The Internet Versus Robert Bat-tison

CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 19: Actor Robert Pattison is photographed for Paris Match on May 19, 2019 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Gilles Bensimon/Paris Match/Contour by Getty Images)

I’m hearing it’s official now and Robert Pattison will be playing Bruce “Batman” Wayne in the next Bat-film. Matt Reeves is going somewhere between first day on the bat-job and seasoned bat-veteran, something closer to The Batman cartoon in terms of what stage in his career he’s in. This could be interesting, as Reeves is also reported to be focusing on something the live-action Bat-Films have failed to even acknowledge, his detective skills. Outside of discovering the Joker’s formula in Tim Burton’s Batman and one scene in the serials only the DCAU animated series and the aforementioned The Batman really used these talents as part of the solution. Maybe some of the games as well. I’m still trying to find a controller that will allow me to play Arkham Asylum properly and I haven’t finished Batman: Vengeance either.

However, the internet is in rage mode, which seems to be the norm as of late, because of Pattison’s most well-known and well despised role, as the moody perma-teen vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga. The fact that the vampire who couldn’t turn into a bat is now playing the crimefighter who dresses as one has them livid because anything even remotely connected to that series is immediately looked down upon as a curse against humanity or something. The thing is we’ve been here so many times and I feel the need to be a voice of reason. I come not to praise Edward nor to bury him. I just want to bring some perspective to this debate.

Routh was also looked down upon because he worked in soap operas. He’s not the only actor to start there and move to works with less melodramatic stories.

Look, I’m not going to lie to you and say there haven’t been bad choices before. Remember, Burton also wanted to have Nicholas Cage play Superman. We also saw yesterday that he was chosen to play Scarecrow in the less grotesque attempt to continue the Batman movie series Burton started, which I think would have made more sense. The actor should look and act convincingly like the character he or she is portraying, especially if the character comes from animated media like comics, video games, or cartoons, and in the case of books should match the description given by the writer. I hear Game Of Thrones was messing that one up badly constantly. The thing is I’ve seen pictures of Pattison (obviously not the one above…he looks like me before I get a haircut) where he looks about as much like Bruce Wayne as Christian Bale did. And the article I linked to in the intro says that he looked better in the Batsuit than Nicholas Hoult, Pattison’s direct competition for the role. Of course that depends on the Batsuit in question, which leads to my next point.

I’ll readily admit that George Clooney was a bad choice to play Batman. Not every actor can play every role (although there are those that will consider that statement a challenge and surprise you). However, a good actor still has to deal with a bad script. Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill do look like Superman and I’m convinced they could play both Superman and Clark Kent as long as they approach both as separate parts and get their characterizations down. The problem is Routh was handed Richard Donner fanfic while Cavill was given to Zac Snyder, a man who does not understand superheroes, especially DC heroes. Val Kilmer could have been a good Batman except he was given Batman Forever, and he wasn’t going to save that script or its direction. For all we know Ben Affleck could have been a good Batman, or even a good Daredevil, with a better story than he was given. I can’t blame them for the failings of the movie beyond his control. Even Bob Hoskins could have played a great Mario if the Super Mario Brothers movie hadn’t been screwed up at pretty much every stage of the project.

I’m also wondering if we can get through this film without flashing back to the origin.

Now I haven’t seen Pattison in other roles. (For that matter the only Twilight I’ve seen are in reviews comparing the movie to the book series or Cinema Sins videos.) So I can’t really judge how well he could play Bruce and Batman, which like Superman is really playing two different characters masquerading as each other. That was a question I posed on Twitter. Has anybody seen any movies he’s done outside of this series? You can’t really judge him based on that alone. Natalie Portman is a good actress, but you wouldn’t know it from the Star Wars prequels. Jake Lloyd might have been good with better direction, but the assaults on him were so negative by the internet and his schoolmates that he left acting and his love of the franchise. Silvester Stallone once starred in a softcore porno (or at least one of those low-budget schlock films that show a lot of topless women). So many actors and actresses started out doing commercials for breakfast cereal or some other ad. Judging Pattison for Edward alone really isn’t fair, but that’s the rage source.

And yet look at some of the other choices the fandoms hated even pre-internet. Michael Keaton as Batman was already getting negative responses at this same stage due to his having done mostly comedy work exclusively at that point and there wasn’t even an internet to complain on. (Or at least at the time it was only used for government communication.) Robert Downey Jr (who I knew from the start would make for a great Tony Stark/Iron Man, even if he was a bit more sarcastic than comics Tony) was also hated as a choice and that did have a public internet to rage on. Both proved audiences wrong and now Downey’s Tony is influencing Tony’s depiction in other media, including the source medium. Until I see more of what Pattison can do, I’m not ready to immediately condemn him for a franchise where the acting wasn’t the worst thing about it. I think the writing and effects have something to say as well about why the Twilight movies (and the books they’re based on) were such poor quality.

All I’m saying is that Robert Pattison has played other roles, made other movies. I want to know what his costume will look like, how he actually looks in it (I don’t know which version of the costume he and Hoult were tested in but I’m hoping it was one of the Nolan costumes and not the overmuscled suit Ben Affleck was given), and how well he can portray both Batman and Bruce Wayne separately and together. Can he make me believe that a man dressed as a nocturnal flying animal can also be a great detective. Will they make him unstable like so many writers of recent years or will they remember the bat motif is a psychological tool he uses against the criminals and not the product of a disturbed mind? We know nothing about how this take on Batman will be done. Who is playing the part may well be the least of our worries when it comes to Matt Reeves’ take on Batman.