point, um, and especially because this Batman is so adult, uh, I really

doubt that this would be anyone's first Batman experience. You know, even if, even like young kids right now, um, I think their parents would show them something else before they showed them this Batman, you know even if even like young kids right now um i think their parents would show them something else before they showed them this batman you know and so i think we don't need to see the waynes get murdered in alleyway certainly and uh and i like that we come in and and there are a few things established like his relationship with gordon you know what I mean? Like that's, that's the backstory that they don't tell, but we, do we need it? No,

because you know, the Gordon Bruce relationship is, is one that we're so familiar with. And so, you know, there's a moment where Gordon like, you know, talks about how he trusts Batman.

And I'm like, I'm not, I don't, I don't need that story. I don't need to know why or how you're in that trust because I feel like I've seen versions of it. So I'm, I'm fine with this,

you know? Um, let's talk about the kit, the supporting cast. I didn't, for whatever reason, didn't research this movie very deeply. And so when,

um, when John Turturro and Peter Sarsgaard turned up, I was like, these guys are in this movie. What's happening. So I don't, I don't So I don't know how closely, Joe, you were tracing this. I know you're a little less

spoiler-phobic than I am historically. I only knew one thing going into this and it was not that John Turturro or Peter Sarsgaard are in this movie. So I had the same thing. I was like, oh, oh. And the bench is so deep. Sarsgaard is uh, is playing a

character as far as I know that is not even in the comics, you know? Uh, so, and he's fantastic in this role is perfect. And so, um, it just, it just makes the whole Gotham feel populated. Like, you know, every care is taken and every corner of, of this movie and, you know every care is taken and every corner of of this movie and you know Totoro chewing up the scenery in a in a in a character that we that we've seen before but Sarsgaard also and he perfectly fits the mood of this movie I think casting a Sarsgaard is on par with casting a Paul Dano and in something like this like that those choices really tell you what movie you're watching you know, what do you think? There's a lot of your faves are in this movie. Colin Farrell

is a big guy for you in your constellation. Farrell, as people probably already know, is unrecognizable in this movie. I was prepared for this experience because I'm one of the seven people who watched The North Water and really loved it. So I'm used to

Colin Farrell transforming his body in this day and age. I would say that... Well, I thought Sarsgaard's incredible. Turturro is definitely going full Turturro in this movie. All of those characters, and this is, I think, probably part of a larger conversation about the genre stuff that Reeves plays with,

they have to pull a lot of expository baggage around with them. And if I had one critique is just that, like you get that level of actor involved and you kind of don't let them play as much as maybe they could because they have to do so much of a Wikipedia readings of like the intricacies of the Gotham underworld and previous investigations into different mafia families by different district attorneys. And there's just a lot of,

of that stuff. Now that is what happens in detective in crime novels. And that's what happens in crime movies is there's just a lot of explaining where we're at. But in the way that Joanna was like, I didn't need to see some of, you know, I don't need to see Bruce Wayne's origin.

I guess I'm kind of of the mind where I'm like, I don't necessarily need all of this stuff constantly explained to me, especially if either A, you could shave 15 minutes off the movie or something,

or B, you just let Sarsgaard cook a little bit or let colin farrell cook a little because most of what those guys have to say is like it was not me that they were investigating in fact it was someone else and if you refer to this case you know it's like oh okay i let me get my notebook out and journal about the various uh the various high high profile cases of gotham i wanted to ask you about that too, Joanna, because we were just talking on the Ringerverse about the one downside, I would say,

to the Zoe Kravitz experience is that she's kind of saddled with some of that baggage too. She has to do a little bit of explicating in situations in which no words would go a long way because of the chemistry between those two. And I think about the movies that Reeves is calling from and Chinatown and Serpico and To Have and Have Not and all of these really weighty kind of references he's making to movie history. And those movies would leave a lot to the imagination, I would say, that they really did not necessarily over- their circumstances on the other hand we're living in this moment

of IP booming in which every single needle has to be threaded with a dot of information every Easter egg needs to be cracked open so that we can examine what's

inside of it did you feel like that was in conflict with the movie that there was all of this info dumping happening while he was also making what I thought at times was like a very elegant detective movie it's so funny because it's both um i completely agree with both of you the the exposition is at times laughable honestly um there's that there's something that happens anyway um i think

and i think in terms of letting people cook or not i think andy circus is maybe the least served in that you know alfred the promise of andy circus is alfred is so big potentially big and you know hopefully later if this becomes a franchise hopefully later that will manifest more than it does in this movie but um what's funny is reeves as a director generally is not afraid of silence. I think, I think a lot of his films like the apes movies or let me in, they're very spare when it comes to dialogue. And there's actually a lot of sparsity in this movie.

Like I think in the opening, there's hardly a line of dialogue spoken for so long. It's a lot of other than that Harbaugh detective voiceover. That's right. Slash like you get that. It's the Blade Runner noir voiceover thing. But also when he's when he's speaking, I could also see it written in in panels on a comic book. Like I love.

Absolutely. That's why I got gleeful, like right from the start, because it felt so comic book to me. love, that's why I got gleeful like right from the start because it felt so comic book to me. I think that's right on. And the other thing is it's a, it's a little bit of a movie nerd crash course because that whole opening sequence

is total Hitchcockian through a window and the way that the camera is sort of zooming in and moving out and the way that there's the frame is kind of smeared all the time and blurred and there's rain on the camera at various sequences and he's using different lenses to

obscure what we're seeing and not seeing and it does feel very um it's it's working really hard to reflect its influences and some of those influences are those comic book panels you know like it does feel like at times he's really matching the source material in a way that like most comic book movies don't seem to care about these days um one of the reasons i have historically defended the uh the avengers end game kind of big coming together sequence is like that's one of the first times i ever have like felt like we've gotten a real splash page in a movie you know where like you get that big wide open look this is kind of the inversion of that this is like the kind of the book you'd see that would have nine panels on one page because it's like going dot to dot

frame to frame small zoom in zoom out you know what does the landscape look like what does this character's eyeball look like like the movie really seems to be reflect that in a way that i loved so that part of it really works um but i i mean i agree with your with your point that like um does does the heavy exposition. The most cynical part of me has to wonder, because you brought up IP, has to wonder how much that's connected to this planned Gotham PD series, you know, that they are planning to put on HBO Max. Which is part of their ongoing strategy. You know, it's Peacemaker is a Suicide Squad. The Bene Gesserit show that they're going to do around Dune. This is Warner Brothers strategy, right? It's like a companion series. And so there's part

of me that wonders if you cast someone like a Con O'Neill, great, great character actor with a perfect raspy voice. If you put him on your police force here because you're going to use him in a show on HBO. And that's why we're spending a little more time than the equation would want but again it feels like Reeves got to make the movie he wanted to make so I don't know how beholden he would be to some sort of massive IP plan like that um anyway it was something that I was I was wondering about how about like Chris did you I mean it definitely was in the back of my head um you know sean you mentioned the end game thing and one thing that kind of i think annoyed me slightly about the movie was how much of it is in the trailer and what they choose to kind of um feel like they

need to sell with batman um or with this with this movie specifically. But I think I have this complaint about a lot of would-be blockbusters. I'm like, did you not think that you had us sold when you just said Spider-Man? Did you have to show this? And Endgame is an example of a movie where if that splash page

had been in the trailer, I would have been mad. Do you know what I mean? I've been waiting quite a while to see that. And there's some stuff in the Batman that I think would have played differently for me if I had not known it was coming

