Robert Pattinson Wants To Fight Batman’s Weirdest Villain
Robert Pattinson wants Batman to fight the Condiment King in the sequel to The Batman.
The sequel to last year’s The Batman is still being written, but according to ComicBook.com, Robert Pattinson has a suggestion about who should be the next big Batman baddie. When asked about which villains may appear in the next movie, writer Matt Reeves responded: “I will say that to me the funniest thing that Robert [Pattinson] did the last time that we were on the press tour is that he kept talking about how great he thought it would be if we did Condiment King.”
Reeves continued: “He loved the idea of somebody just dousing somebody in mustard. I won’t commit to saying that Condiment King is going to make a reference but I’ll just use that as an answer to your question because I don’t have an answer to your question.”
For those who aren’t as familiar with Batman lore as Robert Pattinson, Condiment King was a humorous villain introduced in Batman: The Animated Series. Created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, he was meant to be a call-back to the Silver Age of comic books and its campy, silly bad guys.
Robert Pattinson’s beloved Condiment King first appeared as stand-up comedian Buddy Standler, who got on the wrong side of the Joker and paid for it. The Clown Prince of Crime brainwashed him and turned him into a ridiculous supervillain as punishment, giving him the power of using condiments like ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise as weapons.
After his brainwashing, Condiment King held up a restaurant by threatening its patrons with various sauces, only to be laughed at. This angered him and caused him to get serious: by spraying them with hot sauce.
Robert Pattinson’s animated Batman predecessor showed up in time to save the day, but not without giving Condiment King the chance to deliver a delicious last line: “Parting is such sweet and sour sorrow.”
After this, Robert Pattinson’s favorite villain leaped from the screen to the page, being written into several comic books within the Batman universe. In the comics, Condiment King was the alter ego of Mitchell Mayo, who was not actually brainwashed by the Joker, but was instead a man who didn’t get enough respect because of his odd last name and decided to make the world respect him for his evilness instead.
Unfortunately for him, everyone he taunted with his ketchup-squirting guns refused to take him seriously, which only angered him further. Apparently, the threat of not being able to get a sauce stain out of their nice white shirt isn’t enough to scare most people, and Condiment King was relegated to being a goofy comic relief device. He never fully reached the same dastardly levels of notoriety as the Riddler and the Penguin.
That’s not to say he was completely powerless. While he may sound like a silly villain for Robert Pattinson’s Batman to fight, there was one instance when Condiment King was actually quite dangerous. In Birds of Prey #37, the villain tried a new condiment concoction that sent Robin, Black Canary, and Blue Beetle into anaphylactic shock. Thanks to some toxic tricks he learned from Poison Ivy in Arkham Asylum, he was able to cause the condiments to create an allergic reaction, which could have been fatal to our heroes.
So, perhaps this messy and mustardy villain is dangerous after all! Still, it is highly unlikely that audiences will be seeing Robert Pattinson’s Batman fighting a comedic villain like Condiment King in the ultra-dark new Batman films, but we (and Robert Pattinson, apparently) can dream.
