According to The Batman’s Makeup Designer, How to Get Batman’s Eyeliner

Matt Reeves’ hero Batman boldly do what none of his previous on-screen colleagues have done: When his helmet is off, he wears heavy smoky eyes.

While Robert Pattinson’s dark eyes certainly make for an attractive, unforgettable look, that aspect of his character design is not. all about aesthetics. (To be fair, it’s largely cosmetic.) Eye makeup had a practical purpose: Bruce Wayne needed to cover the area around his eyes to completely conceal his face while wearing black gloves. Other actors playing Batman in live-action movies also wore these panda eyes, but Batman was the first to admit that shadow illusions require some aesthetic skill.

As makeup designer Naomi Donne told Polygon, director Matt Reeves really wanted a makeover that focused on Batman’s look right after he took off his costume.

“Matt really cares about the rest of the [the eye makeup] when he’s topless,” she explained. “So we pushed that. We actually dropped it and looked at what was left, and we used it. It’s really hard to remove black eye makeup, and we used that.”

Donne says it’s been a trial and error process to get the perfect blend of bold eye makeup that looks good and retains color. Amidst the rainy weather, sweaty costumes, and tense action scenes, they needed something with staying power. Ultimately, Batman’s perfectly balanced emotional look is a mix of gouache, cream eyeliner, pencil, and liquid paint makeup.

“And then,” she said, “to brighten it up, we used this light shimmer pigment to give it a little sheen, so that it reflects light the same way his Batsuit does. did.”

While bold eyeliner certainly evokes expressive and goth subcultures, Donne said Reeves’ touchpoint for Batman’s look came from another specific source: Kurt Cobain. Reeves previously revealed how singer Nirvana inspired joining the Caped Crusader, and how he relied more on a tortured Bruce Wayne rather than a playboy millionaire. In fact, that connection led Reeves to choose Robert Pattinson. It’s only natural that deeper character strings bind Kurt Cobain and this version of Bruce Wayne will also extend to their visual aesthetic. After all, Cobain rocked the black eyeliner style of the ’90s – even if it wasn’t as messy as Bruce Wayne’s hairstyle in the movies.

“I love that sometimes it’s so smudged and flowing all over his face, and sometimes it’s just a smoky eye. But at all times it is never clean. Donne says it always comes from the remains of the cow. “That’s how Batman stays in Bruce Wayne after he takes off his costume.”

But while we can learn about the metaphors in eye makeup and how the Batman specter haunts Bruce Wayne forever, Donne boils it down to a universal truth: “It looks glamorous, too. Deadly. Man in black eye makeup looking at really good.”