Movies - TV
The Batman's Kurt Cobain Imagery Was There From The Beginning
By JOE ROBERTS
The first trailer for “The Batman” launched at the inaugural DC FanDome event in 2020 and featured glimpses of what fans could expect from the new Dark Knight movie set to the tune of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way.” Not only did director Matt Reeves use the track to establish the trailer’s tone, but he also used Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain as a model for his emo version of Batman.
Reeves shared, “When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’ ... 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 become a recluse.” This Batman seemed to embody the spirit of Cobain in his later life.
While some might question whether the world needed a new Batman movie, part of the character’s enduring popularity comes from his ability to be endlessly reenvisioned. Reeves’ Cobain-influenced Bruce Wayne has allowed the filmmaker to explore the effects of the crippling emotional trauma the hero endured at a younger age, which had remained somewhat unexplored on-screen.