News Variety Reports Robert Pattinson is the new Batman

Indeed. I freely admit I was one of those fans who was not happy about his casting (although nothing do with his work in Brokeback Mountain). A combination of wanting Robin Williams and thinking Heath Ledger was too much of a "pretty boy."

Same here. I've been longing for such a film ever since that show. I desperately want the character redeemed after what Joel Schumacher did to him.

 

I'm pleasantly surprised by this thread. I actually hesitated on clicking on it, expecting the usual explosion of nerd rage, but everybody seems to taking a measured approach to the news, as opposed to the usual fannish hysteria and hyperbole.

"A gay cowboy as the Joker? Epic fail!"

 

Well, unfortunately, not all the internet is as level-headed. There's already four seperate Change.org petitions against Battinson (Patman? Whatever). Between this and the "Remake GoT Final Season because we don't like how our favorite character ended up" one, it's pretty hard to take online petitions serious anymore. I kinda miss the days of the "We Want Third Season of Young Justice" petitions.

 

Like I said about the Game of Thrones petition, some people have way too much time on their hands. There are worse things to worry about in this world and this country than the casting of Batman.

 

Wait, there was a time online petitions were taken seriously?

 

It used to be innocent. We got Snakes on a Plane turned from a normal action thriller into a meme generating unintended comedy. We saved shows. Then we grew greedy and it all turned to shit. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

Before there were internet petitions, there were letter-writing campaigns, which virtually never worked. (Not even the infamous, semi-mythical Star Trek fan campaign that supposedly got the show renewed for a third season. The show was never cancelled, only "on the bubble," and what convinced the network to renew it was Roddenberry's agreement to a budget cut, as is usually the case with struggling shows that get renewed.)

 

Kind of ironically, I was only thinking just last week "has Robert Pattinson even done anything other than Twilight?"

I'll admit, this news doesn't exactly enthuse me, but I'm also aware that Twilight probably isn't the best marker to measure one's acting ability. So, for the time being, I'm going to stick with guarded expectations here. That is, I don't really have high expectations, but I don't want to seem overly harsh at this stage in the event that Pattinson actually does impress and become if not the best Batman ever, then at least a damn good one and then I have to eat my words.

Though I would have liked it if Ben Affleck could have had at least one Batman movie with proper writing.

 

He's quite good in the artier stuff he's done in recent years. I'm sure he'll throw himself into it completely and do it justice if cast. Can you imagine how all the sparkly sneers would drive YOU like a goddamn demon to be as professional as possible?

 

The guy's gonna need to bulk up, that's for sure.

Kor

 

Which is not at all atypical for actors cast as superheroes. People said Christopher Reeve was too scrawny for Superman when he was first cast. But gyms are a thing.

 

One would have hoped nerds would have gotten it by now: What people are watching on a screen is made by actors. Actors are people who have to sell completely different personalities, as convincingly as possible, to sell the illusion to the audience of characters and situations other than their own. Which isn't easy, and I'd not mentioned having to remember lines of dialogue to have to memorize and other nuances within their task list. Or typecasting, for that matter, which is a potential outcome.

Nerd rage isn't the problem. Typecasting is, since more than nerds get upset over what fake person real actor has to pretend to be for the next movie or tv show. And it's way too easy to do. But the wider range the actor has, the less likely they will be seen as one particular character Doesn't mean it never happens regardless... but the audience has to suspend a little more disbelief as well, which if they're bickering upfront that means they are not giving a not unreasonable chance.

 

And they didn't have rubber suits to create the illusion of bulk get and get smelly in as well... like how many movie incarnations of Batman since 1989, X-Men, and other franchises had...

Or modern day CGI where said actor gets tons of electrodes slapped on and they do the motions and the computer generates all the rest. Nifty stuff, that...

 

The computer doesn't generate all the rest. It generates data that a team of animators then refine into a virtual performance. Their hard work and talent is what makes it convincing, and it's unfortunate that people assume it's all done automatically.

 

Plus of course human growth hormone and other drugs.

 

Pattinson's current film at Cannes, The Lighthouse directed by Robert Eggers and also starring Willem Dafoe, is apparently the subject of much festival buzz.

 

The reason fandoms now think online petitions and boycotts mean anything is because they wanted Solo to do bad and it did, and they assumed it was due to their "Boycott". The real reasons were due to things they had no control over (poor release date, poor marketing, all the BTS drama) and now they think their online petitions can actually MEAN something.

And as expected, their current run of petitions (boycott Captain Marvel, cut her out of Endgame, cancel Batwoman, etc) have all failed massively but they keep trying.

Essentially, they'd rather believe their petitions mean something and there are big conspiracies as to why they aren't working rather than accept their own impotence.

 

Robert Pattinson as Batman: wait and see. I recall much skepticism-to-WTF? reactions when Chris Evans was cast as Captain America, at a time when he was best known as a goofy, embarrassing version of Johnny Storm/Human Torch, but he turned out to be the best version of the character ever adapted for filmed media, and was arguably the best of any MCU character.

Wait and see.

 

To me it feels like Pattinson already did play a superhero, pretty badly, as Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man felt quite inspired by him and Twilight generally.

 

Agreed. I really wish they would just use the tone of TAS as the basis for the films. It's widely considered the definitive Batman and would make the fan base ecstatic. But, can't have Bats doing any detective work on the big screen anymore it seems. I just don't get it.