The Batman promises to give audiences a much darker version of the DC superhero than ever before, and star Robert Pattinson has now offered some more insight into just how dark things are going to get. While speaking with Premiere, Pattinson revealed that his take on The Batman will not just enact violence on the criminals Gotham in the name of justice, but that he takes some sadistic pleasure in it.

"I imagined it that way from the rehearsal of the first fight, I thought it was funnier: something in him just wanted to slit the guy's throat! I told myself that if he spends his nights chasing criminals, it is impossible that he does not take pleasure in it. He suffers and it is a desire that overwhelms him. And by dint of knocking, his mind clears, he calms down, he reaches a state close to plenitude. I'm sure in this first fight, he manages to convince himself that every guy in front of him is the one who killed his mother (Laughs.) And so that allows him to vent all his rage."

Footage released from The Batman has already demonstrated just how badly Robert Pattinson’s vigilante wants to lay the smackdown on nameless criminals, with the first trailer for the movie concluding with by far the most brutal beat down that Batman has ever executed on the big screen. According to Pattinson, this is no accident, with his Batman not only throwing his fists for justice and as a method of inducing fear but also simply because he just loves it. Justifying it to himself by invoking memories of his murdered mother, the psychology of Bruce Wayne runs deep in The Batman, and should provide for some truly dramatic pummelings.

The Batman Aims to Introduce the Scariest Version of The Dark Knight Yet

Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne garnering actual enjoyment from reducing his enemies to a bloody pulp is just one of the ways in which The Batman hopes to craft the scariest version of the character yet—without the vigilante killing anyone, of course.

Thanks to Batman’s violence, The Riddler’s real-life inspiration, the Batmobile’s similarity to a Stephen King story, and much more, The Batman is looking more and more like a horror movie than a comic book one. This is exactly what director Matt Reeves wanted. “This idea of a place that is corrupt, and you try to swim against the tide in order to fight against it and make a difference, is quintessential Batman,” the filmmaker said recently. “And at the center of those noir stories is almost always the detective, right? And that’s why he is the world’s greatest detective. And so this story is, in addition to being almost a horror movie, and a thriller, and an action movie, at its core, it’s also very much a detective story. It’s very narrative.”

Starring Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell alongside Robert Pattinson, The Batman is almost upon us and is due for release on March 4, 2022.