The Batman: Director, Mat Reeves, Explains Why Robert Pattison Didn’t Change his Voice as Batman

In several live adaptations, the voice of Batman has had a deep growl to it, however in the 2022 blockbuster, The Batman, not only does the titular hero have numerous talking sequences, but he also speaks without a growl. It was really a deliberate decision on Director Matt Reeves‘ part.

As the film is now available on HBO Max, fans can listen to new director commentary and extra footage, in which Reeves defends his decision not to alter Robert Pattinson‘s voice, keeping in mind the emotional aspect of having Batman speak in the manner he did.

“I knew I didn’t wanna do a Batman that had been done previously, that had the growl that we’d seen. Because I knew that in this version, if you’re gonna do a detective story, Batman is gonna have a lot of dialogue scenes. Which, when you actually look at all the movies, Bruce may have a lot of long dialogue scenes but Batman’s dialogue scenes, he has dialogue but it’s controlled.

This, by literally the necessity of solving this crime, was going to require him to have to have long dialogue scenes in that suit and some of them are very emotional. If he was growling, we wouldn’t be able to connect to him emotionally. So there was a real exploration to figure out how to make that work.”

The reasoning behind this choice is sound, as The Batman concentrates on the early years of the hero. This implies that there is still a vulnerability to the character, especially given his continuing growth and realization of who we all know him as. Fans may access some extra features for The Batman via the streaming platform, but they can also still see The Batman in theaters.