Ahead of “The Batman” opening on Friday, filmmaker Matt Reeves revealed that during the test screening process for the movie – it was the film’s embracing of the detective noir aspect of the character that audiences responded to the most.
Speaking with Collider, he says the film has a very ambitious, complex narrative and they started testing with a version that hadn’t entirely been cut at that time.
As a result, he was concerned audiences weren’t going to be able to follow the film which was clocking in above the three-hour runtime of the final version. That didn’t prove to be a problem though:
“I knew we were challenging the audience in this side of world’s greatest detective side, because it was going to be a very complex narrative and it turned out they love that part of it. It was one of the things that tested best. So that part was a great thing to learn, which was that, actually, the audience would be excited about this version of the movie and that only continued to get better as we continued to test.”
Subsequent tweaking was mostly “tiny adjustments to make sure that little things that maybe are not clear enough are clearer” however the testing process validated that this was the direction the audience was excited about as opposed to the more conventional superhero antics.
One of the only things the studio reportedly stomped down on was Colin Farrell’s desire to have The Penguin smoking. Speaking with Jake’s Takes recently, Farrell said he “fought valiantly” to have his character smoking but the studio turned him down:
“I fought valiantly for a cigar. At one stage I said, ‘I can have it unlit! Just let me have it unlit.’ They were like, ‘No.’ [As if] a bunch of 12-year-olds are going to start smoking Cuban cigars because [the Penguin is smoking cigars in a movie.]”
The film is currently on track for a minimum $100 million domestic opening weekend with estimates suggesting a higher number above $115 million is quite possible.