or if I had thought that that was a minor scene and it turns out it was a pretty major reveal or a major scene in the movie. And that kind of stuff hung over my head. So the reason why I brought that up is like, you've got Matt Reeves and he's got this very specific idea about making a David Fincher meets 1940s detective movie set in a kind of matrixy 90s industrial punk Gotham. And then you've also got, well, we've got to do The Penguin Show and

we've got to do Gotham PD. And we've also got to sell this thing so hard that we're going to maybe tip our hand about some of the stuff that you're pulling off in this movie six months before it comes out. And people are going to watch that trailer 35 million times. I don't know. I mean, I kind of wish I went into it with a sort of more innocent eyes and also a less like galaxy brain poison brain where I'm like, not always thinking about you know sort of the permutations of like what's gonna happen after this movie where I'm like just enjoy what you're seeing yeah I wonder if we're a little bit out of step or generationally past that where like I don't I don't get the impression that younger viewers necessarily care if there's a lot of

stuff in the trailer it maybe dims some of the excitement but I did have the same reaction to the point where and it's a little bit hard to talk about this character, but I do want to know what you guys thought about how the Riddler was handled and framed. And frankly, like how much we knew about this going into this movie, because there is a case to be made that we should have not even known Paul Dano was in this movie. Yeah. We should have not even known that he was the central villain. To your point, Chris, about kind of what we withhold and whether or not the film would have actually worked better to not know.

Because there are shots in the trailer that come pretty near the end of the film. And I don't, I didn't need that. Now, that's like an external concern. It's not like, let's look at the text of the movie

and how effective we thought the movie was. Because I think the way that the Riddler is handled is actually genuinely modern and different from pretty much any superhero movie villain we've seen before. But do you think that there can be too much that they put out into the world? And then consequently, like, would it have been better to know less? And then let's talk about that character and how that character is handled. It's funny, as you alluded to earlier, like, I usually into the spoilers for things like this and I didn't this time.

I couldn't tell you why. And I think I only watched the trailer once. So I didn't have that. I mean, other than the the the Batmobile chase, which, you know, you got to have in a Batman movie. I don't think I was majorly anticipating many of the scenes or any of that. But I think that the Riddler question is a really interesting one. It is almost impossible to talk about that

in a spoiler-free way. But I also think that it gets a little frustrating when marketing holds too much back. You know what I mean? Paul Dano's on the cover of thr today and you want paul dano to have his like publicity tour um and you don't want it to be like ben in the cover batch saying he's playing a different character than he is in a star trek movie you know what i mean so i get frustrated when people lie about things yeah i don't don't want to repeat Andrew Garfield's walk of shame for six months. Just begging people to ask him about Tick, Tick, Boom instead of fucking Spider-Man.

It's a conundrum of modern movie going, though, isn't it? I mean, if you could promise Baldino that he gets his THR cover a month later, I would be okay with it. And I love this for him. I think this is his first blockbuster movie which is wild to think of and uh and he's such an unusual choice and it what it does is it it gives us a riddler i think similar to putting ledger in the joker like it gives us that is so off balance and soft, but terrifying. And he is,

I mean, if any, you know, Totoro is giving a big performance, but Dan is giving the biggest performance. Yeah. He has a, he has a very big sequence.

He's going, he's going toe to toe with Hardy for, for wild Batman villain voices. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't, I think i need to think about it

but but i wouldn't i wouldn't want to go i i feel protective of anyone going into this movie i want to go in knowing as little as possible i think that's especially like you know it's a mystery movie as you say like seven um or zodiac which is true crime-ish so it's not that much of a mystery but like these are these are the films that we're chasing here and you want to be there for all the twists and turns of it. Well, to that point, what did you both make of the kind of blatantly characterizing the villain of the film

as a serial killer? I couldn't think of another example of a superhero movie where they were so willing to just say, this is actually a crime movie. This is not what you're expecting. Nobody's going to be wearing neon green in this film. He's going to be wearing fatigues and a helmet.

So I thought it was cool. And I really enjoyed the cat and mouse element. I think that probably for another conversation, we can talk about some of the other implications about what was motivating riddler and also how he goes about sort of um rallying people of gotham around his cause i think we can say i think we can say that i i think that's not a spoiler to say that there is like a there's a use of modern media social media i would also go as far as to say is that it like plays around with like

q anon imagery and this idea that there's like a vast conspiracy and that this guy is going to be the one to pull the thread and untangle the entire thing. And I think that's a very electrified thing for Matt Reeves to just throw into a Batman movie. And I think that's... I'll be very curious to see if anybody's just like, this was fucked up, or if everybody is just going to be like,

how exciting he's pulling from today's headlines and it feels very real and current it just doesn't feel like his foot is too hard on the gas with that comparison because it's there if you want it and it's definitely there and it's hard to ignore but it doesn't feel overwhelmed or preachy not like he's trying to make a point like see don't you see um that doesn't really feel like what he's going for there but yeah i mean like this is a guy with saran wrap on his head um it's a serial killer and this idea of like you know batman is world's greatest detective this is a detective story like that that is interesting but it's also that very 70 thing where the darkness in you the detective responds to the darkness and the serial killer uh which i

always love when the darkness of batman sort of uh reaches out and um you know and and that whole serial killer desire for attention which is all any of any batman villain ever wants yeah and that clarice lector kind of like without me you're nothing without you i'm nothing kind of like that we need each other to sort of to go forward um can i ask if we're talking about the detective stuff there's one part i did want to ask both of you which is did you ever trip up when um batman's just like doing a job but wearing a bat suit he's like hey guys like i'm here at the crime scene too chain of evidence huh huh? You guys are all dressed like Serpico, and

I'm in full bat regalia. And this does not go unremarked on in the movie. People are like, you're just going to let him walk in like this. It's completely weird now. It was unintentionally funny to me sometimes to think about Batman just like, boys, you got to have a cigarette

with these guys outside afterwards and maybe grab a coffee there's also a lot of this is not a spoiler to say just a lot of like off screen costume changes

for Batman to get on his motorcycle you know like he'll be like in full bat I was thinking about his go bag right

full bat regalia and then he'll just be on his bike without any of it like in one like the next scene sometimes while chasing people and i was like man this is really like day to night kind of outfit i love it you know it was kind of comic booky that way though yeah you know like comic books that happens yeah does he have lockers all around the city that he can like

i mean i agree this is the first you know it's obviously always ridiculous for a man in a bad suit to be walking around a city but like this is the most i ever felt and and i think it feels intentional especially that shot of him that first shot of him walking to the crime scene i think the camera is behind him and everyone yeah it just looks like a cop they're all who is this guy or or um i think it's in the trailer but but anyway, I won't go into details. Anytime he's surrounded by a bunch of people dressed normally, it really underlines to you what a weirdo this guy is that he has decided to do this. Yeah. Right. And I think especially, you know, Nolan caught some flack for being so realistic in that I'm thinking specifically of

the Catwoman design. I think people got irritated by the goggles because they were trying to do like the ears and the goggles at the same time. Zoe Kravitz's Cat Burglar, she's got like a little burglar knit cap that is kind of peaked in a cat-like way, but not really. And so I think this is even more in the land of realism than other things, which just makes the Batman feel weirder, which I think underscores who he is and what an odd decision he's made that this is how he's going to enact vengeance and justice for the city. weird. You know, like a guy dressing up like a bat in this world that they've created where, you know, there is a criminal underworld and there are people who have nicknames and they, you know,

they take on these outsized personas. But, yeah, a man putting on a cape and cowl with a pointy ears. Sweeping the city, yeah. Yeah, but you could see a world in which there was a new drug introduced and it took hold in the in the in the dungeons of gotham right put me in charge of the drop heads spin off yeah like train spotting but for drop heads oh my god that's a really good

crawling out of the worst toilets in gotham yes love it um choose bats let's talk about zoe a little bit yeah so you brought up joe the the i don't know it's sort of like the clarity of the execution of this character it's like this character is a uh waitress at a nightclub and she's a cat burglar which is pretty true to a lot of the selena kyle's we've seen over the years in the comics zoe kravitz i think was hugely anticipated and they kind of nailed it i don't really i don't really have any notes on on zoe she i think lived up to the billing she's like very live and very physical she's very sensual very sexy she and pattinson have a lot of spark she seems she's i think righteously motivated by the story in a way that felt authentic.

