Before Robert Pattinson can begin work on The Batman, he’s doing press for another film called The Lighthouse, also starring Willem Dafoe, and it seems as though Pattinson has taken some inspiration from Dafoe for his next role.
Speaking with Access Hollywood, Pattinson revealed he was inspired by Dafoe’s drunken lighthouse keeper character when it came down to nailing his voice for the role as the Caped Crusader.
When asked if he’d been practising his Batman voice, Pattinson said, “Willem’s voice in [The Lighthouse] was quite inspiring for it, to be honest… It is pretty similar, the voice I’m gonna do, to Willem’s.”
He then offered a small playful growl as an example, before adding, “I think Batman has a sort of pirate-y kind of voice. I think they’re really suited.”
To be fair, Dafoe’s voice in the film does have a certain Batman-y sound to it:
Nailing the voice for Batman is pretty damn important, I mean, we all still remember Christian Bale’s gravelly whisper-growl that he put on.
In another interview with the BBC (via Twitter), Pattinson said he wants the movie to be “frightening”, and with Dafoe’s voice as inspiration, we have no doubt about that!
“I wanted to do something on a big stage, and so I ended up doing Chris Nolan’s movie [Tenet], which I was really, really happy about at the beginning of this year. And then Batman was kind of a surprise to me.
“Now that I’m starting to get into it, I don’t want to approach it as kind of a big studio thing where all you’re really doing is thinking about your trailer. I want to approach it in exactly the same way [as The Lighthouse], I want it to be frightening, I want it to be something you lose yourself in,” he explained.
He went on to say, “It’s more difficult to do because it’s such a familiar character to lots of people, but… I think if you can find a way to lose yourself in it, I think that’s really exciting.”
Director Matt Reeves has previously said he wants to focus more on the character as a detective, which other movies haven’t really done before, but could very much lend itself to the idea of the movie being frightening.
The Batman will also star Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman and Paul Dano as The Riddler.