Ever since the first trailer of The Batman dropped last year, many remarked on how well the music used a darker rendition of Nirvana’s Something In The Way. As it turns out, director Matt Reeves had a deeper reason for the song selection. In a recent interview to Empire Magazine, Matt reveals that in his film, Batman’s alter ego Bruce Wayne was inspired by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
Matt revealed that while writing the film’s first act, he would often listen to the song in the background, which gave him the idea to base the titular character on the late Kurt Cobain. He said, “When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s Something In The Way. That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne, the playboy version we’ve seen before, there’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So, I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”
This different characterisation of Bruce Wayne and Batman as a tragic recluse also encouraged the director to eventually cast Robert Pattinson in the role as he fit this version very well. Matt said he was impressed by the actor’s performance in Good Time and that he could see a bit of Kurt Cobain in him there. “In that movie you could really feel his vulnerability and desperation, but you could also feel his power. I thought that was a great mix. He’s also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse,” the director said. Interestingly, back in 2010, Robert Pattinson was rumoured to be playing Kurt Cobain in a planned biopic of the late rockstar. But the rumours were dismissed soon after.
{{/usCountry}}This different characterisation of Bruce Wayne and Batman as a tragic recluse also encouraged the director to eventually cast Robert Pattinson in the role as he fit this version very well. Matt said he was impressed by the actor’s performance in Good Time and that he could see a bit of Kurt Cobain in him there. “In that movie you could really feel his vulnerability and desperation, but you could also feel his power. I thought that was a great mix. He’s also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse,” the director said. Interestingly, back in 2010, Robert Pattinson was rumoured to be playing Kurt Cobain in a planned biopic of the late rockstar. But the rumours were dismissed soon after.
{{/usCountry}}The Batman, which releases on March 4, 2022, marks the sixth re-imagination of the popular character on the big screen. Robert Pattinson joins a long line of actors, starting with Michael Keaton and going up to Ben Affleck, who have all portrayed Batman on film. Director Matt Reeves has stated that his take on the character an is darker and grittier than all the films before.