Fans around the world were shocked last year when it was announced that Michael Keaton would be suiting up as Batman for the first time in 30 years to lend support to Ezra Miller’s Scarlet Speedster and Ben Affleck’s Dark Knight in The Flash. It was a scenario that nobody could have predicted.
While there had been rumors popping up every now and then that Tim Burton’s Caped Crusader could be tempted to reprise his iconic turn as Bruce Wayne in a Batman Beyond movie, the project was never officially entered into development, so it was always rooted more in wishful thinking than any sort of tangible reality.
However, both of Hollywood’s major comic book franchises betting big on the multiverse has made the impossible possible on a scale that was scarcely imaginable, never mind believable, up until very recently. And Keaton’s veteran Batman returning to the fold is going to be the tip of a very exciting iceberg.
In a new interview, the actor explained why he decided to seize the opportunity when it came his way, after admitting that he’d always had the lingering feeling he’d still be able to pull off a spot of costumed crimefighting.
“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherf*cker’. And so I thought, ‘Well, now that they’re asking me, let me see if I can pull that off’. I had to read it more than three times to go, ‘Wait, how does this work?’. 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.”
By the time The Flash hits theaters in November 2022, Keaton is going to be 71 years old. But he’s always kept himself in good shape, so it shouldn’t have been too difficult to squeeze the star back into the Batsuit, especially when three decades of evolving technology will have made things a lot more comfortable for him this time around. His Batman is possibly the single most hyped aspect of the film, and it’s a shame we’ve still got fifteen months to wait.