I think it's an interesting contrast to your fave, Michelle Pfeiffer, who is like, literally like electrified and made crazy by her circumstance, kind of gaslit into her madness.

Rubbed by cats, possibly. Yeah. You know, this is not nearly as goofy as all that. What'd you think of Zoe? Yeah, no, Zoe's incredible in this. the sequence where we first see her like in in her cat suit the i think live

is the perfect word she's just sort of nimbly slipping around the city and and it's fantastic and then there's also a sequence where i mean they're they're they're in close contact right away and that's the other thing is like you know, the spark between the bat and the cat can go any number of ways. But these are people where you're like, you kind of want to see them keep fighting because you just want them to be close to each other. And I think she has her. I think as every cat woman should. She has her own agenda and motivation and story going on inside the story i think that's really important uh it's true of pfeiffer and true of hathaway that they're you

know they're pursuing their own agenda and when it aligns with batman great and when it doesn't is when you get the interesting uh conflict of the cat and the bat where they can run together until they can't and and that's that's what I always love about them. I don't know. Chris, where are you on the Zoe stand? I think Chris... Your big high-fidelity head. I'm a huge high-fidelity fan.

Criminally underrated show. And I share Zoe Kravitz's sentiment that it sucks that that was canceled after one season. She's probably the star of the movie because Pattinson, as you do for batman but especially this conception of batman where even in the bruce wayne part of him is is essentially like a goth kid

haunting wayne manor she's the one who's like the light dances off of her eyes and she's the one who does all the cool walks into the nightclub and kicks a guy in the face. She's the one who has a lot of humanity and also real movie star line reads. Really just nails everything. And yeah, I thought she was really great, especially considering the fact that all the other actors in the movie pretty much are in this rain- rain sodden crime movie.

She's got like a pink wig and thigh high boots and is kicking dudes. It's really, it's a nice change of pace in the movie. I don't know if it would have been, it would have been tough to do three hours without anyone like that in the movie. So someone asked me, you know, because it's so grounded in reality, someone's like, okay, but does she do anything that's cat-ish? And I was like, well, she drinks milk at one point that is the thing that happens but she's not you know putting whole birds in her mouth uh the way that michelle pfeiffer did so

yeah i think i think i think it's perfect and and um i think if the franchise goes forward i would be disappointed to see it without her. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

One thing I wanted to ask you both about is one of the few things I bumped on in the film is that same relationship between the riddler and batman which feels very similar to the relationship between heath ledger's joker and christian bale's batman in the dark knight this sort of we need each other we are these refracted mirror images of each other i'm constantly seeking your approval you know kill you why would i kill you all that there's a lot of that in dino and i'm

wondering how much nolan does or does not kind of loom over this movie as you guys were watching it i mean i i think it's probably the movies that matt reeves probably feels most comfortable with these being compared to as opposed to the snyder or the the burton ones and what Snyder or the Burton ones. Or the Schumacher. What's that? Or the Schumacher. Or the Schumacher. And I think that he borrows, like in the same way that we were talking about some of the stuff that happens around Riddler, you know, like there's Occupy overtones

and Dark Knight Rises. There's all this stuff that's happening with the Joker and this sort of, what is the motivation or the root of this evil? And it's like this constant moving target throughout Dark Knight. I think that if you, if you blink, if you didn't look too hard,

you would might, you might be like, is this a fourth Nolan movie? I mean, that is a, is a huge compliment, but I think tonally it probably shares the most with that. As far as like how it,

he conceives of the Riddler. I mean, like these are, these are these are canonical characters i mean like there there are ways to do this where it's like really goofy jim carrey but if you're gonna do it in this sort of realistic darker way there's only so many ways to to depict it right right joanna yeah i mean i i think i think that's absolutely right and i think that um it's i was worried it's i think it's a reason. And I think that, um, it's, I was worried.

It's, I think it's a reason why I didn't watch the trailer a million times and was sort of putting this movie in a place of, I'm not sure it's something that I want because I was worried it would feel so samey with Nolan. And while I agree with Chris that if, you know, from a certain point of view,

you could just put this as a, as a, as a fourth or a prequel or something like that inside the Nolan verse. Um, it doesn't feel that way because the Gotham feels different. The sound is so different. Um, we're going to talk about the Giacchino score,

but I think there's just something this, this world feels more identifiable to me and unique than nolan's gotham does um we mentioned the rain uh but also to sean's point about where the camera goes i think this comes from cloverfield matt reeves but like that he's not afraid to put the camera in weird positions um where we only get half of what we need to be seeing or whatever. And that all makes the whole thing feel less cinematic and more just we're on the ground, boots on ground with the gumshoe trying to figure it all out. You know what I mean?

I think that's a great call. I think the collection of artisans who were working on the Reeves movie is very different from the group of people that were working on the Nolan films. The Nolan films felt like event movies and so like if Wally Pfister shoots your movie he shoots in light a lot. The Dark Knight is actually not that dark of a movie. There are many, many daytime

sequences. There are press conferences. There are hospital sequences. This movie is dark. It is black. It's pouring rain the entire time. There's some mildew problem in this. For sure. There's mold This movie is dark. It is pouring rain the entire time. Yeah. It is so deep. And you know, shop by a problem in this for sure. There's mold growing everywhere because it's so damn wet. And, and it's shot by Greg Frazier,

who is just coming off of dune and who shot zero dark 30 and has a lot of experience in these kinds of warped and blurred surroundings and captures them really well. And always keeps you, you have a lot, a sense of place and also a sense of geography i feel like in greg frazier films that is really hard to pull off and you couple that with this very specific production design that is not superhero-y but does feel very specific and particularly like when you go to what is the name of the club is it the

iceberg what is that place called i think that's right but don't because there's the club within the club yeah the club within the club right there are the Iceberg? What is that place called? I think that's right, but don't ask me. Because there's the club within the club too, right? Yeah, the club within the club. Right, there are two clubs in the film, but both of those, you know, those feel like

very hand-designed, everything, you know, every Bruce's, the sort of the train station aspect of the Batcave is very specifically designed. There's a lot of work that goes into that stuff,

but it just, it feels lived in. It feels like a little grotty, a little, soot laden a little gross and then it's matched against not just the grandeur of a batman story but as joe just said this michael giacchino score which is like huge and so big and beautiful and kind of like dances between the rapturous moments and the very quiet and kind of subtle moments of melody that he excels at um it's a really it's just a very clever contrast i feel like of what you're expecting from a story like this and what you're getting and when the high tension moments come are not necessarily

always when you're expecting them that is also a function i think of having a three-hour movie where you have like five or six conclusions and you're like is this done yet is this not over yet is there like a fifth chapter to this movie but you're like, is this done yet? Is this not over yet? Is there like a fifth chapter to this movie? You're like, the giant eagles already picked up Frodo from the mountain and now new warnings are coming.

