The Batman set photos reveal the full costume and Bat-bike

Filming on Matt Reeves’ The Batman, the first Bat-centric film to break from the Snyderverse continuity, is well under way, judging by photos of the production testing out its new bat costume and a new bat bike on set in Glasgow, Scotland. This is an even better look at the production’s Batman aesthetic than was recently revealed in a video of star Robert Pattinson all suited up.

In these photos, you can even see his ears.

The initial video only gave fans a slow pan up the costume’s chest and cowl, though it did fuel speculation that the bat-symbol on his chest was literally made of guns. Today, photographers snapped a Pattinson-double in full kit, zipping around the Glasgow catacombs on a bat-shaped motorcycle.

Photo: Andrew Milligan/Getty Images

The motorcycle sports swept back bat ears that would surely be incredibly painful if you came to a sudden stop, while the full costume has some surprising additions: Wrist guards that appear to be full of some kind of bolt or projectile. The ears on the cowl taper to a quite slender point, and the whole outfit seems more pieced together from repurposed tactical items than created from the ground up.

Photo: Andrew Milligan/Getty Images

Usually, in film adaptations, a kludged together superhero costume denotes a hero who is still in the early stages of his career, and that may be what Reeves’ production are trying to allude to. Maybe it’s the motorcycle and lack of a cape, but it reminded this writer most of Bruce Wayne’s cobbled together Batman costume in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Zero Year storyline.

Image: Tony Moore/DC Comics

Zero Year followed Batman on his earliest adventures, against the original Red Hood — who eventually became the Joker — the villainous Doctor Death, and finally against the Riddler, who turned Gotham City into a electricity-less prison where he tortured residents with egomaniacal quizzing for months on end.

Paul Dano will play the Riddler in The Batman, with Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as the Penguin, and a rumored three more “villains” yet to be announced. That’s a hefty Rogues’ Gallery for any film to sport, fueling yet more rumors that the movie is pulling from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween, which nearly features a different villain for every month of the year.

Photographers have even spotted jack-o’-lanterns on set, though it should be noted that despite its name, The Long Halloween is a story that takes place over the course of an entire year.

When a character has a history as long as Batman’s there are always a wealth of sources to pull from — we’ll have to wait until The Batman hits theaters on June 25, 2021 for all the answers.