Rupert Penny-Jones confirms City Mayor Role in Robert Pattinson #TheBatman

From Digital Spy:

Spooks and The Strain actor Rupert Penry-Jones has confirmed details of his role in upcoming Worlds of DC reboot The Batman.

Rupert joined Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on today’s (February 2) edition of This Morning, where the presenting duo got him chatting about the film.

Rupert is playing Gotham City mayor Don Mitchell in the movie, which stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Colin Farrell as Penguin and Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, plus Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Paul Dano as the Riddler and Andy Serkis as Bruce’s butler Alfred.

Head over to Digital Spy via link above to read about Rupert’s encounter with Colin Farrell.

UPDATED: 5 February 2021

Since I’m talking The Batman – love this response Mattson Tomlin gave to the question of how “badass” the movie will be

Lee Bermejo is a professional illustrator and comic book artist who has done work for by DC Comics and Marvel. He is paying homage to Robert Pattinson’s The Batman Year One in this amazing illustration.

Thanks @JesabelRaay for heads up.

Phil Aizle Talks Working with Robert Pattinson on #TheBatman

Phil Aizle who finished shooting on The Batman posted a couple of comments about Rob on his instagram. Lovely words as expected and I’m slightly jealous that he saw Rob in the suit in person.

Brandon Katz from The Observer wrote this interesting piece on what Matt Reeves and Rob may need to overcome to bring a fresh take on The Batman:

When Robert Pattinson broods into frame in Matt Reeves’ The Batman next year, he’ll be the third actor to play Bruce Wayne in live action since 2005. If we count The Lego Batman Movie and Zack Snyder’s upcoming Justice League cut, The Batman will be the seventh major movie to feature the Caped Crusader in a lead role in that same span (eight if we’re also counting Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton’s returns in The Flash). When audiences bemoan Hollywood’s lack of originality and industry critics point to its desperate reliance on franchises and reboots, this is what they’re referring to: the endless recycling of a single character. While these detractors stand on solid ground, reusing the same character doesn’t inherently prevent an original cinematic experience.

…

Reeves’ Gotham appears more stylistically grounded. Its wet and weighted fog descends on an old city besmirched by new evils. It stands in stark contrast to the the major metropolitan center of Nolan’s Dark Knight films and the nondescript futurism glimpsed in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Pattinson infuses his Batman with a manic ferocity that stands apart from Keaton’s stillness and Ben Affleck’s weathered lived-in rage. It may nominally be the same character, but The Batman seems to be exploring different aspects of their psyche. In the social media era of the enraged fanboy and incel army, it’s valuable to explore the havoc wrought by a well-resourced but unstable and violent loner who perceives himself above the masses. Especially when he sees himself as the hero.

Reeves has described his take as “very psychological” with an emotional “humanist bent” (the David Fincher vibes are hard to miss). Previous iterations seemed to focus more on the character’s source of trauma and duality, as well as the ideology of his villains, than on the psychological cost of all that pain. With all due respect to Burton’s stellar run, cycling through beautiful girlfriends between films isn’t exactly cutting edge commentary about sacrifice.

Finding the character at a different time in his life bridges the gap between the well-covered depictions too. While Batman Begins told an origin story and Justice League featured an older, more experienced character, The Batman takes place in the second year of Bruce Wayne’s vigilante career. The relatively new setting finds our hero not yet the valued symbol of strength he will become nor the mysterious disruption he must first have been.

The superhero genre continues to expand and amalgamate new veins of storytelling. … Reeves is promising more of a noir crime story than the farcical camp of Joel Schumacher or the hyper-realism of Nolan. A surrealist nightmare that differs from its predecessors in style, tone and intention.

The names may be the same—Batman, Catwoman, Riddler, Penguin—but the context has shifted. Reusing the same character does not automatically guarantee a recycled on-screen product. Reeves previously reinvented the well-worn Planet of the Apes franchise into something more meaningfully allegorical than its legion of B-movie extensions. So too can Bruce Wayne be reborn.

Click on link above to read full article.

Robert Pattinson as The Batman Featured on Cover of L’Ecran Fantastique (Jan 2021)

Rob as Batman is featured on the cover of the January 2021 issue of L’Ecran Fantastique. According to a response on what the magazine will feature, Thomas responded with “Batman is revealed to be Bruce Wayne. More seriously, we come back to the chaotic production, the vision of Matt Reeves, the choice of Robert Pattinson …” We will update this post if and when scans become available.

Robert Pattinson, “The Lighthouse”, “Tenet” and “The Devil All the Time” Making “Best of 2020” Lists

UPDATED: I’ve changed this post to “best of” lists as Rob himself is making quite a few (updates added to beginning of post).

7 January 2021:

Slash Films The 11 Most Memorable Performances

Robert Pattinson, The Devil All the Time

Netflix’s star-studded Gothic thriller featured no shortage of memorable characters and moments, yet none could hold a candle to Robert Pattinson’s peculiar take on the despicable Reverend Preston Teagardin. Teagardin appears late in the film as the new, charismatic pastor the impresses his congregation with his pompous persona while sexually abusing minors on the sly. Pattinson makes bold choices in his approach to the character, including forgoing any Southern dialect coaching to concoct a bizarre accent entirely of his own making. The atypical accent would derail an insidious predator into pure comedy relief in lesser hands, yet Pattinson makes it work for his weirdly charming character. Pattinson continues to pick the unpredictable path in his career, and his appearance in The Devil All the Time shows why that’s a great thing.

IndieWire 50 Best Movies of 2020

8. “Tenet”

What kind of picture is it? Big, certainly: IMAX-scaled, and a hefty 150 minutes even after a visibly ruthless edit. It’s clever, too — yes, the palindromic title has some narrative correlation — albeit in an exhausting, rather joyless way. As second comings go, “Tenet” is like witnessing a Sermon on the Mount preached by a savior who speaks exclusively in dour, drawn-out riddles. Any awe is flattened by follow-up questions.

The Film Magazine 10 Best Films2020

No. 9 The Lighthouse

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are simply unmissable in this old-timey horror fixated on the idea of what isolation will do to a person and inspired by remarkable art of centuries past. And under the never-flinching lens of Robert Eggers’ camera, the duo anchor one of North America’s most expressive pieces in a decade to something tangible and at times even relatable. …

AnOther Magazine Best Films of 2020

Standout releases for me include Antonio Campos’s playfully sinister The Devil All the Time (with its excellent cast of Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård and Riley Keough)