Robert Pattinson is described as having an “ability to look convincingly different, by meaningful degrees, in many different things” in the new GQ feature about The Batman actor. He certainly proves it with the photos accompanying the interview. With silver teeth, bleach-blonde hair, and a menacing gleam in his eye, Robert, 35, looks wildly different than the sullen, dark gothic romance heartthrob of the Twilight series. Instead, he seems to channel a little bit of Jared Leto’s take on The Joker with the grills, Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or Brad Pitt’s characters from Fight Club and 12 Monkeys. ‘
The photos, shot in collaboration with GQ and photographer Jack Bridgland, are part of a conceptual piece, as they document the “step-by-step metamorphosis of a unique character who evolves from an alternate-reality version of Robert Pattinson to someone far more extreme.” This change is an external representation of Robert’s internal transformation, as he’s been shifting farther and farther away from the Edward Cullen role that made him a pop culture phenomenon. “I’m constantly doing risk assessments, which drives everybody crazy, trying to predict every single element that could possibly happen,” he tells GQ’s Daniel Riley. “And then, at the end of it, just being like: Ah, f-ck it! I’ll just play a lighthouse keeper who f-cks a mermaid! I think this is the right move!”
“He’s a chameleon,” Matt Reeves, director of The Batman, told GQ of Pattinson’s shapeshifting ability. “Recently, Rob was telling me that he never plays a character with exactly his voice. The voice is one of his ways in.”
Fans of Robert and the Caped Crusader will see a transformation when The Batman arrives on March 4. “I watched a rough cut of the movie by myself,” he tells GQ. “And the first shot is so jarring from any other Batman movie that it’s just kind of a totally different pace. It was what Matt was saying from the first meeting I had with him: ‘I want to do a ’70s noir detective story, like The Conversation.‘ And I kind of assumed that meant the mood board or something, the look of it. But from the first shot, it’s, Oh, this actually is a detective story.”
Robert also said that The Batman – with its Zodiac killer-inspired version of The Riddler – is going to have a darker tone, one that is also going to address the trauma of Bruce Wayne. “All the other stories say the death of his parents is why Bruce becomes Batman,” says Pattinson, “but I was trying to break that down in what I thought was a real way, instead of trying to rationalize it. He’s created this intricate construction for years and years and years, which has culminated in this Batman persona. But it’s not like a healthy thing that he’s done. … Like, it’s a sad movie. It’s kind of about him trying to find some element of hope, in himself, and not just the city.”