He is vengeance. He is the night. He is the Batman. And apparently in The Batman, he will be super into the vengeance and the night.

That according to The Batman director Matt Reeves in a recent interview (ostensibly about his new film, War for the Planet of the Apes). Asked about his plans for the upcoming solo Dark Knight adventure starring (and originally planned to be directed by) Ben Affleck, Reeves described what he saw as the emotional “parallel” between Batman and his current protagonist, the ape leader Caesar. Both, he said, are “tortured and trying to grapple within themselves to find to do the right thing in a very imperfect, and to some degree corrupt world.”

He went on to describe in concise but specific detail what he wants The Batman to look like:

What I try to do, in an almost Hitchcockian sense, is use the camera and use the storytelling so that you become the character, and you emphasize with that point of view. And I think there’s a chance to do an almost noir-driven detective version of Batman that is point-of-view driven in a very, very powerful way, that will hopefully connect you to what’s going on inside of his head and inside of his heart.

We’ve had plenty of dark Batmen through the ages, and certainly some noirish Batman movies (Burton’s first one, in particular, feels very indebted to film noir). But we haven’t really had an awesome detective Batman, which could be an avenue where Reeves and Affleck could separate their film from its many predecessors. If they pull it off, The Batman could be the Batman movie people remember for a long time.

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