The Batman Trailer Has Us Thinking It Might Wind Up With an R Rating

One of the biggest trailers out of the DC FanDome event is the first look at The Batman, a new Batman adaptation starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman. While most superhero movies aim for a PG-13 rating to get the broadest audience possible, we're wondering what The Batman will be rated. If it's as intense as the trailer suggests, it could be headed for Gotham's first R rating.

Like most films, The Batman won't get an official rating from the MPAA until much closer to its release date, which is still more than a year away. It's the vibe of the trailer, though, that has us all wondering: the footage released at the DC FanDome features violent action sequences and a dark, gritty, gloomy mood, suggesting an even darker take than the seminal Dark Knight trilogy.

Director Matt Reeves also revealed his influences for the movie at the FanDome event, and, as ComicBook.com reported, those influences are all notable R-rated crime thrillers. "In that way, it's like a classic noir, and this series of murders that Batman investigates is very much in that mode. So Chinatown was a really big one," Reeves said, notting the "gritty, flawed humanity of it." He added: "[Batman] was very inspired by those kinds of movies, by French Connection, and other sorts of cop movies like that. I would say even a movie like Taxi Driver, the description of a place, and very much getting inside of somebody's head. I guess a lot of '70s, sort of street-grounded stories."

If The Batman does wind up with an R rating, it would be the first Batman movie to land that adults-only designation. The two most recent iterations of the character — Ben Affleck's version in the DCEU films and Christian Bale's from the Dark Knight trilogy — had PG-13 ratings, despite their dark content, continuing the long-standing tradition of PG-13 Batman films dating all the way back to the Michael Keaton era in the late '80s and early '90s. It wouldn't, however, be the first R-rated superhero flick: on the Marvel side of things, Deadpool, its sequel, and Logan all had R ratings, and just earlier this year, DC had its own with Birds of Prey. Regardless of its official rating, it seems pretty certain that The Batman will be taking the "dark" in "Dark Knight" very seriously.