10 Upcoming DC Movies And The Comics They'll Adapt
9. The Batman
Comics: New 52 Batman by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo,
Following the success of Joker and the news that Ben Affleck would not be returning to the role of Batman, fans were left wondering what role Matt Reeves’s The Batman would play in the DCU. Would this still be set in the same universe as Affleck’s Batman and continue that iteration of the character, is this the same Bruce Wayne that we all saw as a child in Todd Philips’s Joker, or is this an entirely new Batman set in an entirely new universe?
Whatever the case may be, one thing is for certain, this will be a different Batman. As stated by Reeves himself, he wants to depict a younger Caped Crusader, while focusing on the character’s skills as a detective.
Once again, look no further than the New 52.
With Paul Dano cast as the Riddler in this new movie, Snyder and Capullo have created the perfect tale just waiting to be adapted, in Zero Year. In this story we see an inexperienced Batman try to take control of Gotham back from the Riddler, who has cutoff the city from the rest of the outside world, with there being seemingly no way for anyone to escape, or for that matter, of Riddler losing his grip on the city. This story matches Reeves vision almost perfectly, seeing as how his version of Batman is being depicted as around 30 years old and in the beginning stages of his crime fighting career.
Another source of inspiration, more so for Robert Pattinson than Reeves ,could be Tom King’s divisive DC Rebirth Batman run. In an interview with the New York Times, Pattison revealed that he wasn’t interested in playing “ a straightforward good guy”, while going on to say that Batman is “not the golden-boy, unlike almost every other comic book character.”
Unlike what we read in Snyder and Capullo’s run, King’s Batman isn’t portrayed as optimistic and future oriented, instead we see a version of Batman that is much more focused on the present and his internal struggle with the toll his oath to fight a war on crime has taken on him over the years. King’s Batman is very much a flawed and emotionally damaged character, whose emotions sometimes cloud his judgement, leading the reader to questioning if what Batman just did was heroic or not.