The direction that director Matt Reeves will take with the next Batman stand alone film is anyone’s guess at the moment, but it seems that the filmmaker is channelling the right inspirations for The Batman. During a recent interview while he was out promoting his latest film War for the Planet of the Apes, Reeves says that Chris Nolan’s work on the Dark Knight Trilogy had a huge impact on the way he will make his first movie in the DCEU, The Batman.
Not only did Nolan impact Reeves directly with The Batman, but he influenced the way that Reeves handles blockbusters as well. Reeves tells Yahoo UK:
“What I love that [Nolan] did was that he took the genre seriously. What studios are willing to make at the moment is a very, very narrow band of films. What I discovered is that this genre has the potential to be about something more. You can use the metaphors of the genre to talk about [a lot].
I think the other thing that I really admire in what [Nolan] did was knowing what it is to make a big studio film, which often can fall into that sense of committee filmmaking where there’s an anonymity to the point of view of the film.
What I admire in what [Nolan] does is that, despite being a filmmaker in an enormous system, his perspective comes through. That to me was very exciting, it’s always exciting when you see a film of his because of that. That’s what I feel like I’ve been trying to do, it’s trying to allow a perspective to come through despite the fact that we’re in this very large studio movie world.”
The jury is still out on whether Warner Bros. Pictures will step in and mess with The Batman at all. They messed with Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, both of which had dismal critical reception but still made money. The studio left Patty Jenkins and Wonder Woman alone, and the film is getting critical acclaim along with big numbers at the box office.
You can bet that if Warner Bros. steps in again, the results will not be good. They have a long track record of watering-down films, and erasing directorial creativity from films.
There is no current word on when The Batman will go into production. Reeves is just starting to go over the script written by Geoff Johns and the film’s star Ben Affleck.
