Los Angeles, March 7 : Hitting the theatres on March 4 and receiving exceptional reviews, “The Batman” has done a fantastic job so far, from being the darkest, bleakest and grittiest reboot of the superhero, to its more experimental take on the Caped Crusader, to becoming the highest post pandemic opener of this year with a whopping $57 million. The Batman played by Robert Pattinson is in his second year of crime fighting and is a mentally damaged person who is reckless, rough, grim, angry and borderline crazy. Encountering the enigmatic and highly intelligent serial killer Riddler as his new foe, The Batman is outdone by the psychopath on many turns though he does ultimately manage to defeat his new and formidable nemesis, but not entirely as the Riddler does achieve most of his objective. In an ending that could be a set up for a No Man’s Land scenario from the comics, Bats manages to lock up Riddler in Arkham Asylum and the antagonist in great agony sees the final steps of his plan foiled by the Dark Knight. Another inmate in an adjacent cell played by Barry Keoghan starts speaking to him as the Riddler moans the failure of his long drawn out plans. This inmate though officially referred to as “The Unseen Arkham prisoner”, is covered in shadows has long hair and bears a twisted smile and visage giving many ample clue to his identity. Recently in a statement on Variety, Reeves has confirmed the inmate is indeed Batman’s arch nemesis the Joker. “It’s not an Easter egg scene,” he said. “It’s not one of those end credits Marvel or DC scenes where it’s going, like, ‘Hey, here’s the next movie!’ In fact, I have no idea when or if we would return to that character in the movies.” It turns out that Reeves’ had initially planned for Keoghan’s Joker to have a much bigger role in the film , only to later cut Keoghan out entirely. In an early cut of “The Batman,” Keoghan actually showed up much earlier, in a scene following the revelation that the Riddler has killed the Gotham City police commissioner, and left behind yet another note addressed to the Batman. Between the Riddler’s notes casting an uncomfortable spotlight on Batman and the discovery that the Riddler is killing the city elite in his quest to unmask the truth about Gotham, Batman finds himself unnerved over what to make of the Riddler . “I thought he would be really insecure about this and he’d probably want to find some way to get into the [Riddler’s] mindset, like in ‘Manhunter’ or ‘Mindhunter’ — this idea of profiling somebody, so you can predict his next move,” says Reeves. So Reeves shot a scene in which Batman snuck inside Arkham, arriving at the door of a specific inmate. “And this guy says, ‘It’s almost our anniversary, isn’t it?’” says Reeves. “You realize that they have a relationship, and that this guy obviously did something, and Batman somehow got him into Arkham.” As they talk, Batman tells Joker he wants to know how Riddler thinks. Joker’s reply, as relayed by Reeves: “What do you mean, you want to know how he thinks? You guys think the same.” Reeves smiles. “What he’s really doing is getting into Batman’s head,” he says. “And [Batman] is resisting this idea violently. And so that’s what that scene was. It was a scene to unsettle him.” Ultimately, however, Reeves felt that the scene hit the same beat accomplished elsewhere in the movie. So he cut it. “It wasn’t necessary,” he says. “It was one of those scenes where, given how complex the narrative was, by taking it out, it kept the story moving in a way it needed to.” Cutting the first Joker scene was so heartbreaking that Reeves intends to release it once enough people have seen “The Batman.” “It’s a really creepy, cool scene,” he says. “That was the scene that was meant to introduce this guy and just to tease the audience to go like, ‘Oh my god, he’s here too? And he’s not yet the Joker — what’s this going to be?’ And then it seems so delicious in the story, since we’d already set him up, to have the end of the story, the completion of the Riddler arc, be that he was in a cell next to this guy.” ANV ING
