Why is a bil­lion­aire in a bat cos­tume con­sid­ered more pres­ti­gious than an immor­tal bloodsucker?

Since he was cast in The Bat­man many have come out in defence of Robert Pattinson’s career, list­ing the acclaimed direc­tors he has worked with – includ­ing Robert Eggers, Claire Denis, David Cro­nen­berg and the Safdie Broth­ers to demon­strate that he is more than his break­out role in teen vam­pire fan­ta­sy Twi­light. His film cre­den­tials are sup­posed to high­light to us that he is wor­thy to play the role of a bil­lion­aire whose pas­sion is to dress as a bat and beat up crim­i­nals. But why is the role of Bat­man con­sid­ered pres­ti­gious while play­ing a vam­pire is seen as friv­o­lous? Both are equal­ly fan­tas­ti­cal imag­in­ings ulti­mate­ly based in myth and fan­ta­sy, that require the same amount of the­atrics from a film­mak­er and per­former, and a sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief from the audience.

Even though the Twi­light Saga fin­ished some 10 years ago, it feels like Robert Pat­tin­son and his co-star Kris­ten Stew­art might be expect­ed to defend this film for the rest of their careers. How­ev­er, this rit­u­al that occurs with each press cir­cuit does not seem to be one that sim­i­lar stars of young adult fran­chis­es such as Jen­nifer Lawrence and Daniel Rad­cliffe are ever put through. The Hunger Games and Har­ry Pot­ter fran­chis­es are not scoffed at the way Twi­light is, despite all being high gross­ing fan­tas­ti­cal block­busters aimed at chil­dren and teenagers.

The key aspect that dif­fer­en­ti­ates Twi­light from its fan­ta­sy peers is that Twi­light wasn’t just aimed at young adults – it was aimed at young girls and women. Despite teenage girls con­sis­tent­ly dri­ving pop­u­lar cul­ture tastes, their inter­ests are often under­mined with Twi­light being no excep­tion. Pattinson’s role as a vam­pire is belit­tled because the story’s focus is on two guys’ infat­u­a­tion with one girl. But when this love tri­an­gle exists in HBO’s dra­ma True Blood (also adapt­ed from a series of books) among explic­it sex, drugs and explod­ing vam­pir­ic bod­ies, it was con­sid­ered cool again.

Stephanie Meyer’s 2020 release of ​‘Mid­night Sun’, an edi­tion to the book saga this time from Edward’s per­spec­tive, seems to have kicked off a Twi­light renais­sance. Teenage girls once obsessed return­ing to these films in our adult­hood, enjoy­ing the teen romance and heart­break now as light melo­dra­ma. Twi­light has become a sooth­ing dis­trac­tion from the state of the world. Sound­bites of Pat­tin­son in char­ac­ter say­ing ​“this is the skin of a killer Bel­la” are pop­u­lar on Tik­Tok where the video pans over a car’s frost­ed win­dow or a frozen chick­en breast, as the ice twin­kles in the light.

Even Pat­tin­son – known to slate the fran­chise in the past – said in a recent inter­view: ​“It’s not even cool to be a hater any­more… That’s so 2010.” And yet more than 10 years on from the releas­es of both Twi­light and Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, we are expect­ed to hold one of these block­busters in con­tempt and one in prestige.

The Dark Knight has cast a long shad­ow over the Bat­man fran­chise with pres­sure put on every direc­tor since Nolan to pro­duce a caped cru­sad­er film as grit­ty as that one, which fea­tured Heath Ledger’s Jok­er blow­ing up a refugee boat and a hos­pi­tal. But Nolan’s Bat­man tril­o­gy was in pro­duc­tion dur­ing a cin­e­mat­ic trend to ultra-real­ism; before him, Bat­man exist­ed in a camp colour­ful realm with tacky goth­ic aes­thet­ics. Nolan’s devo­tion to grit allowed Bat­man to sur­pass its com­ic book fan­dom, becom­ing pres­tige when its Jok­er became a lone wolf terrorist.

Block­busters aimed at adult audi­ences dur­ing the mid-2000s couldn’t just be enter­tain­ing, they had to be seri­ous or clever enough to be deemed respectable. Trips to the cin­e­ma became a mind-blow­ing event. Bond stopped being a suave, chic spy fan­ta­sy, with ludi­crous vil­lains and became an immer­sion of sever­i­ty and high stakes, tak­ing a sharp turn from ludi­crous vil­lains who own shark-filled swim­ming pools towards oil tycoons and wince-induc­ing tor­ture scenes.

The only fran­chis­es who abscond­ed from the grit­ty real­ist trends were those designed for the whole fam­i­ly; Pirates of the Caribbean offered pan­tomime com­ic relief when the rest were set on inten­si­ty. But today when many adults are regress­ing to their teenage fan­doms in search of com­fort dur­ing tumul­tuous times – the Twi­light and emo renais­sance are but two exam­ples – we don’t need block­busters that hur­tle us back into our every­day fears or work our burnt-out doom scrolling brains.

What we see now with Matt Reeves’ The Bat­man is total immer­sion into anoth­er world. The Bat­man through Matt Reeves direc­tion once again draws from the the­atri­cal world of the comics, allow­ing Bruce Wayne to be a bit of a dork. Great cin­e­matog­ra­phy and high bud­gets are being used to cre­ate what some pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies like Mar­vel nev­er for­got audi­ences need­ed from block­busters: escapism.

Today the respectable block­buster may now be any film that offers a new excit­ing world far from real­i­ty; so there’s no need to con­demn one fan­dom based around Pattinson’s role as some­one who has the abil­i­ties of a bat while hail­ing his newest role where he mere­ly dress­es as a bat. Both brood­ing char­ac­ters deliv­er the enter­tain­ment we crave from a block­buster, with­out ask­ing us to take them too seri­ous­ly, and show­case Pattinson’s irre­press­ible charm and tal­ent as a performer.

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