What links The Batman to High Fidelity and The Satanic Verses?

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The state of Gotham

Somehow playing Batman or the Joker has become the modern equivalents of an actor playing the Dane. And so Robert Pattinson displays his chops with the latest gritty interpretation of the bat-based vigilante. The almost three-hour (!) epic The Batman is a star-laden affair, with Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, and Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman.

Robert Pattinson is the eponymous hero in The Batman, whose Catwoman is played by … Photograph: Getty Images

About a girl

Kravitz previously voiced Catwoman in (“sophisticated”) animation The Lego Batman Movie (streaming everywhere). In 2020, she revived High Fidelity, now in prestige TV form (Disney+), though it was cancelled after one season. The series, transplanted to New York, built on the blokey record shop foundations of Stephen Frears’ Chicago-set adaptation starring John Cusack in 2000, and Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel from back when north London was approaching its Blairite/Wengerist imperial era.

… Zoë Kravitz, who previously revived High Fidelity by Nick Hornby … Photograph: Hulu

Englishman in New York

Later Hornby expanded his catalogue with a collection of successful screenplays. Moving beyond N-based postcodes, he shifted to 1950s Wexford and New York, and picked up an Oscar nomination in 2015 for his deft adaptation of Colm Toíbín’s tender novel Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan.

… who wrote the screenplay for Brooklyn, which starred Saoirse Ronan and was adapted from Colm Toíbín’s novel … Photograph: AP

Nan-o-books

That novel, 51st on the Guardian’s best of the 21st century, was edited by Nan Graham. The New York super-editor and publisher at Scribner has fingerprints on many heavy-hitting books of recent decades: be it Jennifer Egan or Stephen King; The Satanic Verses or Hillary Clinton’s autobiography. In the late 90s she was on board for Don DeLillo’s Underworld – a trip down the rabbit hole of America in the 20th century.

… which was edited by Nan Graham, who also worked on Don DeLillo’s Underworld … Photograph: Getty Images

Underwhelm

Several years after DeLillo’s epic came the underwhelming Cosmopolis, which was turned into a film by David Cronenberg (our review called it “cumbersome”). It concerns a day in the life of a young billionaire, played by The Batman himself, Robert Pattinson, and came as he sought to eclipse his Twilight fame with more serious fare. “A rat became the unit of currency” is the elliptical epigraph of both film and book, quoting Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert; now it seems to be a bat.

… which was followed by Cosmopolis, also turned into a film, starring Robert Pattinson. Photograph: Alamy

Pairing notes

Watch Pattinson excelled alongside Willem Dafoe in 2019’s strange, unsettling, scatological The Lighthouse (Netflix). Director Robert Eggers’ next outing is a Viking epic, due shortly.

Eat In a GQ interview, Pattinson explained his idea for a handheld fast food pasta concern, somehow involving a parcel of penne, cheese, sugar, “a sauce”, breadcrumbs and a burger bun. Try it? He called his creation piccolini cuscino, but clearly it should have been RPattzta.

Illustration: Guardian Design