Matt Reeves Plans To Put Bruce Wayne Through A Lot In The Batman 2
Matt Reeves says The Batman 2 will explore the emotions of its characters even more than the previous film.
If you thought Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne went through hell in The Batman, don’t count on The Batman 2 being a better time for the character. Recently, director Matt Reeves spoke to the Happy Sad Confused podcast where he said “We’re going to take these characters and put them in some kind of emotional jeopardy.” Undoubtedly, Batman is going to get some physical beatdowns, but it sounds like his emotional journey is going to be pretty brutal as well.
The Batman was one of the best DC films in recent memory, as the film introduced us to Pattinson’s take on the iconic character as he faced off against Paul Dano’s terrifying Riddler. We were also introduced to Batman mainstays like Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman and Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobblepot, who is getting his own HBO Max spin-off series. Undoubtedly, Matt Reeves will be weaving Penguin’s story into the upcoming The Batman 2.
While there’s a good chance that the Penguin will be a major adversary in The Batman 2, fans have been wondering what other villains might be involved in the sequel. Deadline recently reported that Mike Flanagan recently pitched a film featuring the villain Clayface over at DC. While the film was supposedly pitched to be a solo feature, some sources said that the shape-shifting villain would actually play a part in the upcoming Batman sequel.
What’s interesting about Matt Reeves’ The Batman 2 and his other DC projects is that he sort of has free rein to use the characters however he wants. The Batverse films under Reeves are categorized under James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Elseworlds projects, meaning they don’t operate under the continuity of the mainline DCU. This allows Reeves to play around with the DC characters more than the creators who are contributing to the mainline DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters are allowed to.
The upcoming sequel to Joker has similar creative freedom, which is why we will now have Barry Keoghan’s Joker, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, and presumably, a Joker for the DCU all playing parts in major blockbuster DC films. It’s a clever bit of marketing that allows for some more creative projects to come out of DC that don’t have to consider a strict timeline and continuity a la the MCU. Interestingly, this setup means The Batman 2 also won’t be the only Batman film in theaters come 2025.
Along with The Batman 2, James Gunn has also planned a mainline Batman DCU film for 2025 titled The Brave and the Bold. The Brave and the Bold will be a film about Batman and Robin, with Bruce Wayne’s son Damian Wayne as the current Robin. No actors have been cast for the project yet, but we’ll have two different Bruce Waynes on the big screen in the same year.
It seems likely that The Batman 2 and The Brave and the Bold will be quite different from each other. It’s especially interesting since we haven’t seen a proper live-action Robin in a film since Chris O’Donnell played him in 1997’s Batman & Robin (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the Nolan films hardly counts). We’ll just have to wait and see which version of Batman fans prefer when these films hit theaters in 2025.