It does have, it had a little bit of that Return of the King quality. Absolutely. I think there's also like, you're getting at something that I also noticed about this movie,

which is that it leans more towards the practical human realities of what would this be like versus the mythology of the Batman character, the Joker character, the, like the, even the Bane character,

this idea of this guy who was born in like an unescapable prison. And then, you know, like all those, it's the kind of like larger than life parts of the Nolan movies. You're right. Like, I think that this movie is like,

what if this was just a killer? What if this was just a guy who decided he wanted to stop crime and actually was now playing whack-a-mole with petty criminals after two years of being awake? And what if Gordon was just like, I can't get anything done?

There is something very relatable, I guess, about this version of the movie of this story and i think that jekino score which as you say like sometimes gets like swoony 40s noir and sometimes gets and sometimes gets swoony losty there's like a little bit of lost swoon in there um but then you get like the bells the like you know of of like a city of like a city and you get like the bells the like you know of like a city of like a city and you get there's also a ticking which is very nolan but there's like a ticking on the score too and i i have been so captivated by this score in a way that i'm not usually captivated by film scores um i i can just listen to it for hours i think it's incredible um it's doing a lot of the work and chiquino of

course has worked with Reeves multiple times. So, you know, they're old pals. But I think Giacchino can do incredible work and hasn't for, Sean, you and I were talking about this, hasn't for a little while maybe has been doing sort of samey stuff. And this just felt like a real big swing that connected in a big way. Agreed. He's been really busy.

I mean, I don't know if people realize he wrote the score for Spider-man no way home which i don't really remember a single thing about yeah you remember the needle drops in that but not necessarily and then and the batman has a pretty big and something in the is is kind of like the it's more of like a nirvana soundtrack in some ways yeah you know i said this to you chris after we saw it too and that's the other thing is i loved that first whatever fandom teaser trailer that they released, which had the Nirvana needle drop in it. I was like, this is a stroke of genius. I know exactly the tone they're going for, for this movie, the grounded, gritty detective, depressive guy who came out from under a bridge in Seattle, basically. That was a smart move. But then when the song drops in the

film, I was like, I wish I didn't know this because if I didn't know this was happening, this would have been one of my favorite needle drops in a long move. But then when the song drops in the film, I was like, I wish I didn't know this because if I didn't know this was happening, this would have been one of my favorite needle drops in a long time. Yeah. But I saw it coming. And so it kind of goes back to the what we know versus what we don't know.

Let's talk about what's going to happen. We don't want to spoil too much of this movie, but do you think this movie is going to be a big hit? Do you think people are going to love it? Or do you think it's maybe potentially a little pointy headed for, for the common Batman fan? I'm a little worried.

It's so long and it is so quiet and spare in parts and cerebral in parts, but I never want to underestimate any audience or the bat audience. You know, I was where I had this similar worried about Dune and people really showed up and loved dune um and dune doesn't have nearly the built-in uh historical fandom that the bat properties do um i don't think anyone's gonna reject it in the way that they rejected say like mark hamill's luke skywalker in my favorite star wars movie um you know i don't think they're going to say this isn't my Batman, hashtag not my Bruce Wayne or anything like that.

But I don't know. Don't even put that in the world, please. I really want to meet those guys who are just like, this Bruce Wayne is not suave enough. We're all his babes. Bruce Wayne is meticulous. But I think that

the rewatchable quality is a question that I have. When I, when I, even though I walked out of it giddy and I did, I was like, okay, but how soon do I want to sit down and rewatch this again? Like, you know, it's opening this weekend. I've got a bunch of friends who haven't seen it yet who want to see it with me. How many times do I want to see this in the theater? How many times do I want to sit there for three hours and watch this? Um, at least once, but, but as many times as I have

some other blockbusters that I felt giddy about, I don't know. But similarly, Dune was also a major investment and I was there for that. I want it to be huge. That's what I want. I have to assume that if people are really rocking Uncharted like this, they're going to go see the bad man right yeah i know uncharted has like a like a like fans of the video games who may have been looking forward to it but i really get it's more about like cool a new big movie i can go see it finally like i'm ready to go back out like i just have to assume this movie is gonna print it

did you guys see uncharted we didn We didn't. No. Okay. I saw it. And it starts with Tom Holland, like fighting people and then apologizing. And the person I saw it with sitting next to me just went like, oh, hey, Peter Parker. Like it's just a Peter Parker video game. Like, of course, of course. And this feels like cinema. And I caught some flack on Twitter, who cares, but I did, for calling this and Dune cinema, but they feel like cinema to me. Can I read a Marty Scorsese quote from this New York Times?

Okay, so like, you know, Marty Scorsese goes hard against Marvel. It's Marvel specifically. He wasn't talking about comic book movies in general. He was talking about Marvel specifically. 2019 is sort of the big Marty Scorsese versus Marvel. And then he wrote this op-ed in the New York Times. Time of great conflict for me, Joanna.

I mean, we can contain multitudes, right? He wrote this op-ed in the New York Times in response to the interview that he gave to Empire Magazine. And one of the things he said when he was talking, trying to define cinema, he said, for me, for the filmmakers, I came to love and respect for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did. Cinema was out revelation, aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation is what characters, the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves. That's the Batman to me. Like, I think this is something that comic book cinema can be. And I love the Marvel films.

Not all of them, but I love a lot of them. But this, it's when you see a genre that you like elevated to something like this, elevated artistically. That's, I think, why I walked out so giddy do you know what i mean yeah i would really be surprised if i saw people being like i hated this it's it's obviously like on a craftsmanship level and in terms of like a commitment level like everybody was on board like they got the exact performance from pattinson for the exact movie that Reeves wanted to direct with the exact right foil and Zoe Kravitz and a bunch

of really good antagonists in this movie. It's kind of hard to be like, oh, this was cheap or this looks like it was shot in Manhattan Beach in a room or whatever. It feels and looks overwhelming. It's a big blockbuster.

I'll be really curious to see if there's a weekend where it's huge and then a really significant drop-off because no one comes out saying, you've got to go see this because it's kind of dark. Or it doesn't get, like Joanna, like what you're saying, it doesn't get the repeat business. Right. But maybe then a second surge when it hits HBO Max in April. Do you know? Oh my God. They're not doing the repeat business. Right. But maybe then a second surge when it hits HBO Max in April. Do you know? Oh my God. They're not doing the same thing.

HBO Max in April. Yeah. So I will be interested to see how that factors into the box office math. You know, if some people are doing the math and are like, I can wait till April to see this. I've heard that from some people.

Jason Kilar is the real Riddler. Well, I think you both hit on. What I think are significant takeaways. From the movie which is. I want there to be comic book movies. That aspire to this. And do this. And they don't necessarily all have to have like.

