The Batman comes out in two weeks, so we’re in the full-court press for, er, press. Yesterday, it was Robert Pattinson at Jimmy Kimmel Live, today it’s RBattz and Zoë Kravitz together on the digital cover for Entertainment Weekly. (In a heart-crushing blow to the celebrity/pop culture establishment, EW shuttered its print edition last week. It will only be digital from now on.) I know The Batman is a Serious Movie about Sad People Being Sad (In Capes), but can we just appreciate the aesthetics for a minute? Pattinson and Kravitz as Batman and Catwoman have been a HUGE selling point for The Batman.
Kravitz is the third cinematic Catwoman (four if you count Halle Berry, which no one affiliated with DC Films does), following Michelle Pfeiffer’s untouchable and deliciously kinky performance in Batman Returns and Anne Hathaway’s saucy but more grounded thief in The Dark Knight Rises, and it’s clear one element to set Kravitz’s version of Selina Kyle apart from the others is that we’re really going to see Selina and Bruce’s relationship develop, not just as a teasing affair but as something that truly rocks them both. In the comics, they just cannot stay away from each other, for better and worse, and they challenge each other’s assumptions and identities in interesting ways. That’s not really the Bat-and-Cat dynamic we’ve seen on screen yet, though, so I’m interested to see it here. Especially with Pattinson and Kravitz looking so damn hot together.
As for the movie, I hope it’s as much of a detective story as it’s being billed, because that is practically the only corner of Batman left unexplored in movies. We’re very close to actually, finally, seeing this thing, though, so the hard sell about the plot doesn’t really interest me. I’m sold! I’m already in! RBattz and Zoe Kravitz got me! But this profile does mention how much Pattinson wanted this role, so no matter how quirky/weird/blatantly lying he is on the press tour, Pattinson is invested in how this is all turns out. And when an actor of his caliber cares this much, the results are almost always good, if not outright phenomenal. I’m trying to manage my expectations, because things shot during COVID have been a little all over the place, and The Batman faced a lot of COVID challenges, but Pattinson has been SO good over the last decade, if he can bring that high-energy weirdness to Batman, we could be in for something special.