Batman returns

Making his debut in the monthly American comic series Detective Comics in 1939, Batman－whose secret identity is the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne－has been portrayed by a string of A-list actors, with the likes of George Clooney, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck donning the iconic black cowl.

Robert Pattinson is the latest actor to play the masked crime fighter, protector of the fictional Gotham City. The new film spans around three hours, making it the longest-running Batman film in history. It follows the eponymous character as he teams up with James Gordon, one of the city's few upstanding police officers, to solve a string of mysterious murders and tackle one of Batman's classic adversaries, Riddler, portrayed here, not as the flamboyant comic book villain, but as a gritty criminal with an antisocial personality.

During a recent premiere held in a downtown cinema in eastern Beijing, director Matt Reeves, alongside actors Pattinson, Colin Farrell and Paul Dano, shared some behind-the-scenes anecdotes with the Chinese audience via video.

Speaking about the movie being set two years after Bruce Wayne first put on the Batman's suit, Reeves says most of the previous Batman films and TV series usually depict either the masked vigilante's origin story, or when he has been the Batman for a long time.

"But in this story, you are meeting him in a place where he's still figuring out what it means to be Batman," explains Reeves, who cowrote the script with Peter Craig.

Tortured for years after witnessing the murder of his parents when he was a child, Batman in the new movie is more like a recluse, who is completely focused on fighting crime, rarely sparing time to run the Wayne family's business interests.

With few high-tech gadgets or weapons, this Batman is brought to life with a more humanized and fragile side, exemplified by scenes featuring him getting injured while fighting with a street gang or falling into temporary coma during a fierce conflict.

Deemed by some critics as a return to the iconic hero's detective roots－the character was originally conceived as such－Pattison's iteration of the Batman brings his sleuthing skills to the fore, figuring out the clues left by Dano's Riddler.

"You will see he is enduring a lot… He is still on the path to becoming the perfect Batman and 'the world's greatest detective'," says Reeves.

Pattinson, who accumulated many Chinese fans for his role as a pale-faced vampire in The Twilight Saga, echoes that his incarnation of Batman is different from previous on-screen versions, tapping more into his detective origins.