The cat, err, bat’s out of the bag, now. After months of will-he-won’t-he, Michael Keaton is finally opening up and confirming that he is, in fact, returning to the role of Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, in the upcoming DC film, “The Flash.” But just because Keaton is returning to the role he revolutionized more than 30 years ago in 1989’s “Batman” and is coming off another inspired superhero performance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise that doesn’t mean he’s a diehard fan of superhero big-screen adventures. In fact, he’s only seen one superhero film all the way through over the past four decades.
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Speaking to THR, Keaton talked about his return to the role of Batman in “The Flash,” as well as just how out of his depth he is when it comes to the more nerdy aspects of the superhero filmmaking world.
“After the first ‘Batman,’ I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an entire [comic book] movie,” Keaton admitted. “I just never got around to it. So you’re talking to a guy who wasn’t in the zeitgeist of that whole world. When I went down to do the Marvel things in Atlanta … It’s an entire city dedicated to Marvel … They’ll be doing Marvel movies forever. I’ll be dead, and they’ll still be doing Marvel movies.”
But even though he hasn’t been closely following the goings-on in the DCEU or MCU, that doesn’t mean he stopped thinking about superhero work altogether. Keaton admitted, in the interview, that he has always thought about the idea of returning to Batman.
“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherfucker,’” Keaton said about his Batman role. “And so I thought, ‘Well, now that they’re asking me, let me see if I can pull that off.’”
As he alluded, the offer to play Batman returned with the upcoming “Flash” film from director Andy Muschietti. That film, which is the first solo adventure for Ezra Miller’s DC superhero character, is expected to play around with the multiverse and time-travel, giving the filmmaker a chance to bring back Michael Keaton’s Batman. But the whole multiversal, timey-wimey thing wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for Keaton to grasp.
“I had to read [the ‘Flash’ script] more than three times to go, ‘Wait, how does this work?’ ” Keaton explained. “They had to explain that to me several times. By the way, I’m not being arrogant, I hope, about this. I don’t say it like, ‘I’m too groovy.’ I’m stupid. There’s a lot of things I don’t know about. And so, I don’t know, I just kind of figured it out, but this was different.”
He added, “What’s really interesting is how much more I got [Batman] when I went back and did him. I get this on a whole other level now. I totally respect it. I respect what people are trying to make. I never looked at it like, ‘Oh, this is just a silly thing.’ It was not a silly thing when I did ‘Batman.’ But it has become a giant thing, culturally. It’s iconic. So I have even more respect for it because what do I know? This is a big deal in the world to people. You’ve got to honor that and be respectful of that. Even I go, ‘Jesus, this is huge.’”
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Obviously, we’re still pretty far away from seeing Keaton return as Bruce Wayne on the big screen, as “The Flash” doesn’t arrive in theaters until November 4, 2022. In the meantime, you can see the actor reprise his Vulture role in the Sony/Marvel film, “Morbius,” which (for now) is scheduled to arrive on January 19, 2022.