It turns out that Matt Reeves’ DCEU movie The Batman took some of its cues from ’90s grunge music. In an interview with Empire Online, the director revealed that when writing his version of Gotham’s caped crusader, portrayed by Robert Pattinson, he was inspired by none other than the legendary frontman of Nirvana Kurt Cobain.
Back in August 2021, fans first saw the trailer for The Batman, the dark thriller movie that showed billionaire Bruce Wayne coming to terms with the murder of his parents and his early days as Batman. The teaser clip was accompanied by the Nirvana Song ‘Something In The Way’, which according to the director, was a track that helped him form his ideas for Pattinson’s Batman and develop the flick’s script.
“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’,” Reeves recalled. “That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before. There’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and became a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”
Kurt Cobain is one of the most influential musicians in alternative rock history. He was also a troubled artist who dealt with depression throughout his life. Having a version of Bruce Wayne whose parents’ deaths deeply affected his outlook on life aligned with the Cobain inspiration and offered the deepest and psychologically revealing portrayal of Batman yet.