How Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne in The Batman Was Inspired by Kurt Cobain

There’s something about the way Robert Pattinson plays Bruce Wayne in The Batman.

In an interview with Empire, posted on Saturday, Dec. 18, director Matt Reeves talked about how late Nirvana frontman and ’90s music icon Kurt Cobain inspired his adaptation of the comic book character in the new film, which is set for release on March 4. 

“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way,'” he said, referring to the grunge rock group’s 1991 song, which Cobain wrote about a fictional person living under a bridge, and which appears in the trailers for The Batman.

“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,” Reeves said, referring to the 2005 film loosely based on Cobain’s life, “and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”