March 15th, 2022 / 0 comments


imgbox

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.”

Leave a Reply



Current Mood
image host
Public Appearances
imgbox

No Upcoming Appearances

RPAustralia Exclusive Interview

Watch our interviews with Rob. You can check out our other interviews with David Michod, Liz Watts & David Linde at our dedicated film page for The Rover


RPAustralia Twitter
Rob’s Contact Details
UK Agents - Curtis Brown Group

Haymarket House, 28 - 29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, UK

US Agents - William Morris Endeavor (WME Entertainment)

9601 Wilshire Blvd, 8th Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA

Rob’s Films
Mickey17 Role: Mickey17
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Release Date: 31 January 2025 (US). | Post-Production since 22 December 2022. Check out all upcoming release dates at our Film Page by clicking on News below


The Batman Role: Bruce Wayne | Batman
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


Tenet Role: Neil
Director: Christopher Nolan
Release Date: 26 August 2020. For DVD release dates head to our dedicated film page by clicking "News" below.



The Lighthouse Role: Ephraim Winslow
Director: Robert Eggers
Release Date: Screened at TIFF Sept 2019 | US 18 Oct 2019 - DVD releases at Film Page - click News below





Information for all of Robert's past films can also be found at RPAU's individual film pages by clicking photo below.
Site Meter

Rob Fans Online: 3,391,933

Total Views: 10,337,617

Search
RPAU Calendar
imgbox

Free download - Click on photo below. Thanks to Suze for putting together.



019.jpg
018~0.jpg
002A.jpg
002.jpg
002.jpg
032.jpg
RPP005.jpg
RPP003.jpg
RPP004.jpg
RPP002.jpg
RPP001.jpg
RPP0926_28229.jpg
RPP006.jpg
RPP056.jpg
RPP004.jpg
aRPP008.jpg
aRPP009.jpg
aRPP007.jpg
aRPP006.jpg
aRPP005.jpg
aRPP004.jpg
1RPP0926_28229.jpg
1RPP038.jpg
1RPP003.jpg
RPP0926_28929.jpg
RPP0926_281029.jpg
RPP0926_28829.jpg
RPP0926_28729.jpg
RPP0926_28629.jpg
RPP0926_28329.jpg
RPP0926_28129.jpg
RPP055.jpg
RPP053.jpg
RPP054.jpg
RPP051.jpg
RPP052.jpg