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Matt Reeves says the eyeliner under the Batman mask is not only a nod to previous live action Dark Knights, but also appropriate for Robert Pattinson.
While the Batman of the comic books has eyes that are typically depicted as white slits, nearly every live-action interpretation of the character has ignored this, instead putting eyeliner on actors in an effort to keep the exposed eyeholes of the cowl black. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is no exception, with director Matt Reeves defending the look.
“You can’t wear a cowl and not wear that. All of the Batmen wear that,” Reeves told Esquire. “I just loved the idea of taking off [the mask] and under that there’s the sweating and the dripping and the whole theatricality of becoming this character.”
Following Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery and Adam West, who portrayed the Caped Crusader in the 1940s serials and the fan-favorite 1966 television show, all other actors to portray Batman have worn black makeup around their eyes, beginning with Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie.
While the movies always showed Batman suiting up in dramatic fashion, they never showed him actually applying eyeliner to his face, and the finale of Batman Returns featured an amusing continuity error where Keaton, clearly wearing black eyeliner under his mask in one scene, proceeded to rip off his cowl in front of Michelle Pfieffer’s Catwoman, revealing no eyeliner underneath.
In contrast, the finale of 2008’s The Dark Knight, as well as the armored suit in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, mark the only instances when Batman has appeared on screen with white eyes similar to his depiction in the comics.
Aside from defending Batman’s eye shadow, Reeves has also compared his version of Bruce Wayne to Kurt Cobain, the lead singer and guitarist for Nirvana who struggled with depression and drug addiction before taking his own life in 1994.
“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way,'” Reeves said in December 2021. “That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before, 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.”
The Batman, complete with eyeliner galore, is scheduled to premiere in theaters on March 4.
Source: Esquire
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