'It was terrifying': 'The Batman' star Robert Pattinson embraces a superhero who's 'a mess'

All eyes were on Robert Pattinson when he walked on the set of “The Batman,” and not in a good way.

“Everyone was looking at me,” the former "Twilight" star recalls filming a moment where Batman enters a murder scene surrounded by skeptical Gotham City cops. “It really felt like they were thinking, ‘You think you're Batman?’ It was terrifying.”

Like Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck before him, Pattinson, 35, wears the cowl of the Caped Crusader on the big screen, although this version in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” (in theaters now) navigates an emotional coming-of-age journey as a hero with arrested development.

Review: Robert Pattinson embodies a broody, brawny Dark Knight for a new era in 'The Batman'

In his second year of fighting crime in a corruption-filled Gotham City, Batman beats down crooks, solves crimes with the help of police lieutenant Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), dives into a complicated relationship with cat burglar Selina Kyle (Zo? Kravitz), has a fiery car chase with gangster Penguin (Colin Farrell) and is hot on the trail of the puzzling serial killer Riddler (Paul Dano).

But outside of his cool super suit, Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne isn’t like the outgoing wealthy playboys of prior Bat-films – in fact, he’s a bit of a broody, isolated introvert. The death of his parents when he was 10 inspired his war on the city’s criminal element, however “he's trying to cope with something he's never going to get over,” Reeves says. “It’s incredibly personal and it's a psychological coping mechanism. He's just pushing himself because he doesn't know what else to do with himself.”

Although it’s become a well-tread trope of Batman-related movies and TV series to show the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne to audiences, “The Batman” instead has its main character internally “reliving that night every single night and just turning the tables, again and again and again,” Pattinson says. “He hasn't gotten over the perception of his parents as a 10-year-old. They're like angels to him. So it's like, ‘I am avenging my parents who are also perfect and my life was perfect before, now it's just hell and darkness.’ ”

'The Batman': Zo? Kravitz talks sweaty first day, breaking the ice with Robert Pattinson

And along the way, “he discovers his parents weren't angels,” Reeves adds. “He is in many ways stunted. He sees the world through a very specific perspective and the movie was meant to challenge all of that so that it could push him and bring him to an awakening.”

Other retellings of the mythos have Bruce training to be Batman in his adolescence or right after his parents die, but the actor thought it was more interesting to inhabit a Batman who’s “been a mess, like he's been doing drugs and stuff throughout his 20s,” Pattinson says.

“It seemed to me like someone much more likely to have been in a self-destructive mindset. He wasn't about self-improvement, he didn't know that he was going to become Batman and it suddenly just happens after 15, 20 years of winding yourself up and no one challenging this world view that you are building.”

The OG 'Batman': How Michael Keaton's 1989 blockbuster changed superhero movies forever

It isn't always easy being that serious on screen. Filming fight scenes in the Batsuit especially tested his mettle. "You're just so boiling hot," Pattinson reports. "And immediately after every take, I had to take the cowl off and put like an ice bucket on my head. You're trying to be like 'the cool guy' but it's embarrassing. The curtain is constantly being pulled back.

"Minute one on set, you're like 'I'm Batman.' And then it's like, 'I'm dying!' "

Wright enjoyed working with Pattinson, calling him "a very reserved and gentle" soul. And he was wowed by the younger actor’s “remarkably sensitive, smart interpretation” of Bruce as well as Batman, “leaning more toward a type of fragility and the trauma of the murder of his parents being a driving force toward his needing that suit,” he says. “There's an expression of strength, power and ferocity that is unavailable to him without it. That's a really interesting choice.

“There is such a distinction between his Bruce Wayne and his Batman that I think for once we can buy that Gordon doesn't put two and two together that they are the same guy.”

The 10 most must-see movies of 2022: From 'The Batman' to 'Top Gun: Maverick'

So far, critics have also been won over by his performance (“The Batman” is 87% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and he weathered early fan backlash that admittedly wasn’t as “vitriolic” as expected. Pattinson could see the tide turn in his favor while filming in his native England, fittingly for a scene later in the movie where police and Gothamites alike finally start to embrace the hero after initially distrusting him.

“English people are generally loath to get excited about stuff and (the scene) just looked so Batman: It was in the middle of the night, the wind was blowing, my cape was blowing back,” Pattinson recalls. “All of the guys who are playing cops, they're like, ‘You all right, Batman? How you doing, Batman?’ ... It was quite amazing.

“You occasionally get moments where you feel the power of what that suit inspires in people and it kind of makes people feel like little kids."

Joss Whedon's 'Justice League' controversy: Director denies threatening Gal Gadot's career, calls Ray Fisher 'a bad actor'

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Batman': Robert Pattinson's Dark Knight is 'a mess' in new film