18 March 2022
Here’s a little behind the scenes
17 February 2022
For those like me who had to wait to come home from work to watch – here’s the YouTube version
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Polygon spoke to Naomi Donne who did Rob’s makeup for The Batman. This is what Naomi had to say about Bruce Wayne’s smokey eyes:
The hero of Matt Reeves’ The Batman boldly does something none of his previous onscreen counterparts have done: When the cowl is off, he wears a heavy, smokey eye.
While Robert Pattinson’s darkly lined eyes certainly make for a compelling, unforgettable look, that aspect of his character design isn’t all about the aesthetic. (To be fair, it is a lot about the aesthetic.) The eye makeup has a practical purpose: Bruce Wayne needs to cover the area around his eyes in order to completely conceal his face while wearing his black cowl. Other actors playing Batman in live-action films usually also wore these raccoon eyes, but The Batman is the first to acknowledge that the illusion of darkness requires some cosmetic skills.
As makeup designer Naomi Donne tells Polygon, director Matt Reeves really wanted a makeup look that focused on how Batman looks immediately after taking off his costume.
“Matt was really keen that there were remains of [the eye makeup] when he took his cowl off,” she explains. “So we pushed that. We actually took the cowl off and looked at what was left, and we used that. It’s really hard to get black eye makeup off, and we used that.”
It was a process of trial and error, Donne says, to get that perfect blend of dark eye makeup that would look good, but also stay on. Between the film’s rainy setting, the sweaty costume, and the intense action scenes, they needed something with a lot of staying power. In the end, Batman’s perfectly calibrated emo look was a mixture of pigment, a creamy eyeliner, pencil, and a liquid paint makeup.
“And then,” she says, “to brighten it up, we used this lightly sparkly pigment to give it a bit of light, so that it reflected lights in the same way his Batsuit would’ve.”
While the dark eyeliner certainly brings to mind emo and goth subcultures, Donne says Reeves’ touchpoint for Batman’s look came from a different specific source: Kurt Cobain. Reeves previously revealed how the Nirvana singer inspired his take on the Caped Crusader, and how he leaned more on a tortured Bruce Wayne instead of a playboy millionaire. In fact, that connection led Reeves to cast Robert Pattinson. It makes natural sense that the deeper character threads tying Kurt Cobain and this version of Bruce Wayne would also extend to their visual aesthetics. After all, Cobain rocked the black-eyeliner look in the ‘90s — even if it wasn’t as messy as Bruce Wayne’s getup in the movie.
“I loved that at times it was very smudged and running down his face, and at times it was just a smokey eye. But at all times it was never clean. It always came from the remains of the cowl,” says Donne. “It was the way of Batman lingering in Bruce Wayne after he’s taken his costume off.”
But as much as we can wax on about the metaphors in eye makeup and how the lingering specter of Batman will forever haunt Bruce Wayne, Donne boils it all down to a universal truth: “It also looked dead sexy. Men in black eye makeup look really good.”
14 March 2022
Dior shared this great photo of Rob from the Paris Photocall for The Batman
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*SPOILER* for those who haven’t seen the film you may not want to watch this scene.
Matt Reeves narrates a sequence in which Batman flees the police from a rooftop using his batsuit for The New York Times.
In this scene from “The Batman,” a superhero flies, but it’s mostly by the seat of his pants.
Batman (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in an interrogation room after an altercation he was present for turned deadly.
Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), who has developed a partnership and trust with Batman, secretly helps him flee the scene. But in Matt Reeves’s take on the series, the Caped Crusader doesn’t have a smooth handle on his tech.
In his narration, Reeves said that he wanted to present a less polished version of Batman than we’ve seen before.
“Rob as Batman is never really in control,” Reeves said. “He’s just barely making it.”
Reeves went in this direction with the character to humanize him a bit and make him more relatable. When Batman reaches the ledge in the scene, he’s actually afraid of how high up he is.
For the flight tech, Reeves found inspiration in wingsuits, a webbed jumpsuit used in extreme sports like skydiving and BASE jumping to experience more airtime. Some of the shots of the sequence are patterned after YouTube videos Reeves watched of wingsuit moments in all their harrowing, will-they-survive-or-not wonder. And strategic camera placement makes it feel like the audience is taking that harrowing, blundering journey right along with the Batman.
David Cronenberg talks about his respect for Rob
The Wrap recently spoke with The Batman cinematographer Greig Fraser. Note are spoilers in the article, but this is what Greg had to say in response to the camera test with Rob in the Batsuit:
I’m also curious about the camera tests with the Batsuit and figuring out how to lens it. I know someone has said – and maybe it was you — the two hardest things to light are the Batsuit and the Darth Vader helmet, and you’ve done both.
Yeah, I said that. I told Robert that. I think I said it to him apologetically as I was adjusting an eye light a millimeter at a time. And the poor guy standing there with this big leather suit on. So I think I felt really bad, having to say, “Hey man, I’m so sorry. I really want to see your eyes.” But it’s tricky because getting the light into the eyes, yet not putting too much on the cowl, is the balance. It’s a really hard balance to strike because when you over-light the cowl — I mean, listen, it’s a beautiful costume, of course. But if you over-light that cowl, it can lose some of the power, you know? It can lose some of its menace, and it doesn’t then feel like it’s servicing that story as well.
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Rob’s Films
Mickey17
Role: Mickey17
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Release Date: 18 April 2025 (US). | Check out all upcoming release dates at our Film Page by clicking on News below
The Drama
Role: TBA
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Information for all of Robert's past films can also be found at RPAU's individual film pages by clicking photo below.
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Release Date: Expected 2025. Currently Filming – 21 October 2024 rumoured to conclude 13 December 2024.
The Batman
Role: Bruce Wayne | Batman
Director: Matt Reeves
Director: Matt Reeves
Release Date: Aust: 3 March 2022 | US: 4 March 2022. Check out all upcoming release dates at our Film Page by clicking on News below
Information for all of Robert's past films can also be found at RPAU's individual film pages by clicking photo below.
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