The Batman Part II Set Footage Gives Us Our First Proper Look at the New Batsuit

Footage circulating from the Glasgow production shows Batman's suit being worn during filming, following earlier photographs that offered a less complete glimpse of the costume.

The person inside the suit appears to be a stunt performer rather than Robert Pattinson himself, which is worth making clear before somebody starts analysing the man's chin.

But the costume is very real.

The overall look remains immediately recognisable from The Batman, with Matt Reeves and his costume team apparently choosing to refine Pattinson's original Batsuit rather than throw it away and start again.

Changes appear to include tweaks to the armour plating and abdominal sections, although we're still looking at a costume being photographed from the side of an active film set rather than a beautifully lit official Warner Bros publicity shot.

In other words, don't start judging the final movie entirely from somebody's phone camera just yet.

That's probably the most interesting thing about the new suit.

It still looks like Pattinson's Batman.

The Batsuit in the 2022 movie felt deliberately practical and homemade compared with some previous cinematic versions of the costume.

This wasn't Bruce Wayne casually ordering a finished superhero suit from the Bat-catalogue.

His armour looked used.

It looked heavy.

It looked like something Bruce had built and repeatedly modified while spending his nights getting punched in Gotham's alleyways.

The sequel seems to continue that idea.

Rather than suddenly transforming Pattinson into a completely different Batman, the new costume seems like an evolution of the suit we've already seen.

And considering where Bruce was in his career when we last left him, that makes perfect sense.

The Batsuit isn't the only thing we've seen.

Filming has transformed parts of Glasgow city centre into Gotham, complete with fake street signs, American flags, Gotham City businesses, police vehicles and a layer of artificial snow.

Bothwell Street has been among the areas given the Gotham treatment, while a local building has even become the fictional Office of the City Clerk.

It's quite a transformation.

Then there's the Batmobile.

Pattinson's glorious muscle-car interpretation of Batman's famous vehicle has been spotted repeatedly during filming, including action sequences involving Gotham police and SWAT vehicles.

Footage from the production has shown the Batmobile speeding through the streets and being pursued by GCPD vehicles.

Exactly why Gotham's police appear to be chasing Batman is another matter entirely.

And that's where we need to be careful.

You can probably imagine what happened approximately six seconds after footage of the police chasing the Batmobile appeared online.

The theories started.

Has Batman become a wanted man?

Has something happened between him and Gordon?

Is somebody framing Bruce?

Does the GCPD simply really dislike his driving?

Right now, we don't know.

And we're not going to pretend that we do.

Set footage can reveal some fascinating things about a movie, but it can also be incredibly misleading when we're seeing a few seconds of a sequence that could last several minutes in the finished film.

The winter setting has generated plenty of speculation too.

Snow plus Batman inevitably leads fans towards certain members of his rogues' gallery, but a snowy Gotham doesn't automatically tell us who the villain is.

Until Matt Reeves tells us otherwise, we're keeping the conspiracy board in the cupboard.

For now.

One thing we're delighted hasn't disappeared is the Batmobile.

Every generation seems to get its own interpretation of Batman's car.

Michael Keaton had that wonderfully ridiculous jet-powered machine.

Christian Bale basically drove a tank.

Ben Affleck's looked like something designed specifically to make insurance companies nervous.

Pattinson got a muscle car from hell.

When it first fired up in The Batman, sounding less like a superhero vehicle and more like something Satan had built in his garage, it immediately became one of our favourite modern Batmobiles.

Seeing it back on the streets of Gotham — or Glasgow, technically — is very welcome indeed.

And judging by the amount of vehicle work being captured during filming, Reeves intends to put it through its paces again.

Robert Pattinson will once again play Bruce Wayne/Batman in the sequel, with Matt Reeves returning to direct.

The original The Batman arrived in 2022 and gave us a much younger version of the character, still learning exactly what Batman was supposed to represent.

By the end of the film, Bruce had begun to understand that terrifying criminals wasn't enough.

Gotham needed something else from him.

That's one reason we're interested in seeing how the suit develops alongside the man wearing it.

Batman's costume has always changed as Bruce changes.

Sometimes that means adding more armour.

Sometimes it means becoming more technologically advanced.

And occasionally it means somebody decides George Clooney needs a Bat-credit-card.

We don't talk about that one.

It's been a long road getting here.

But seeing Gotham appear on the streets of Glasgow makes The Batman Part II feel much more tangible.

We've got the Batmobile.

We've got Gotham police.

We've got snowy streets.

And now we've got our first proper look at Batman's updated suit in action.

There are still plenty of mysteries surrounding Matt Reeves' sequel, and we'd quite like to keep some of them that way.

We don't need the entire bloody movie spoiled through somebody's TikTok account before it reaches cinemas.

But a little glimpse of the Batsuit?

We'll take that.

Vengeance is back.