Glowing green amulets that confer. The power of a god to someone. They can still be high art. I think Reeves in particular is kind of the signal figure in this complex stew of movie making over the last 20 years. A guy who started out writing like very personal dramedies and thought he was going to be the next Hal Ashby and now has made two planet of the apes movies, a Godzilla found footage knockoff,

a child vampire movie based on IP, and now a Batman movie. And all of his movies are at least pretty good, and some of them are brilliant. And so he is the embodiment of a lot of this conflict and a lot of, I think, what... He's a person who I think is sincerely, if not always entirely successfully trying to make good on the challenge that someone like Scorsese presents, like how can we retain, you know,

the soul of an artist in the face of a conglomerate's desires to build. And the one thing that the Batman may not have is exactly what Chris just put his, his thumb on, which is there might not be that. Oh shit moment that makes 10 people, you know, makes 100 people stand up in a theater and start screaming and clapping. And there is now an expectation that these movies actually have to accomplish that, which is an unreasonable expectation for really any movie, but particularly these franchise

movies. They have to work really hard and also be extremely cynical in their execution. This does have a couple of moments like that that we won't spoil, that will get people kind of, I think more scratching their chins in anticipation as opposed to screaming aloud. But I think there's two aspects of this.

There's, is there repeat business? And then there is, is this a franchise? So just as a wrapping point, is this, Joanna, is this a big franchise to you now? Do you think there will be six more Robert Pattinson Batman films? I hope so. I will say, I don't know,

six, but like at least three, right? Give, give Rob his trilogy. But like, I think to Chris's point at the very beginning and to your point that you made recently,

what's so refreshing about what Warner Brothers is doing right now. And I wouldn't have said this a couple of years because Warner Brothers just seems so lost in in their in their franchisology is that unshackling of continuity is that idea of like Robert Pattinson's world doesn't have to connect to these other worlds and so you can get the gonzo Jason Momoa Aquaman and it doesn't have to match tonally with what we're doing here and that's that's ideal right even for comic book like hardcore comic book fans when you go to the the shop like you you there are different flavors of comics and that's what we want and marvel does french vanilla and you know i love marvel movies but they're all like in the same

it's all vanilla in some way because they need to be able to blend together eventually um and so i i got a lot of exhilaration coming out of this thinking about this is a movie that i know you guys are like hardcore cinephiles so i don't know if this is like beneath you or above you or what but when i watch a piece of art that i've never seen before one of the things that i like to do is to go to YouTube and watch like really nerdy like cinematography breakdowns because there are a lot there's a lot of things

that I don't understand that I like to have people who know much more than I do breakdown I can't wait to watch the breakdowns that are going to come out of this movie

yeah the car chase breakdown is going to be awesome incredible and all the like illusions that Reeves makes I definitely think there will be sequels um it's really hard for me to imagine it also seems like at least from my you know casual engagement with the promotional tour of this movie that this isn't one of those

superhero movies where like all six people seem like they can't wait for it to be over like i think that pattinson zoe kravitz and pa Dano, like all seemed like they were like, this was really cool. We got to make a cool Batman movie. Um, so they seem to be having a fun press tour. Bale was kind of like in the Daniel Craig zone almost immediately where he was just like, when can I stop being this guy?

Uh, Pattinson seems pretty game for it. And, um, we know what it looks like when Pattinson hates a franchise he's in. If you've ever watched the Twilight Interviews right he can do these movies and then he can do

80 Safdie movies after this he's kind of shown he does do the one for them one for me thing really well in a way that is becoming increasingly rare with big stars I think that's a

good place to wrap we should probably go to my my conversation with with Matt but Joanna and Mal are going to be going very very deep much deeper than we were able to go this was this

was a puddle depth conversation you guys will be at the bottom of the sea hopefully on the ringer verse on Monday is that coming on Monday that's true on Monday yeah CR is Andy to see this movie?

I assume he will. Who can say when? Andy's a busy guy. There's a lot of Paw Patrol to watch. So July 18th or so, you guys will do an episode on the back end? When it hits HBO Max, yeah. That's exciting. I bet he'll see it this weekend.

Thanks to both of you. I really appreciate you doing this. Now let's go to my conversation with Matt Reeves. Honored to be joined by Matt Reeves. We're here to talk about the Batman. Matt, thanks for doing the show. Last time we spoke was almost four years ago. We were coming off this six, seven year odyssey of motion capture and visual effects

on the Planet of the Apes films. You know what? That would be five years ago. Five? Wow. 2017. Oh my gosh. I signed on to this movie

when I was finishing War and it took five years until the pandemic and the whole craziness of the world. And so, yeah, it was five years ago we must have spoken.

Mind-blowing. So it's been five years. I couldn't help but notice that this film has a slightly different feel than the Apes films. Did that meaningfully, essentially, make you want to make a film that was more grounded, more real, more textured because of that experience? Well, you know, what's interesting,

my attempt in those films was to ground them. And to me, I tried to put them in an emotional space that I understood because what I found so exciting about those sort of films, I mean, it's weird. Like Batman, I loved them since I was a kid. But there's something about both of these franchises that actually is the same, which is it's an opportunity to look at the characters from a psychological standpoint

and to really look at human nature. I mean, the Apes films was so much about sort of our relationship to violence and to the animal side of us. And Batman is such a, because of the corruption of Gotham and how what has formed Batman is really a traumatic experience.

It's a psychological story. You know, he's really doing it. You can look at it, you know, as a superhero story, which, of course, he's doing what he's doing to make the city a better place. But he's really doing that from a very personal place, which is that it's the only way he can make sense of his life. He's in a kind of, especially in this one where my idea was to make him be an early years Batman, he hasn't gotten this worked out at all. And he doesn't know if it's going to work. And in fact, the truth is Gotham being what Gotham is, in a certain sense, it isn't going to work. Gotham will always be corrupt. Gotham, there will always be crime. And Batman, I mean, in that way, it's very real, right? I mean, we know there's ebb and flow in the amount of corruption and crime in cities,

but it's always there because it's human nature. And so the currency of both of the franchises was human nature. It's just that I was able to take this one because the fantastical element was that he was Batman. But the truth is Batman already is not a fantastical element because he is not a superhero he doesn't have powers what he has is a super heroic um will his what has happened to him as a as a child has so um traumatized him that he is willing to do anything in order to try and make sense of what happened to him and he's never going to

fix it, right? No matter what he does, he's in a certain way, he's revisiting the ghosts of his past every night. He's looking for a fight. He wants to try and change what is unchangeable. And so he will always be haunted by that. And what I wanted in this story was, I wanted to deal with that idea of what was driving him in a way that was very Jungian. You know, he has this kind of like shadow side, really. And he's not, as much as he wants to think he's doing this to make the city better, it's really for himself also to make sense of his life. And I don't think he understands the degree

to which he's driven in this way that's really a personal vendetta. And that's why he begins in this one, he doesn't say, you know, I'm Batman, like the Burton movies. He says, you know you know i'm vengeance which does come from the comics and from the animated series and i thought well what i'd love to do is i'd like to see him have an awakening over the course of the story so he starts to understand um that he has to be more that he has to change that it's not enough to take this path of vengeance and take you on that journey and and in a certain way have him have an awakening that takes him out of being stuck in a place

really of being 10 years old in a certain way there are so many ways in which he's kind of naive and the the story and the elements even his relationship with selena kyle they're all kind of an awakening for him and so i guess that's really you know my long sort of rambling answer um about what was important to me was to use the psychology of this character and to ground it in a way where gotham because gotham is like our world felt like our world and felt like our world now i mean that's the whole idea of the kind of social media and the social media mob and all of that the rididdler uses. Like I wanted it to sort of connect so that the audiences would be able to see a character

that's beloved to them, but in a way that felt fresh, but also relevant for now. I want to ask you about some of those things, but I'm curious from the very first shot of the film, we're seeing a lot of images that are blurred and obscured. And this is pretty significantly different from not just most superhero movies, but most movies in general, which sort of feel like hyper real now and especially big budget films.

