The director of the highly anticipated DC film, The Batman Matt Reeves has said his movie will be emotional, grown-up and ambitious.
After star Ben Affleck stepped down from directing duties, Reeves has taken the reigns for the standalone DC film.
Reeves, whose directing credits include the upcoming War for the Planet of the Apes, predecessor Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and 2008 cult favourite Cloverfield, has spoken out about his plans for the film.
Reeves explained: “[The studio] came to me and said, ‘Would you be interested?, and I was like, ‘Well I would be interested, but for me I have to find a personal way in.”
He’s planning to take a notably mature approach to The Batman, similar to his Apes movies, noting that, “I think [Christopher] Nolan’s films did that and I think Batman as a myth is a very similar myth [to Caesar’s], in that he’s a tortured soul who is struggling to find a way to do the right thing in a very imperfect world.”
“As Caesar is part of the Apes franchise, the Apes franchise was a huge part of my childhood, and Batman was a huge part of my childhood too, yet weirdly both of them have the potential of speaking not down to an audience but being ambitious,” he said, adding that he’s “excited about the idea of trying to tell a very point-of-view-driven, emotional story from that perspective in the same way that I tried to do with Caesar. I think there’s a way to tell his story that could be very emotional.”
Whilst talking about Apes, he mentioned how it stands out from the usual Summer Blockbuster recipe, noting that, “Apes doesn’t fit into that and it’s because of the metaphors of the genre.”
“It gives you the freedom to smuggle into a movie that is otherwise grand summer entertainment… there’s a bleakness to it, there’s a reality to it, there’s a roundedness to it. We’re holding a mirror up to ourselves, we’re looking at ourselves in these apes’ faces and I feel the same potential in Batman.”
War for the Planet of the Apes opens in cinemas on 11th July. Watch the trailer below:
