

To finish the costume we sourced an accurate replica cape to visually complete the display. Once we mounted the suit on the mannequin, we also performed some minor restoration on several tears and bits of damage to the foam latex. This choice creates more of a costume display than a wax statue type display. We created a custom mannequin to support the bat suit with a Val Kilmer lifecast, which we painted a matte gray tone, allowing the original suit to shine. Getting the Batman movie costume on a custom form was the best way to support it over time. While foam latex is a wonderfully flexible material for productions, over time it can get brittle and fragile. The suit was made of foam latex which gave the look of the heavier armor but still allowed Kilmer to move they way the film required him to.

His take on the Batman universe was a bit of a departure from the darker style of the previous films directed by Tim Burton. They were added to the suit because the director and writer of the film, Joel Schumacher, wanted his version of the Batsuit to be more fitted and sexier. Val Kilmar’s Batsuit also called the Panther Batsuit is the first of the Batman films to feature the infamous “bat nipples”. Our client brought us this original Batman movie costume from the Batman Forever film, looking of a themed base to display it. It’s kind of perfect considering Batman Forever and the upcoming The Batman both have Riddler as a villain.Custom mannequin and themed display for an original Val Kilmer Batman movie costume. There’s a lot of suits for Batman over the years, including for Michael Keaton, George Clooney and more recently through the Dark Knight trilogy, Christian Bale, but it so happened to be Kilmer's. Warner Bros must have had Val Kilmer’s Batman suit (or one of them anyway) lying around for Robert Pattinson to try on for the screen test. When Rob and I first got together, we’d had all these conversations and then just by virtue of what it is, it’s Batman, the studio said well, ‘We always do a screen test.’ Kind of like, Rob did first by himself and literally was wearing, I believe Val Kilmer’s bat suit, which by the way, the moment you put it on, it was a crazy moment. Ahead of revealing the jaw-dropping second trailer for the film, Reeves recalled how he tested Pattinson to be the next Bruce Wayne. Writer/director Matt Reeves, Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz were in attendance at the DC Fandome event, which was packed with massive reveals for upcoming movies and TV shows from the comic book universe.