So I'm curious about that decision and maybe why you wanted the film to look this way. Well, to me, you know what I, for me, what I'm excited about when I go to the movies and for what I'm trying to do, it's weird in this way. I identify with Batman, which is for me, movie making, and it's been this way because I started making movies when I was a kid. And it was always a way for me, I didn't realize it as a kid, but I realize it now, it's a way for me to make sense, to make meaning. And so I'm trying to, even when I'm doing a kind of blockbuster film, it has to be personal for me. If it isn't personal and I can't connect in that way, I can't sort of attune my compass so that I can be the leader of this project. And I can't tell

whether or not, you know, I always want to draw in the creativity of my collaborators, but I have to be the compass to say, wait, we're going in the right direction or the wrong direction, or I won't know where to put the camera. I won't know all of those things unless it feels very personal. And the thing that makes sense to me and what cinema means for me is this idea that you have a kind of empathic relationship with the characters. And in that sense, that kind of comes from Hitchcock, right? This idea that you put the camera in the point of view of the characters and so that you can walk in those characters' shoes, even as they do things that you'd like to think that you would never do, or they're doing things that you don't think you'd be brave enough to do. I want you to be in an emotional reality where you say, God, if I was

in that position, would I do those things? So there's a kind of almost provocative sort of relationship that the camera puts you in. And so I've done that in everything that I've done, but I wanted to take it to even more extremes in terms of grounding this so that, on the one hand, it's got a very Hitchcockian kind of point of view approach, which I knew was appropriate not only emotionally, but also because I wanted it to be a psychological thriller and a detective story. And all of those things kind of work sort of for that. But we also wanted to take something that could feel very, almost too clean. You know, everything's done digitally today, right? And so what Greg and I talked about was trying to make a Gotham that felt very visceral. I wanted you to feel, when you're doing a kind of Hitchcockian thing, the thing is about subjectivity. So the sound and visuals all need to make you feel like

you're in it and so that you can feel like you're immersed. It's one of the reasons why I'm excited for people to see this on the big screen. And so, you know, for me, I've always felt, and I did this, you know, in the Apes films as well, and we did it when Greg and I worked together for the first time on Let Me In. The idea of what you can't quite see is as important as what you do see. And so there's a lot of stuff that's off camera, but there's also a lot of stuff within the frame that is soft. There's a lot of stuff that you can see what you're meant to focus on, but there's also that sense of the uncanny of something that is just out of focus. And in a movie like this too, where I wanted it to have a kind of horror bent,

sometimes what's out of focus and what you can't quite see is the most terrifying because then you are filling it in as the audience. You know, like Hitchcock always talked about how in the shower scene, he was very careful. You don't ever see the knife piercing the skin, but you feel like you're getting, you're experiencing that assault. And all of that is created by the audience engaging in that visual in such a way that you fill in the blanks. And I think we wanted to move in that way where you would fill in the blanks. And so the idea of what was in focus, what wasn't in focus,

what even like I wanted the Batmobile to feel real. So I wanted to do it the way you would have done it in a 1970s chase, the way you would have done it in like, let's say the French connection or bullet. So I talked to Rob Alonzo about like camera positions. I said, I want to know everywhere we can put a camera and I want to do hard mounts. I want this to feel like when the camera is on the side of the car and the car shaking, the camera shakes. When we drive through water, the water gets on the lens. And that along with the texture that Greg brought, because not only do we use anamorphic lenses, but we use lenses deliberately that the camera house thought were bad. The quality that we wanted, they were like, well,

technically this is not really as sharp as it should be on the edges. And we were like, perfect. That's great. And we tried to introduce as many ways as possible to take what you would sort of see in today's super pristine, ultra clear, hyper real, as you would say, photography and bring in elements that were more evocative of what you would see if you were making this movie, let's say in, you know, the era when I came of age, when I was watching movies of like the seventies, we're like, you know, the French connection, all that kind of stuff where we even did a thing which, which Greg started on Dune, but we took further where we took the finished digital image and we ran it out to film and then we scanned it back, but we didn't do in Dune. They did a thing where they ran the negative and they pulled it back.

We did it also an IP so that it was one further generation away. And we did, you know, bleach bypass. And we wanted the movie to look like it had been shot in the vein of those kind of seventies movies. And it was all about bringing in a texture that made you feel more immersed, that didn't feel like something you could sort of put on a shelf and admire and sort of say like, okay, super clean, super pristine. It's just, we wanted to feel like we were putting the audience in it. So the design of the production does a lot of that work too. You know, you mentioned- Oh, totally. I mean, James Chinlan, who I worked with since the first Apes movies that I,

the first Ape movie that I did, Dawn, on that movie, I had a very unique experience that now I've had ever since then, because that experience I found to be so satisfying from a creative standpoint, which is that because Rupert Wyatt was starting that movie, James was already on. And there was a period of time where, you know, I came in with a new story and they were like, oh, well, you should see if you like James, he's already on. But to be doing a movie and crafting a story while the production designer is already on is an incredible luxury. And it was so productive in that, that James and I have done it ever since. So when I was writing this movie, James and I would be in constant communication.

I would send him pages and we would be talking about, okay, so what should Wayne Manor look like? And we talked about this idea of instead of it being sort of like a Wayne Manor that you'd seen that was sort of away from the city and almost in a sort of countrified area we wanted to take it to what was traditionally Wayne Enterprises Hub which would be like a sort of tall building but make it like a gothic building that might have been a place where the Vanderbilts or the Rockefellers might have lived founding families like in a city, an American city. And so we started those kind of conversations and we started talking about what's the Batcave.

And he was like, well, you know, there's this legend about the Waldorf Astoria that there's a private train line and that maybe some of these industrialists had their own train lines. And we thought, oh, that would be really cool. What if we have in the old foundation a no longer used, a disused sort of train station that was private for the Wayne Tower. They had their own private line and

the Wayne cars and that bats have gathered in here. And that's why it's the Bat Cave, but it also was actually an old train terminus specifically for the Waynes. And so that production design and the texture is something that began at the writing stage because James has been working with me. He's one of the first people on the movie actually with me and saw the way through. And I think that the work that he and his team did in this is like a new high watermark. I mean, I think it's just absolutely stunning work. We built the backlot that we built where outside the iceberg lounge, James had this idea that the iceberg lounge could be in the footing of this old bridge um and that you know and how that would work and that falcone could be above it and we'd all be in the thing we built a huge section of the footing of that bridge and

we you know we had it plumbed dom tui our amazing um physical effects guy like plumbed it with all this water the the set is constantly being rained we had real cobblestones and we were we used real photography and extended you know the stuff that we were doing in our on our sets and i think you The set is constantly being rained. We had real cobblestones and we used real photography and extended the stuff that we were doing on our sets. And I think you look at that backlot and it's inseparable from being a real city. I mean, and so James's work is just astonishing. Yeah, you can smell it.

