The Batman's eagerly anticipated debut on the big screen is just a few days away and its lead star Robert Pattinson has opened up on the initial struggle he felt with balancing his preconceived ideas of how he'd play Batman with the reality he faced when donning the Caped Crusader's famous suit.
"When you're approaching it, you're trying to break it down like it's a conventional job, which is really isn't," Pattinson admitted to Digital Spy in an exclusive interview. "You're thinking how to play certain scenes and you can't really imagine yourself being able to convincingly do it until you put on the suit.
"The first day you put on the suit, you're like, 'Oh yeah, I'd be scared of this guy if he's walking down an alley trying to beat me up'. When you're actually shooting it, there's a whole host of unforeseen issues that you just can't predict when you're trying to imagine how you're going to play the part. You have to constantly reconfigure your performance at every single hurdle."
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Coincidentally, Colin Farrell suggested the same thing when referencing the makeup and outfit for his character Penguin (Oswald Cobblepot), which sees him completely unrecognisable and feeling a "sense of liberation" because of that.
"Oswald's not yet fully embodying the recognisable archetype of the Penguin. He's called the Penguin behind his back by people, but it's more of a derogatory term. He's Oz and he's at an earlier stage of his career.
"I had ideas, but then I saw the design that Mike Marino had created, and when we put that on for the first time, once the make-up went on, I did start moving, speaking and gesturing and just behaving in a way that I hadn't even considered up until that point. There was something alchemical about the reaction that I had.
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"Psychologically I was hidden as well – whatever nervousness we carry as human beings in relation to being seen or in relation to portraying our feelings from our expressions, all of it was gone. I was totally submerged and it was an incredible sense of liberation that I felt."
The Batman has a release date of March 4, 2022.
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Hannah Bird is a freelance sub-editor with over 10 years of experience in content creation and editorial across digital and print media.
Beginning as a Lifestyle and Travel Editor, Hannah's expertise has since spanned entertainment, health, wellness and science, developing a keen eye for copy editing. Bringing her research skills as an Earth Science academic, Hannah enjoys thoroughly delving into topics to explore new angles and offer fresh stories to readers, as well as priding herself on the content's accuracy.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
