The other villain on Pattinson’s wishlist? Calendar Man, the creepy, date-obsessed baddie who commits crimes based on holidays. He also plays the role of a Hannibal Lecter-like genius taunting the Dark Knight as he tries to find the serial killer terrorizing Gotham in The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, one of the major influences for The Batman.
But before Pattinson can truly turn his attention to owls or calendars, he first needs to deal with Paul Dano’s Riddler.
The sadistic, puzzle-solving masked killer inspired by the Zodiac Killer is not only on a quest to eliminate Gotham’s most elite citizens but to uncover the corruption at the heart of the city, one body at a time. Along the way, he digs up dark truths about the Wayne family that will shock Bruce to his core.
It’s the classic setup we’ve seen in many great comic book stories, a fight for the soul of the city and Batman’s own, but this is still all new to the World’s Greatest Detective played by Robert Pattinson. Only two years into his crime-fighting career, this Caped Crusader thinks he knows Gotham and understands his mission, but when the Riddler comes to town it makes Bruce lose his footing.
“[Bruce] thinks it’s his city in a weird sort of way. He thinks he’s kind of built it,” Pattinson says. But while Bruce has “the money and the castle,” he’ll learn the hard way that he has “absolutely no control or power over anything in the city.”
Riddler is far from the Dark Knight’s only problem in the upcoming movie. Pattinson’s Batman will also have to take on a who’s who of classic villains, including master cat burglar Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), infamous mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), and freakish gangster Oswald Cobblepot (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell). It’s certainly the biggest challenge this Batman has ever faced.