The Batman trailer that dropped last year left the audience bedazzled of how well the music used a darker rendition of Nirvana’s Something In The Way. As it turns out, director Matt Reeves had a deeper reason for the song selection.
In an interview with Empire, director Matt Reeves talked about how late Nirvana frontman and '90s music icon Kurt Cobain inspired his adaptation of Batman’s alter ego Bruce Wayne.
"When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana's 'Something In The Way,'" he said, referring to the grunge rock group's 1991 song, which Cobain wrote about a fictional person living under a bridge, and which appears in the trailers for The Batman.
It was within the music that Reeves decided to forego the standard portrayal of Bruce Wayne as a playboy and go for something edgier.
“There’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days,’ and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor,” remarked Reeves.
Reeves' decision to cast Robert Pattinson galvanised with having Kurt Cobain in his mind. “He’s also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse,” said Reeves.
Pattinson drew Reeves' attention after the director watched his performance in the 2017 crime thriller Good Time. "In that movie, you could really feel his vulnerability and desperation, but you could also feel his power," the director told Empire.
Reeves’ cinematic influences for “The Batman” include Chinatown, The French Connection, and Taxi Driver. Reeves co-wrote the script with Mattson Tomlin and “The Batman” features cinematography from Oscar-nominated DP Greig Fraser.
The Batman releases on March 4, 2022, marking the sixth re-imagination of the character on the big screen.