Matthew George "Matt" Reeves (born April 27, 1966 in Rockville Centre, New York) is an American director, screenwriter, and producer.
He found success with Cloverfield and the critically acclaimed sequels to Rise of the Planet of the Apes that he directed, and has since went on to write and direct the next cinematic iteration of Batman starring Robert Pattinson.
Works he directed:
- The Pallbearer (1996)
- Homicide: Life on the Street (1997, Season 6 episode 8)
- Felicity (1998-2001, several episodes)
- Cloverfield (2008)
- Let Me In (2010)
- Planet of the Apes (reboot/prequel series):
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
- War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
- The Batman (2022)
- Untitled The Batman sequel (TBA)
Other works he's been involved in:
- Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995, co-writer)
- The Yards (2000, co-writer)
- Cloverfield:
- 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016, executive producer)
- The Cloverfield Paradox (2018, executive producer)
- The Passage (2019)
- Tales from the Loop (2020, executive producer)
- The Batman spin-offs
- Arkham (TBA, showrunner)
- Penguin (TBA, showrunner)
- Batman: Caped Crusader (2022, animated series, co-creator and executive producer alongside Bruce Timm and J. J. Abrams)
Tropes associated with his works:
- Anti-Hero: His films usually feature an imperfect protagonist. Caesar in his Planet of the Apes struggles with a temptation towards evil, Owen in Let Me In fantazies about killing his bullies, the cast of Cloverfield is not the most sympathetic, and his version of Batman amps up the darkness a fair amount.
- Bittersweet Ending: His films usually feature one. With the exception of The Pallbearer which has a Happy Ending, and War for the Planet of the Apes indicates a Happy Ending Override regarding it's prequel's human protagonist in a deleted scene.
- Deconstruction: Cloverfield and The Batman deconstruct various tropes and elements of the Kaiju movie genre and the Batman mythos, respectively.
- Early Installment Weirdness: His directorial debut was the romantic comedy The Pallbearer, starring David Schwimmer and Gwyneth Paltrow. His subsequent films have been much darker.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: In his Planet of the Apes movies, apes are more sympathetic, but humans are just fighting to survive. His version of Batman is unusually dark, while his Riddler is a Well-Intentioned Extremist with a Freudian Excuse.
- Hero Antagonist: In Dawn and War for the Planet of the Apes. The Police Officer in Let Me In counts as well.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: While leaning more on the cynical end, it does establish that all his characters are human, sympathetic, and complex creatures.