You can feel it. All that stuff is really tremendous. You know, you mentioned the 70s films and that sense of urban decay in those movies. There's a little bit of 90s serial killer. But the thing that really jumped out to me is this is really like a pretty brutal bogart fatalist 40s detective movie and that seems unlikely in the in the modern superhero enterprise how what kind of freedom did you have here did people tell you like this is pretty bleak at times you know you know what i have to say that my experience

making the movie with warner brother was amazing in that they let me do it and um from the beginning when i came in see i always come to these kinds of projects with a i'm very philosophical like i happen to the two the two franchises that I happen to be sort of in my mind right for in that I have a connection that means something to me actually were the apes and batman franchises and the fact that they came my way is total serendipity but I always approach that kind of experience by saying like look these studios own these characters, right? So I have to respect that. So if they don't like my version, then that's totally fine. So I always begin saying like, look, you might not like this, but that also means that I'm not going to do something you

don't like, meaning I won't do the movie then. And that's okay. Like my thing on this movie was when I came in, I said, I want to do the movie in this way. And if you don't want that, please don't hire me and they did they were like look we do want this they had to wait for me in fact to do it because I was finishing Apes and that they kept true to that

because one of the things that's so unique about this character is that he's been around for over 80 years and that quality you're talking about of the kind of noir, it is what the story was created. And he was created, you know, in response to Superman, which is such a sort of, you know, American dream kind of story, very optimistic. And, you know, Bob Kane and Bill Finger tried to come up with a kind of response to that, that was totally born

out of World War II and the noir sensibility and the world's greatest detective. And so there was a kind of fatalism that was built into what this character is. And that's the seeds of it. That's the genesis. And so to be able to look backward, I mean, I love that you say that because in my mind, I thought, gosh, we have a way, you know, and it's sort of perfect that it is Warner Brothers because Warner Brothers made sort of the iconic gangster movies. And I was like, I kind of feel like this is a throwback in a certain way. And I think to create a Gotham where like all of it just exists, that we're in this year two Batman. And you could imagine if you went down certain back alleys that you would come across the Sydney Green Streets or whatever.

But instead, it's going to be, you know, Oz. It's going to be the Penguin. You're going to see him like the idea of sort of creating a tapestry that felt like an old Warner brothers gangster movie was absolutely the intention. The first sort of point of inflection was this idea because I wanted to do world's greatest detective mode that would intersect with like Chinatown and sort of the French connection and that kind of stuff, which were the movies that kind of inspired me to want to be a filmmaker in the first place. And I did see that kind of stuff, which were the movies that kind of inspired me to want to be a filmmaker in the first place.

And I did see this kind of connection, but I did see it going back all the way to that kind of like, you know, 30s, 40s thing in a way that obviously couldn't be anachronistic. I didn't want it to be that way, but I love that you can feel those roots because that was something we were absolutely conscious of, while at the same time wanting to make that world totally contemporary because i mean the whole idea of like you know

the way that the kind of viral aspect and sometimes corrosive aspect of social media how how um how the riddler could use that to inflame people the idea of the mob mentality that can sort of build online and how that can sort of have this kind of insidious effect like i, I wanted to make sure that while we were doing all these things that were part of the history of Batman, that an audience coming to it would also recognize this Gotham as being part of our world. So I want to ask you a little bit more about that specifically. Obviously, you started writing this film a number of years ago. That mob mentality, that concept of the kind of conspiratorial online madness that we're all kind of living amongst has ratcheted up significantly since you started writing. At any point, do you have any regrets

about applying to some of these things? Do you have to modulate the story you're telling so you don't feel like you've gone in a direction that is astray from what you intended? That's a great question because I, you know, I've been working on the story since 2017 and the script was done, you know, part of the reason why it took five years to do is really the pandemic. And so we were, what was supposed to be, you know, six or eight months was like a year and a half in London.

I was just, we were stuck there for months. And then we, you know, then we got back to making the movie. And as we were, the events that you're talking about kind of, you know, there were all kinds of things that happened that suddenly felt like, it's funny, you set out to set Gotham in a way that almost feels extreme. I was trying to ground it. I mean, I wanted it to feel like, in my mind, there were references that were like Watergate. You know, we were doing stuff that I, there's a way in which I see Batman and Gordon as being Woodward and Bernstein and that they're trying, they're on the trail of trying to understand where this corruption is and how this sort of corruption leads all the way to the top and how all of that works. And so there were historical things in that sense, it was sort

of real, but you're hoping that there's a heightened nature to this and that Gotham is, the whole point is that Gotham is pretty extreme. And it was one of these things where the world in a weird way seemed to kind of catch up. And there were certain moments where we were going, like, oh my gosh, is the real world in certain ways worse than Gotham? That was kind of an unsettling moment. And there was a moment I remember specifically where we stood together as cast and crew shooting this scene where Jamie Lawson, who plays Bella Rial near the end of the film after everything that's happened, is talking about having to rebuild the city. And she said, you know, we have to rebuild, but not just our city.

We have to rebuild our faith in each other, in our institutions. And there was something that was very heartbreaking about the idea that what we were talking about was Gotham, but somehow that felt true to us about the world. And so it was a very, you know, we were definitely conscious of it. And I think that had things aligned even more directly, I think I would have felt the imperative

to change things. I think I felt that they hadn't gotten so close. I would never have done something where something that was so recent would be something that we would deliberately grab and use because I think that would be exploitive. So we didn't do that, but there are ways in which certain things seem to unsettlingly kind of feel close, but never, I think, so close that you can't see that this is our fictional world and it's not the real world. And so we didn't change anything, but we were certainly aware that the resonance had sort of somehow gotten deeper as events of the world sort of carried forward from, you know, where we started from. It was startling. I mean, you know, look, everything

moves in kind of like, you know, you swing both ways and you have like, it's like a pendulum, right? It goes one way and then it comes back to the other. But, you know, one of the things and why I think Gotham is so relevant, why Batman is so relevant is corruption and crime is never not relevant, right? This is what we live with. It relevant is corruption and crime is never not relevant right this is what we live with it's human nature and we're never going to transcend it's why batman is never not going to be needed in in gotham because there's no place it's not reality to say that you could ever completely excise crime and corruption but the degree to which things sort of swing toward the dark side um obviously sort of moves and ebbs and flows and i want to believe that

while there seems to be this intersection at the moment between our Gotham and the real world, that hopefully in the real world, things will start to swing back toward the light. And that's obviously the idea and the mission that Batman is on. And it's been a very interesting time as we've made this movie. Fingers crossed on that sentiment, Matt. There are some aspects of your story that are deeply faithful to the comic books and the animated series as you said but i think that the consciousness of batman has become so definitively a movie product for people and i think this is so in some respects radically different how much are you concerned or do you

think about fan base anxiety and the idea of the constant attention on a movie that is this big and what happens if you let people down? I mean, how does that affect your ability to make a film? You know, what's funny is I, I seem to keep getting myself into this position. You know, when we made Cloverfield, I remember that this trailer came out on Transformers, you know, and it was a sensation. It was huge. And we made the trailer to prove to ourselves that we could make the movie, but we hadn't made the movie. So everyone's going like, what's this movie? And I was like, oh my God, there's all these expectations and we haven't shot the movie. I don't know what this movie is. We're still in the process of making

it, still discovering it. Can we do this? Will this work? And I remember thinking, wow, this is a lot of expectation to be put onto something that we haven't made yet. And that was really daunting. And then when I came into the Apes movies, I remember that, like, you know, I know that people were surprised by how wonderful Rupert Wyatt's first edition of that, they thought, oh, you can't do a reboot of, how could you do this thing? But that, the conception of that story and centering on Caesar was such a wonderful thing. And then I know that everyone at that time was saying like, well, this was a surprise and you won't be able to do it twice. And then we didn't do it twice. We did it three times. So it was like that, there was that. And even when I was

