After launching his career with relatively small roles, including one of the ‘Harry Potter’ films, Robert Pattinson broke out in a massive way thanks to “Twilight.” But now, years after that film franchise, he’s been riding the line between mainstream and arthouse, turning in some of the best work of his career. And now, with “The Lighthouse” coming soon and a new Christopher Nolan film, along with “The Batman,” Pattinson continues to straddle both sides of the film industry divide.
And part of playing in both the big-budget and arthouse playgrounds, different things are asked of you, as an actor. For Pattinson, that involves his first day on “The Lighthouse” involving a very…unique situation, and then six months working on Nolan’s action film “Tenet” followed by putting on a cape and a cowl for Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Needless to say, that makes for one hell of a NYTimes interview.
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Many of us can’t possibly begin to look forward to “The Batman” when Pattinson has “The Lighthouse” on the docket first. And when he described his first day on the set of the Robert Eggers film, it’s clear that “The Lighthouse” is poised to be one of the most interesting, crazy experiences at the cinema in 2019.
“Well, my first shot was this ferocious masturbation scene,” explained Pattinson. “It’s always nice to do something massive for your opening shot, and I went really massive on the first take. It was a 180 from everything we’d done in rehearsal, and I could see Robert a little in shock afterward. But I was like, ‘O.K., cool, I didn’t get told to stop, so I’ll keep going in that direction.’ As soon as I’d done that, it was like the road started getting paved.”
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While it’s expected that “The Batman” is going to challenge Pattinson in new ways, we’re going to go out on a limb and guess that the Warner Bros. superhero film won’t feature a “ferocious” masturbation scene. However, that doesn’t mean the actor isn’t excited. But his ‘Batman’ thrills aren’t due to any superheroics. Instead, Pattinson is excited by the morality of what he describes as a “complicated character.”
“I love the director, Matt Reeves, and it’s a dope character,” he said. “His morality is a little bit off. He’s not the golden boy, unlike almost every other comic-book character. There is a simplicity to his worldview, but where it sits is strange, which allows you to have more scope with the character.”
We’ll have to see how Pattinson does with “The Batman” when the film is released on June 25, 2021. However, if you’re more interested in seeing the fruits of his labor on “The Lighthouse,” that film arrives in theaters this weekend.