Why Batman's New Costume Could Be Made From A Gun

Damn, Bruce... that's metal.

Footage from a camera test for The Batman featuring Robert Pattinson in the Batsuit has officially been unveiled (courtesy of the film's co-writer and director Matt Reeves), and fans are already picking it apart. Among their more fascinating discoveries: Batman's chest plate appears to have been made from repurposed materials.

Although the footage is bathed in red light, it does reveal a pretty sweet-looking Batsuit with a solemn Robert Pattinson demonstrating that, at the very least, he has the right jaw for the part. The chest plate really turned heads, though; at first glance, it simply appears to be mechanical, possibly made from a pair of Batarangs or some other gadgets of the type that the Dark Knight is inclined to utilize. At second glance, though, it looks like something much more hardcore: pieces of a gun.

Now, we know what you may be thinking: Batman doesn't use guns. Heck, he hates guns. Why on Earth would he have pieces of one embedded in his costume? Fans think they know the answer, and if you haven't guessed it yet, prepare for a big ol' explosion inside your cranium.

The theory is that it isn't just any gun that Batman may have used to construct his chest plate. Fans believe that the possible gun in question will serve to remind Bruce Wayne, every single time he goes to put on that suit, why he's putting himself in danger to protect the citizens of Gotham. The gun that can prod him to think of the innocent lives that might be lost if he should lose his focus — the gun that set him on the path to becoming the Batman in the first place. That's right: the idea goes that protecting Batman's heart in the new Batsuit could be the gun that was used to kill his parents.

The gun that killed Batman's parents also appears — in an arguably even more significant way — in the pages of the wondrously loony Batman: Year Two, a four-part story penned by Mike W. Barr that first appeared via Detective Comics #575 through #578. 

At a tense point in the first issue's narrative, Bruce Wayne decides that the proper way to avenge his parents' deaths is to take the gun involved in their murder and fire it at someone else — the Judson Caspian iteration of the Reaper, an original protector of Gotham who suits back up and aims to outperform Batman with his experience in lethal-force-fueled vigilantism, penchant for violence, and proficiency in wielding weapons (most notably guns). 

"I've always dreaded this, but perhaps the only way to avenge them is to fight my enemy on his own terms, to fight the kind of men who killed them with the weapon that made me what I am," Bruce says in the comic. "The gun that took their lives."

Now, Reeves has made it clear that his film offer a fresh take on the character, previously teasing that The Batman is "an almost-noir driven, detective version of Batman" that pulls inspiration from the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Likewise, Pattinson made waves by stating that Batman is "not a hero" but rather a "complicated character" who isn't totally good or bad. That considered, though, it feels like it would be too much of a narrative risk to put any kind of gun in Batman's hands in the upcoming film — let alone one with so much importance. Batman has long opposed guns, and the backlash that could come from incorporating the Batman: Year Two plot point into the new movie's narrative would be major. Thus, it seems that if the gun used to kill Batman's parents does somehow make its way into the film, it probably won't be used by Bruce to murder anyone else. 

This further fuels the idea that Batman might use it to fashion his suit's insignia, just as he did in Detective Comics #1000. But with nothing confirmed in this regard as of yet, any chatter about the gun's involvement in the new movie is just speculation.