doing Let Me In, like when I agreed to do the movie, I had been resistant because I loved the film that Thomas Alfredson made with John Lindquist. And I actually wrote to Lindquist and said, look, you know, I initially turned this down, but I realized of all the things I can do, this feels like the most personal because I grew up, I'm the same age as you in the same era. And I wonder if I can translate this into a different sort of, you know, place and put it into, make it sort of, instead of a Swedish myth, an American myth. And he said to me, I want you to do this. I love Cloverfield. So he urged me to do it. But as I started making the movie, the movie, when I signed on, hadn't yet even come out. So as we were making the movie, that movie came out and it became kind of a cult legend. People were like, oh my God,

it was beloved. And I thought, we are dead. We are so dead. So when I was doing the Batman movie, of course I was thinking, well, okay, here we are again. Like we're dead. But this time I would say I took it eyes open, which is you can't take on a Batman movie without being aware that there have been great Batman films. And I love the Batman films. So it's one of these things where what you do is you say, okay, can I bring something new to it? Can we do something different? And that was why that was the challenge. And that was what I wanted to do. It's why I took it on. I was like, okay, this is a character I've loved since I was a kid, and I've loved these Batman films.

And I feel like, of course, you have to give the audience, there are certain expectations you have to fulfill. You can't not have an immersive, propulsive, somehow startling, great Batmobile chase. So I knew we had to try to do that. I knew we needed to have him fight in a certain way, and we needed to have him, we needed some level of spectacle that said, okay, you're in a Batman movie. So that's the baseline. But I knew that that wouldn't be enough, that if you couldn't

find a way after there being so many iterations, you also have to prove to an audience that there's a reason to revisit this. And so this idea of leaning into a very point of view driven story that was going to be a world's greatest detective story and that we were going to take not an origin tale. I knew I couldn't do that. That had been done so many times really well, too. We couldn't possibly see Martha's pearls on the cement again. who still had a place where you could take him and put him through the crucible of this experience of trying to solve this mystery that could turn very personal and that the movie could be an awakening for him.

I thought, well, we haven't seen that, that level of this kind of intimate sort of relationship to not Bruce becoming Batman, but to Batman being Batman and Batman kind of really being, in a way, driven by his shadow side and not aware of everything he was doing so that he was really acting in a kind of instinctual way um i felt like okay i think if we

could do that and then introduce all of these characters in a way that feel fresh and new that that could be a really interesting new and fresh take that could warrant another movie and that's what we set out to do but but you but you're, you know, you can't, of course, you know, the, the horror horrifying thing is you start writing. And as I'm writing, suddenly I start seeing the thing that's there every day as you're walking down the street, but you don't really notice because it's not what you're doing. I suddenly would see babies in onesies with the bats, you know, symbol on it and people in their t-shirts and in their, their sweatshirts and wearing their, their baseball caps. And you go like, oh, wow. Like, I know I love Batman, but I realize this is serious.

People love Batman. When you look on Twitter, you're like going, people are fighting about Batman. And I was like, okay, there's nothing you can do other than fight for your own version and know that, look, for this moment, I am custodian. We are custodians for this character. And you really hope that people will connect to this version.

And what's exciting for me is some people, you know, this will be their first iteration, just as, I mean, for me, it was Adam West. And to me, what's really exciting is the idea of somebody discovering this character for the first time, and it's going to be Rob's amazing portrayal. So that's really cool.

That's cool. So a couple of quick ones for you. You've been working in franchise entertainment for a long time now. Do you want to keep making these movies? You seem to have set this movie up to keep making these movies. Oh, you mean, do I want to keep making films in this sort of bat verse? Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. And also even in franchise in general. Oh, in franchises. I mean, look, here's the thing. What's so interesting is when I began making movies and TV, I never thought I would be a franchise filmmaker. I didn't think I would be a genre filmmaker. And the industry has changed so dramatically. You know,

I thought I would have been, in my early days, I wanted myself to make movies in the mold of like Hal Ashby comedies or something. You know, I thought I would make this kind of poignant, sad comedy kind of thing. Or I thought I would make this kind of poignant, sad comedy kind of thing. Or I thought I would certainly, whatever it was, I knew I wanted to make personal films. And my path was such that I ended up sort of, that the opportunities for me ended up being in genre space.

And what I discovered, I mean, I knew it obviously as a viewer. I knew that like, I had loved genre movies when I was a kid. And like what John Carpenter did with his remake of The Thing. And what so many genre, I mean loved genre movies when I was a kid and like what, what John Carpenter did with his remake of The Thing and, and what so many genre, I mean, what Hitchcock did, right? I mean, Hitchcock's personal obsessions find their way into all of these. Like you look at those and his, his work at the time, people thought, oh, you know, he just makes these suspense movies, but

you know that that work is all tremendously personal to him. And for me, it's not, I can't approach what I do unless I find a personal way in because that's what tells me where to put the camera and how to talk to the actors. So what I found, you know, really in making Cloverfield was that there's a way to be very personal under the guise of something that's very kind of spectacular and fantastical. And that the anxiety of that movie for me was very personal. I mean, that all felt very, very personal to me. And that was true, you know, the idea in Let Me In, I grew up and was bullied much the way John Lindquist was. It was one of the things I was writing to him about. And that experience and trying to do that from a personal perspective,

even though it was this genre story, I was like, wow, you can use these metaphors to be very, very personal. And the Apes filmsors to be very, very personal. And the Apes films, for me, were very, very personal. It was a way to explore human nature. And Batman is sort of the same thing. So, you know, on the one hand, you know, would I ever want to do, like, something that wasn't a franchise?

For sure. You know, the thing about the world and the way it is now is most likely that would have to be in the streaming space. And I'm sure that I will do something like that. I would love to. There's actually a project that I wrote that I've still yet... I was a movie that I wrote that I wanted to make when I was... Just before I did Cloverfield. And it was a really personal film that had a kind of Hitchcockian side of it, but again, was very, very personal. And I didn't end up getting to

make it. It fell apart. And the chance then came to do Cloverfield. So I took that and I made that as personal as I could. And so I would love to make that movie one day. I'd love to make personal films for sure, but everything I do is personal. I have to say that this experience of making this one, this is a unique thing to have a character that, you know, look, what's left of the big screen experience at the moment seems to be these kinds of franchises, right? And so I don't so I love cinema. I love the idea of being able to draw something on that big canvas. And this is a really unique version of this character. Not just of this character, I'm not saying my own. What I mean is of he's not a superhero in that traditional sense. He's a human, flawed character that allows exploration of the grays. And that idea of not just sort of trying to entertain in a way that also isn't somehow also looking at something that could feel personal and human, that's rare. And so I am happy to be here. And I would absolutely, should the audience engage and accept this version of the character, of course, I want to do more.

I'd like to see more. Matt, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate this. I really appreciate it. Thanks, man. Fun talking to you. Thank you to Matt Reeves, Joanna Robinson, and Chris Ryan. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, and to Jonathan Kerma for filling in today.

Tune in next week to The Big Picture. We'll have a lot more coverage of the Batman. Van Lathan, Rob Mahoney, and myself will be ranking every damn Batman movie that's ever come out. We'll see you then.