There’s only a handful of great Batman movies. While everyone can agree Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman is wonderful, almost nobody can agree on whether Batman Returns (1992) or Batman Forever (1995) are secret classics or noble failures. And even when it comes to beloved Batman sequels — like 2008’s The Dark Knight — there is one tendency that many, many Bat-flicks often have: Many Batman movies aren’t about Batman, mostly because there’s often a huge emphasis put on the Caped Crusader fighting some over-the-top villain.
Speaking to SFX about his plans for The Batman 2, Matt Reeves revealed a somewhat controversial viewpoint on Bat-sequels and in doing so, seems to indicate that his vision will be much different than what has come before.
The Batman 2 won’t be The Dark Knight
Although it's safe to say Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, it’s also perhaps a tiny bit accurate to think of this movie as more of the Joker’s film than Batman’s. Heath Ledger’s Joker steals the show here, and by the end of the movie, he’s joined by another villain, Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent/Two-Face.
If this formula sounds familiar, it should. An overwhelming number of Batman movies are stuffed with villains, from the 1966 classic starring Adam West (which featured The Riddler, the Penguin, Catwoman, and the Joker), to Batman Returns (Penguin and Catwoman) to Batman Forever (Two-Face and the Riddler), and of course, Batman & Robin (Bane, Poison Ivy, and Mister Freeze.) In essence, Reeves is aware of this historical tendency and is very fixated on avoiding it with his follow-up to The Batman.
“A lot of times what happens is you establish the Batman in the first movie and then the next movie is the Riddler’s movie or the Joker’s movie and the rogues’ gallery takes center stage,” he told SFX.“I wanted to find a way to keep Batman as the central arc of the movies.”
To this point, Reeves also noted that extremely goofy or borderline surreal villains like Gentleman Ghost probably won’t have a place in the Bat-universe he’s created. “Gentleman Ghost is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do,” he said. “But there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”
A Batman sequel about Batman
One of the most interesting things about 2022’s The Batman was the eleventh-hour character switch from the titular character himself. When Robert Pattison’s Bruce Wayne realizes that the gang of terrorists have been inspired by him as much as they were inspired by the Riddler, he realizes that being a guy who beats up people out or rage isn’t exactly the greatest thing for Gotham, or humanity.
Brilliantly, and tenderly, the ending of The Batman finds Bruce turning toward the role of protector rather than vigilante, a turn that says more about the character’s journey than most other Batman movies, including the good ones. In a sense, it seems that in crafting The Batman 2, Reeves is keeping true to what he began with the first film, by focusing on who Batman is and his relationship to Gotham City.
Reeves points out that he wants “these stories to be a meditation on the way Gotham is the way it is.” In The Batman 2, the story will “dig into the epic story about deeper corruption,” but without losing Bruce Wayne/Batman in the machinations of all of his antagonists. At the end of the day (or dark night), this will still be a movie about Bats. As Reeve promises: “It expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see.”
