Robert Pattinson Plays ‘The Batman’ Like a Dorky Virgin and I Love It So Much

At about an hour and fifteen minutes into The Batman on HBO Max, Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) eats pavement and I laughed out loud. The moment comes after Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) helps the caped crusader escape police custody. Batman flees through Gotham City Police Headquarters, pursued by every cop in the building (who’s not Gordon). He eventually makes it onto the roof, adjusts his costume, and soars through the city with the assistance of a wing suit. Triumphant music blares as our hero literally flies over the crime-ridden streets. That is, until he attempts to land on a bus and his parachute catches on a bridge, causing Batman to tumble like a dork onto a car.

It was, to me, a perfect Batman moment that underlined the fact that Batman is not meant to be superhuman. He is super rich and super dogged, but he’s a mere mortal. Robert Pattinson doesn’t just play Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman as fragile, though. He plays him as a lame ass, awkward, virginal loner. And honestly? It’s a great take on the Dark Knight that underscores the anomie Bruce must have felt as an orphan from the 1%. Robert Pattinson’s Batman is a moody dork and I love it so.

The Batman was directed and co-written by Matt Reeves and is set two years after Batman’s emergence as a mysterious vigilante in Gotham City. While other Batman movies take pains to chart out Bruce Wayne’s journey from traumatized child to caped crusader, The Batman just drops us in on the action. He is not starting out nor is he an established hero. What makes this approach so fun is we’re able skip over the story beats that have become so rote they’re cliche — like Martha Wayne’s pearls dropping as she and husband Thomas are gunned down — while introducing key figures from Batman’s rogues gallery of villains in inventive, lo-fi ways. The Riddler’s (Paul Dano) main style influence is masking tape. Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz) gets roped into Bruce’s hunt to help save a friend. The Penguin is Colin Farrell in a fat suit. (I don’t know about that last one, folks.)

Bruce is also stripped down to his nuts and bolts. He is a depressed loner seemingly obsessed with self-harm. His preferred manner of flagellating himself? Roaming the night, getting into trouble, and fighting his way home. He tells butler/father figure Alfred (Andy Serkis) that his work as Batman is his way of securing his parents’ legacy. At the start of the film, Bruce sees his lionized father — who was a doctor, philanthropist, and political figure — and his mother as martyrs, gunned down for the city’s sins. While that image of Thomas and Martha Wayne is challenged over the course of the film, The Batman makes it clear that Bruce has not processed his grief in any real way. He fixates on the Mayor’s son, a child who stumbles upon his father’s own brutalized corpse, and emotionally erupts when the people he cares about, Alfred and Catwoman, are threatened.

So about those relationships… Bruce is a hilariously awkward human being. He doesn’t know how to charm his way through an interaction, kitted up as Batman or roaming Gotham as its tragic prince. One thing The Batman does really well is show us how differently the same characters react to Batman vs. Bruce. The only through line haunting both personas is how people consider both Batman and Bruce Wayne as “other.” He is always, mask on or off, a man alone. Alfred is the person closest to Bruce, the broken boy, and Selina Kyle is the one character who seems to understand “Batman.” (The Riddler tragically thinks he and Batman share a bonkers connection, and maybe they would, if it weren’t for Alfred, Selina, and Gordon tethering Bruce to his humanity.)

Robert Pattinson plays both Bruce Wayne and Batman like a ghost and a monster, respectively. Bruce is bizarrely pale and seems unable to live a life of his own; Batman literally believes he is the spirit of vengeance made flesh. So where does love fall into this picture? Bruce’s flirtations with Selina in costume feel so fiery because you can tell this is the closest he’s ever gotten to another person. They’re a match for each other in a fight and fall into an easy alliance when they realize they have the same enemies. The moment that Catwoman kisses Batman is sensual, but you’ll have to note that our hero is caught off guard. He is familiar with how wounds on corpses heal, but unsure of himself as a man. In the end, Selina understands that Bruce is already spoken for, by Gotham City herself.

Bruce’s awkwardness, his solitude, and his single-minded focus on justice can lead us to but one conclusion: Robert Pattinson’s Batman is a virgin. Or, at the least, he’s never been emotionally intimate with another soul. This isn’t just seen in the subtext of Pattinson’s performance, but it comes from the actor himself. In an interview with IGN’s Jim Vejvoda, Pattinson and Kravitz were literally asked if this version of Bruce had known sexual or romantic love before. After joking that he must have had, they sort of arrive at the idea that, no, he has not!

Jokes aside, I really like this take on the character. Christian Bale played him like a bizarrely well-adjusted alpha, happy to play the part of a billionaire bad boy to take the heat off of his extra-curricular activities. Ben Affleck’s Batman was a wizened, elder statesman who had seen heartache, but not been undone by it. Pattinson’s version of the character plays into the mental health issues that have buzzed around Batman since its inception. There is indeed a thin line between what Batman does and what the Riddler does in The Batman. A huge part of Bruce’s journey in this film is accepting those similarities and rejecting the mantle of vengeance. But not that of Batman.

The Batman is a fascinating look at the pathos that would compel a grown man to become a vigilante, but it’s also an all-too-human look at a superhero character we all know and love. Pattinson knocks him off his pedestal, letting Bruce come off as an imperfect person. That makes his commitment to justice seem all the more heroic. Rather than embrace nihilism in the face of heartache and defeat, Batman chooses hope by the end of his latest film. The future of Reeves’s Gotham City might see more manic and arch villains, but Bruce Wayne has been made stronger by loving and losing. Now can we just get this guy laid already?