The Batman: Creating the Perfect Bruce Wayne

While Batman has always been a franchise success, despite often critic panning DC/WB may have a large hurdle to overcome with Matt Reeves The Batman. Fans and critics together have been beating the dead horse with how dark the DCEU has been. DC from Wonder Woman, right through Aquaman, finally hit their peak Shazam with their family friendly pivot. Sure, they can still maintain that humor through The Flash or even Green Lantern Corps, but if they expect to do fans justice, The Batman will be where it ends.

Yes, Batman does have the ability to be campy and fun. We’ve seen it at its best with Jim Carrey as the Riddler and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. But that was the 90’s before Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Tom Hardy set the bar for what Batman movies could be. If DC/Warner Bros. wants to keep connecting fans to the characters they grew up loving on the pages comic books, then goofy characters need to be left in the past.

So how does Matt Reeves approach one of the most iconic characters out of the DC universe?

Rumor has it that Reeves would like to approach a younger Bruce Wayne which might work out in his favor. If he can pull off a young Batman he’ll be able to lay the groundwork for the remaining DC version of the character. He won’t have to try and fit Bruce into someone else’s vision. That’s not to say we wouldn’t be able to get Batman in an extended universe capacity. If DC runs two concurrent versions of the same character we’ll get to see the same brooding, dark, and tortured Bruce Wayne we’ve seen on the pages of comics and we’ll get to see how he got there. Imagine having two actors who closely resemble each other but around a decade apart in age. The older version of Bruce is the one we see in the Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, and future team up movies, while the younger Bruce is it’s own stand alone trilogy or more.

Since we’ve already been bashed over the head with Batman’s origin story, writers can take a page out of Sony’s Spider-man: Homecoming and gloss right over it. With all we’ve seen out of Bruce Wayne how can they possibly get a younger iteration without touching on his origins? Simple, start with one of the classics, his love affair with Selina Kyle. Yep, that’s right, Catwoman. If Reeves is looking for inspiration, he can turn right to the pages of Tom King’s current Batman run in the comics. King has been writing the back and forth love affair between the two and has been absolutely crushing the connection between the two.

The Cat and Bat story is the one element of Batman that the movies have yet to get right and its time for DC to right that wrong. Such an iconic story needs to unfold on the big screen. We’ve seen the tough, brooding, tech’d out Batman. Now it’s time for fans to be reminded that Bruce Wayne is still human. A younger, more vulnerable Bruce still suffering the loss, still begging to find hope in Selina Kyle is an iteration we’re owed. No matter what villain The Batman decides to go with, this is the version that will allow Reeves to pay true homage to “The World’s Greatest Detective” from Detective Comics.

Every single director that has been brought in to work on a Batman film forgets this defining characteristic of the Caped Crusader. All of them want to dive into the Joker, into Bane, into Batman and Robin to show off the superior combat awareness of Bruce Wayne. Not a single director yet has paid tribute to the “greatest detective” moniker and how the genius of Batman has outwitted his foes. Of course we all want to see the next kick ass Bat-mobile, and some cool Wayne tech along the way but on our journey can we love the character as well?

Bruce Wayne is the ultimate tortured soul and adding Selina Kyle to the mix is a perfect reflection of how his two worlds collide. The trouble with most on-screen portrayals is the lack of chemistry due to casting that year’s Hollywood “it” girl or whatever actress is big at the time. For this to succeed, they’d need to take relatively unknown and make her steal the show. Center the story around his struggle to be everything to everyone in Gotham and want a little piece for himself as well. Allow audiences to be pulled in to his mentoring of a young Dick Greyson. Build the story in the future extended universe with the entire Bat-family in Nightwing, Red Hood, Damian Wayne, or the Spoiler. Hell Batman alone has enough characters to be its own extended universe. By stepping back into a more traditional comic book version of Bruce Wayne, The Batman movie could be the catalyst that kicks off a whole new extension of the DCEU but first, they have to connect us to the character.

To do so, we have to see what Bruce leaves behind to become the Batman Gotham deserves. What better way to show that than the chase of Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Loss and sacrifice go hand in hand when it comes to being a hero. We’ve seen what Bruce has lost throughout the year’s but we’ve never seen what he’s sacrificed. By visiting a point in his life where Bruce believed he could have it all will help shape the Batman we see in future shared universe films. Connect audiences to the human side of Bruce, to the mind that out strategizes his foes, and the man who sacrifices so much to be the hero he’s supposed to be, then and only then will you have the next great Batman film.