In the lead up to the release of The Batman, there have been various headlines about how Nirvana had influenced the director Matt Reeves’ take on the iconic DC Comics character. In a new interview, Paul Dano, who plays The Riddler, touches on this topic.
Speaking with NME, Dano was pressed on where he took inspiration from in crafting his very dark portrayal of the Batman villain. He said, “There was music. There were tons of comic books. Well, in the script Matt had actually mentioned ‘Something In The Way’ by Nirvana. So that right there, that song, those words, that refrain, became hugely important to me. Nirvana became a part of that [character].”
Reeves said in a December 2021 interview with Empire, “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. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days,’ and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”
Reeves would draw on Nirvana again when talking about casting Robert Pattinson as Batman saying, “He’s also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse.”
The Batman hits theaters tomorrow, March 4.