The Arkham Prisoner Scene We Didn't Get To See In The Batman
Contains spoilers for "The Batman."
Matt Reeves' "The Batman" offers up a Gotham-sized character reveal during the film's final moments. But, what if we told you there was supposed to be an even bigger, more pivotal scene at Arkham Asylum much earlier in the movie involving this surprise prisoner that got cut? As Reeves put it while speaking to IGN (via YouTube), "The movie is not an origin tale for Batman, but it's his early days. It really is an origin tale for the rogues gallery."
Not only is this "origin tale" sentiment applicable to the character we need in the third act, but it also applies to the other antagonists we meet earlier in the movie. Over the course of the nearly three-hour runtime "The Batman" boasts, moviegoers are introduced to the Riddler (Paul Dano), Penguin (Colin Farrell), and Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), followed by the widely-talked-about Arkham reveal of Reeves' Joker (Barry Keoghan).
In Reeves' Batman universe, the character is currently locked up for some unknown reason and, as the director tells IGN, is only in his early "infancy" as the Clown Prince of Crime. According to the director, "Batman" viewers almost got a "really cool scene" involving Keoghan's Joker and Robert Pattinson's Caped Crusader at Arkham, but it was cut for some undisclosed reason.
Batman was going to consult with Barry Keoghan's Joker to try and stop the Riddler
According to director Matt Reeves, the big reveal fans get at the end of "The Batman" featuring Barry Keoghan's Joker was actually supposed to be a "companion" scene to a much bigger breakout moment involving the character at Arkham Asylum that would have occurred much earlier in the movie. The scene would have featured Robert Pattinson's Dark Knight coming to consult with the Joker at Arkham in an attempt to profile the Riddler in the hopes of stopping him.
"The reason that Joker's in the movie is there was actually another scene that was earlier. The scene that was not in the movie, the scene that this is really the companion to, which is actually a really cool scene," Reeves told IGN. "It's a scene where Batman is so unnerved because the Riddler is writing to him, and he figures he's got to profile this killer. So, he goes to see another killer that he's clearly had an experience with in these first two years. And this killer in this story is not yet the character that we come to know. So everybody's in their kind of infancy."
As Reeves describes it, DC villains will often "declare their alter-egos" in response to Batman's existence and arrival in Gotham throughout the comics, so this was a direction that he wanted to go in, too. "We have a Joker that's not yet the Joker," the director explained. As for why the scene involving Batman and Joker was cut, the "Planet of the Apes" filmmaker did not say. But he did reveal what Warner Bros. has planned for it in the future.
Reeves says Arkham Asylum scene that got cut will be released 'at some point'
"The Batman" helmer Matt Reeves insisted during his interview with IGN that fans would get to see his deleted Joker and Batman scene at some point in the future. Whether the scene will appear in a director's cut like "Zack Snyder's Justice League" or perhaps a Blu-ray/DVD feature of some sort remains to be seen. "[The scene] will release at some point," Reeves said. "In the scene that you'll see in the future, you'll see that we worked on what he'd look like, and he's kind of held in this kind of very suspenseful way, away from you visually."
As for what's next for the iconic DC baddie, should he pop up again in the future is anybody's guess. But one thing we know for sure is that Reeves has big plans for him. "He's eventually going to declare himself as a clown, declare himself as the Joker," he told IGN. YouTube users who watched the interview and heard this declaration were excited to learn that Reeves was taking things slow but serious with the character, especially since it gave Paul Dano's Riddler more time to shine in "The Batman."
"I'm actually glad they cut the scene because if they showed him in the middle of the movie, people would just think about Joker and ignore Paul Dano's excellent Riddler performance," said one user. Another commenter noted, "Keeping him in the shadows gives them more time to work on his look, which is being designed by the same people who did the Penguin."