One of The Riddler‘s deadly traps is introduced in the Batman TV promo. In the forthcoming dark and gritty superhero motion picture, Paul Dano plays the famous enigmatic Batman antagonist against Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader.
The theme of Bruce Wayne having a double life as a suave playboy and an urban vigilante guarding the harsh streets of Gotham City against criminals has been explored in preceding Batman films. However, classic Batman stories have always included a strong detective narrative aspect, giving them a more cerebral edge than represented in many of the films. With his solo feature The Batman, Matt Reeves hopes to revive the image of Batman as a detective, an aspect that has been stressed in the film’s promotion by teasing the cat-and-mouse nature of Batman’s confrontation with the film’s major adversary The Riddler.
The latest The Batman TV promo continues the story of Batman the genius detective while hinting at another of The Riddler‘s deadly traps. Check out the video below (via Binge Watch This):
Audiences already caught a quick glimpse of one of The Riddler’s games when Reeves recently posted a whole sequence depicting the villain practically attending a funeral in a desperate attempt to catch Batman’s attention. With a quick early picture of police officers sifting for fingerprints in what is presumably The Riddler’s chamber, given the taped-up torso with a bomb padlocked to its neck, the new clip adds to the mystique surrounding the villain. Of course, given that this version of The Riddler was inspired by the Zodiac Killer, it should come as no surprise that he lives in a home littered with disassembled electrical gadgets, explosives, and other telltale signs that he’s definitely up to no good (along with other miscellaneous items such as a seemingly old overhead projector and a bag of onions in the backdrop).
The Riddler‘s traps are, in fact, of a DIY kind, which fits well with the film’s overall style. The Riddler favors duct tape, but Batman appears to have sewed his costume together at home using scraps and a sewing machine. Of course, films like The Dark Knight depicted a sleeker, more tech-savvy Batman, while adversaries like The Joker were shown as chaotically thrown-together. In The Batman, though, it’s evident that, despite his wealth, Bruce Wayne is more on par with the story’s adversaries in terms of how he goes about his heroic business.
As Reeves takes the superhero franchise towards a new and very dark future, it will be intriguing to watch how this jerry-built style works for The Batman.
