The Batman‘s marketing campaign is heating up, with the latest trailer ‘The Bat and the Cat’ promising a truly epic debut for Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight. With the release coming in March (and only Morbius competing for comic-book movie attention) Warner Bros. has begun turning up the heat by asking fans to test their smarts against The Riddler.
The villain’s cryptogram can be seen at the end of the new trailer, though doesn’t take a Bat-computer to crack. The simple substitution cipher was solved practically instantly and reads “You are el rata alada,” or “you are the winged rat.”
Now fans have discovered the intriguing rataalada.com where you can ‘play a game’ with the Riddler. Succeed and you can unlock some sketches of Batman, with further updates promised in the run-up to the film’s release. With the movie set to introduce us to a new Gotham-centric cinematic universe in which new TV shows and movies will be set, this kind of background information could prove crucial to figuring out the dark secrets buried in the city’s past.
This attention to detail is typical for the franchise. Those with good memory will remember the killer ARG marketing campaign for The Dark Knight. In the year leading to the movie’s release, fans found Joker cards hidden in comic-book stores, received phones the Joker left for them inside birthday cakes, had clues delivered along with pizzas, and were asked to help project the Batman signal on buildings in New York City and Chicago.
The Batman‘s marketing hasn’t scaled those heights, though fingers crossed Warner Bros. has some very fun activities lined up to stoke enthusiasm for the movie.
The Batman hits theaters on March 4, 2022.