The Batman Scene That Took A Million Takes According To Robert Pattinson
There's no denying that perfection takes time and practice, even for movies. Sometimes shooting a scene can take dozens, even hundreds, of takes. It famously took 127 takes to film the baseball bat scene in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining" (via The Guardian). It took 156 takes for Tobey Macguire's Peter Parker to perfectly catch Mary Jane Watson's lunch tray in the first "Spider-Man." Heck, Jackie Chan once purportedly took 2,900 takes to nail the hacky sack scene in "Dragon Lord." Some scenes are just that difficult.
This is something Robert Pattinson learned the hard way when filming "The Batman." At one point, he had to perform a minor stunt that proved exceptionally tricky, resulting in a "strangely difficult" scene that took "about a million takes" to get right, according to Pattinson (via CinemalBlend). However, it might not be the kind of scene you'd expect for a "Batman" movie.
Pattinson spent 'a million takes' perfecting his bat-handling
In an elaborate action movie like "The Batman," one might expect the most difficult scenes to be the most intense ones. In reality, however, Robert Pattinson and the filming crew didn't struggle with complex fight sequences, dangerous stunts, or finicky practical effects nearly as much as one might think. In fact, the tricky scene in question is one in which Bruce Wayne (Pattinson) removes a live bat from a box.
"The suit only allows you to move your arm in a certain way," Pattinson said. "And if you were at the wrong angle and trying to twist your arm around and do delicate motor functions, it was almost impossible to get the thing out of the cage. It literally took about a million takes to get it right 'cause it looked so awkward."
Thankfully, Pattinson eventually did get the bat out of the box. However, the endeavor was obviously more difficult than he, or the crew, bargained for. But perhaps it was worth it — because now that scene (as well as the bat) will go down in history as one thing that made the filming of "The Batman" a little more interesting.