It’s been confirmed that Robert Pattinson will be the new Batman, but a bit of information brought forth by Ryan Scott of MovieWeb and others is that this Batman won’t be linking up with the DCEU. You can only imagine how much this would confuse fans since the Justice League and Batman vs. Superman established that we’ll finally get to see the heroes together in the movies as we move forward. It might be a real downer if not for the added information that the movie is apparently one of a trilogy that’s being tentatively planned and that it will take place during Batman’s past, before his entanglement with Superman and the Justice League. So there is a method to the madness, but there is a reason why the DCEU seems to be tripping over its own feet at this point when it comes to overall popularity. Thus far the heroes have been kept apart save for a couple of movies, and it would seem that the movies have been all the better for it, well, in some cases at least.
So far as Rick Marshall from Digital Trends has relayed the release date for this movie is going to be set for 2021, but as a lot of us know by now this is bound to be a tentative date since anything can happen in the next year and a half. Plus, for anyone that’s worrying over whether taking Batman back to being a solo player let’s remember that when he first started in the movies there was no other hero around to help him out, and he did just fine. Even when Robin came around in the form of Chris O’Donnell things were kept pretty much within the Bat family, either because of budget concerns or because the director wanted to keep focus on the Batman and no one else. It might be nice to make mention of other heroes as the movie goes along but otherwise it would seem that the sole focus is going to be on the dark knight. In fact there’s been no mention of anyone else joining the cast but at this point it’s still pretty early to be thinking about such concerns since production is still a ways out. If there are any special villains and/or sidekicks or allies then they’re bound to be regular folks that Batman relies on pretty heavily most of the time and not other heroes. Like Christopher Nolan’s trilogy this one sounds like it’s going to be Batman taking the load on his own shoulders for the most part.
This shouldn’t be too surprising as Adam Holmes of Cinema Blend reminds us that the upcoming Joker movie isn’t being set in the same universe as the rest of the DC heroes and villains, so it seems fair to say that DC is trying a different approach as opposed to something that’s nearly buried them in the recent past. As we’ve seen, Wonder Woman and Aquaman have been able to stand on their own two feet where the Justice League and Batman vs. Superman movies have done well but haven’t been nearly as respected as their counterparts at the MCU. For some strange reason the DCEU hasn’t been able to fully integrate their heroes and villains in a way that’s made the fans absolutely crazy over the result as of yet, and it’s kind of hard to imagine how or why this has happened. But it does seem to mean that they’re going to bank more on the standalone stories that have been coming out and the reality that they seem to be doing better than the group movies that people have been criticizing so heavily.
If you watch Batman from the Michael Keaton era all the way until now, you can see how the effects get better but the fan reaction gets worse with every movie up until the Christian Bale era. That was when things took a turn for the better, especially with The Dark Knight. Before and following that however people simply lost interest and began to look elsewhere for their entertainment. The Batman is still a heavily favored character and is obviously going to be a part of the DCEU at some point, but in this version it would seem that Pattinson’s Batman gets a chance to stand on his own two feet and do his own thing in a different time, hence the desire to hire on a younger actor as Keaton, Affleck, and the others are getting a bit old these days, and a few of them wouldn’t even want the chance to put the suit back on.
So it might be be that this coming Batman movie could be more akin to the Batman we received with Michael Keaton, or it could be its own entity entirely. Until we see anything else on the movie it’s probably best to hold any real judgments on how it will perform in the theaters.
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