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Matt Reeves's The Batman is an unapologetically grungy take on the caped crusader. Inspired by New Hollywood classics from the 1970s like The French Connection, Chinatown and Taxi Driver, and with a miserable 62 minutes and 40 seconds of rain during the film, there's a sense of dread that lingers in the background in this take on Gotham.
One way this is enforced is the repeated refrain of Kurt Cobain's track “Something in the Way”, from Nirvana's iconic 1991 album Nevermind. The track never fully bursts open and blares out, instead the thrum of those instantly recognisable guitar chords continually creep in to remind us there's something still out there.
Speaking to Esquire, director Reeves revealed how the figure of Cobain was a major influence for him, and how he saw similarities between the singer and the figure of Batman:
“Early on, when I was writing, I started listening to Nirvana, and there was something about [Nevermind song] ‘Something in the Way’, which is in the first trailer, which is part of the voice of that character. When I considered, ‘How do you do Bruce Wayne in a way that hasn’t been seen before?’ I started thinking, ‘What if some tragedy happened [ie: Wayne sees his parents murdered] and this guy becomes so reclusive, we don’t know what he’s doing? Is this guy some kind of wayward, reckless, drug addict?’ And the truth is that he is a kind of drug addict. His drug is his addiction to this drive for revenge. He’s like a Batman Kurt Cobain.”
The grunge vibe also carries over into how Robert Pattinson's take on Batman looks, with his eyes covered in thick black emo eye-liner. There's also little delineation between Batman and Bruce Wayne, meaning that we see him pale and dark-eyed even out of the Batsuit, such is the sense he is plagued by the weight of responsibility that hangs over him.
As Reeves explained to 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.”
