Image Source: Daily Sabah, DeviantArt

Creating a new Batman movie simply means that the actors and everyone concerned would get acquainted with The Batman comics. There are the more common ones like Batman: Year One, and Batman: The Long Halloween, but Robert Pattinson, the latest Batman star, was not satisfied with just these comics. 

While the more popularly known Batman comics did help the actor to get into the character and helped create the film, the Twilight star chose to seek inspiration from many more sources than just a few. Robert Pattinson stars as the dark hero in Matt Reeves’ latest Batman reboot, playing the character in his second year as an avenger. The first Batman film did not show why the billionaire became what he is, but Robert Pattinson chose a deeper insight into his character as he tried discerning the motivations for Bruce becoming a caped hero. 

"In the Christopher Nolan movies, it was kind of addressed in a pragmatic way and kind of explained pretty well," Pattinson told Entertainment Weekly. "I was trying to find a different angle on it."

Hence, Robert Pattinson went on to explore Batman: Shaman by Dennis O'Neil, John Beatty, Edward Hannigan, and The Man Who Fell by O'Neil and Dick Giordano. The stories are a little vague but show the earlier years of Batman as the caped hero and what might have motivated him to wear the cowl. The 1989 story showed Bruce, before his Batman years, being rescued by a shaman after he was injured on the Alaskan mountains. He stays with the shaman until he is well again, and that is where he first heard the story of how the bats learned to fly. While the tale is a myth, the story leaves an imprint on Bruce Wayne and comes back to him years later when he decides to become Batman. 

"It's almost a dream state the whole time," Pattinson shared, explaining the comic. "I was like, 'Oh, that hasn't really been touched on.' There's a kind of mysticism to it."

The film also helped design a more user-friendly Batman suit that relayed greater mobility to the actor. "In other iterations of the suit, because of the way you move, you kind of have to be more of like a tank. And in this one, it felt like it was such a shock how smoothly you could move. You kind of end up moving like more of a wraith," he said. "There's a scene right in the beginning of the movie where I'm kind of crouching over, investigating this dead body. And I really wanted a sort of druid."

He continued: "I was also thinking there's some kind of link when you look at like Viking warriors or something: You put on this outfit, and you genuinely believe that you have power afterward. And I was thinking that Bruce kind of thinks that. It clears his mind so much to be in that suit that it actually gives him extrasensory abilities. Even though, ironically, it's the opposite, like the reason that Batman is kind of separate from other superheroes because he's a normal guy."

The Batman: Shaman comic also helped Robert Pattinson learn why the caped hero is allowed on crime scenes along with police to investigate. 

"I was trying to play that, trying to think: 'How can you be a detective when you are wearing this outfit, which is the opposite of a detective?' I thought it's kind of he's a witch doctor more than anything else," shared Pattinson. "And the more you get it right, the more the police believe him, and so they start letting him into crime scenes and stuff."

Apart from the previously mentioned stories, Matt Reeves and Pattinson also went through Batman: Ego by Darwyn Cooke. The story adds to the mystery of the murder and helps expand on the thought process of the vigilante as he tries solving the case and figuring out why he is avenging. The story even shows the two alter egos of Bruce Wayne colliding after the character undergoes a serious psychological trauma. 

"I started thinking about Jekyll and Hyde and the idea of the shadow side," explained Reeves. "Ego really gets into this idea of the beast within him and that struggle. So, that got into the really internal, psychological struggle of being Batman."

"In a lot of the comics, he has trouble differentiating reality and his dreams, and in Ego as well," said Pattinson.

The actor continued his extensive research by reading other Batman works like Birth of the Demon and Batman: Earth One. Additionally, the more known Batman comics helped define the overall tone and setting of the film along with adding the serial killer element to the story. 

"It's so weird because I didn't know till I did all of this deep dive that it was literally my screenwriting teacher from USC — the person who told me that I should become a writer — Jeph Loeb, who wrote those stories," explained Reeves about the connection of the comics and the film. 

"He was very responsible for me pursuing that because when I went to film school, I was very set on being a director. I'd always written what I was doing as a kid and when I was making short films when I was young because I thought these are the means to get to make a movie," Reeves said about his cinematic journey. "And I never really separated the two. And when I was in his screenwriting class, he said, 'You have to continue pursuing this because this is something I feel you can do.' When I started going through all the comics, and I saw that he'd written, I was like, 'This is crazy.' And then I loved it."

The film will be released in theaters on March 4th.