The Batman director Matt Reeves has talked about how he loves collaborating with Paul Dano because of his obsessive perfectionistic approach.
Reeves revealed how the confrontation scene between Batman and Dano’s Riddler in Arkham Asylum was a surprisingly long shoot.
Paul loves doing a lot of takes, as do I. We took two days on the final scene between him and Robert Pattinson as Batman, and we must have easily done 70 or 80 takes.
Paul loves exploring. He’s obsessive that way.”
The scene that Reeves was referring to was after the second act of The Batman. Batman and the police captured the Riddler, but Batman suspected that there was more going on with him. The Riddler wrongly believed that he and Batman were on the same side and there to tear down all of Gotham’s infrastructure. He then inferred that his plans for the city were bigger than what the Dark Knight expected.
It’s a crucial scene that was a turning point for the film, as well as the Riddler’s character arc. Dano’s Riddler went through a range of emotions, from cool and calm to an upset rage-filled and then to sinister and maniacal. It seems like Dano was trying to be perfectionistic about his line delivery when face-to-face with Pattinson’s Batman, and it worked.
Reeves went on to praise Dano’s ability to surprise him with each take.
There were all these moments as the Riddler where he’d be tickled by something and then fly into a rage, and you never knew from take to take where that switch would come. I’d be sitting there with the headphones on, trying to stifle my laughter because he’d always do something surprising. Paul would ask me: ‘Was that crazy? Was that too much?’ I’d say: ‘No it’s fantastic. Let’s do another.”