To be fair Robert Pattinson certainly can’t be worse than Affleck, Kilmer, or Clooney, though he might still have to work a little harder to reach the level of Keaton or Bale since as a newbie to the Batman name he’s going to have an uphill climb to make. The confidence that a lot of people have in him and the idea that he could begin something new with the dark knight however is hopefully going to be well-founded and will ignore all jibes and jokes about Batman appearing to sparkle in the right light. Pattinson has come a long way from his Twilight days after all and has shown that he has what it takes to play a more serious and very adult role that doesn’t depend on teenage angst and a tiresome love story that appeals to young girls and wistful moms across the world. When it comes to Batman he’ll be appealing to a different demographic, one that’s a lot more exacting in their criticism and can create a huge amount of buzz or do their absolute best to cut a person down to size if they don’t appear to measure up to the ideals that the fans bring to the table. But seriously, we’re banking on the idea that Pattinson will be up to the challenge. Kristen Bateman of W has something else to share on this subject.
It’s true that this is a lot of confidence for an actor that has never done something like this and might be coming in a serious disadvantage in the eyes of some fans, but his acting skills are solid and his ability to step into a character have been shown to be impressive, so there’s nothing else to do but sit back and wait to see if the confidence being placed in him is going to pan out. Batman is a role that a lot of people watch closely and a lot of people have their own opinions about since the dark knight is a character that is universally well-respected by fans of just about every genre. He’s one of the only heroes that is tossed about in a way that suggests that he could beat just about anyone given enough time and opportunity, and it’s happened plenty of times in the comics when Batman had no reason to stand on his own two feet let alone win. In this light Pattinson is coming into a world where the hero has been built up to such a degree that the action scenes and the whole feel of it is already there, it’s simply the acting part that he’s going to have to nail in order to impress the right people. That doesn’t sound like a tall order but ask Clooney and Kilmer how it went and you might get a different story altogether since they were both lambasted when it came to their turn in the suit. George Marston of Newsarama wrote and interesting article you might want to check out.
Christian Bale was a breath of fresh air that some people fully enjoyed while others looked at cockeyed when he went into his rough, grumbling voice to disguise the fact that he was Bruce Wayne, a man that no one believed had any business fighting crime thanks to his playboy persona. Throughout three movies Bale really put on a show, starting off as someone that didn’t know much of anything, let alone how to take care of himself on the street, to someone that was old, ready to hang it up, but had one last good fight in him. Keaton had at least one great movie for the time while the second kind of fell flat for various reasons, and Affleck had a couple of appearances in movies that didn’t even belong just to him and brought an aggressive side to the Batman that some people liked and others couldn’t really get used to. Joshua Meyer of SlashFilm has his own opinion on this matter. So really Pattinson is taking on a character that’s been a general mess apart from the three Nolan movies and is being expected to shine in a way that will make a lot of fans get on board with the upcoming movie much the same way they did with Joker recently. The hope appears to be that Pattinson will start off the dark knight’s life in a different chapter, similar to Christian Bale but obviously focused in Gotham and in the earlier stages of his crime-fighting career.
How he’ll adapt to the Bruce Wayne persona and the Batman persona is going to be interesting since on screen Pattinson is not that intimidating of a character. Some of the other actors haven’t been that intimidating either, but Keaton and Bale at least have the ability to become aggressive and a bit scary at the drop of a hat, whereas Affleck had the serious scowl that was definitely a Batman trait but didn’t really work on the same level. We’re still confident in Pattinson, but he definitely has a lot to get done in order to make people believe in him when it comes to this role.
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