According to The Batman director Matt Reeves, his take on the Caped Crusader gives a larger story arc to the Dark Knight, instead of Bruce Wayne.
During a press event attended by CBR, Reeves explained, "When I started thinking about that, I knew that what was important to me was that Batman have the arc of the story. That you wanted to do a story ... because a lot of times, once he's already Batman, he no longer has the arc, per se. You might have rogues' gallery characters who come in, and in a way, they have the grand story, and then Batman is going to battle them in some way."
For Reeves, it was the evolution of the Batman character that he wanted to focus on. He explained that he wanted to focus on Batman story centered on the detective aspect of the iconic superhero. He stated, "I wanted to do a story that the investigation of this particular mystery would lead him back to something very personal and would rock him to his core."
Many of the previous Batman movies have focused on Bruce Wayne's journey from orphan to masked vigilante. This was a story beat that Reeves knew he wanted to avoid, simply owing the number of times that origin and sequence of events in the alleyway have been depicted in recent films.
As Reeves stated, Batman's status as 'the world's greatest detective' has often been overlooked by the previous live-action movies. Even Robert Pattinson, the actor tasked with wearing the bat-suit in The Batman, says he was unaware of the Dark Knight's sleuthing skills. "And I feel like an idiot because I didn't even know that Batman was 'the world's greatest detective'; I hadn't heard that in my life before -- but it really plays," Pattinson said. Reeves agreed, saying, "I knew that I wanted to do a story that would lean into the detective side of Batman because we hadn't seen it where it was really in the forefront of the story."
The Batman arrives in theaters on March 4.