Michael Keaton certainly has a lot to think about as he prepares to reprise his role as Bruce Wayne / Batman for The Flash, and recently fans have been wondering how the actor feels about slipping back into the cape and cowl. This prompted the fine folks over at The Hollywood Reporter to schedule some one-on-one time with Keaton and discover how he’s feeling about revisiting DC’s Dark Knight, as well as how it felt to play the character so many years ago.
When asked about suiting up as the World’s Greatest Detective after almost three decades, Keaton revealed that he saw the opportunity as something of an exciting challenge.
“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherfucker.’ And so I thought, ‘Well, now that they’re asking me, let me see if I can pull that off.'”
Rather than play Batman for a third time as a part of 1995’s Batman Forever, Keaton decided to hang up his bat suit and pass the torch. At the time, he felt the script for Batman Forever was of poor quality and wanted to move on. Now, he’s digging into a script written by Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson, which Keaton admits has him a tad confused. “They had to explain that to me several times,” Keaton confessed. “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.”
Thankfully, The Flash director Andy Muschietti was able to convince Keaton to keep reading. Eventually, the actor came around to all the multiversal madness happening in the film. 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.”
During his talk with THR, Keaton reflected on how much the character of Batman has changed throughout the years. In other words, it’s an even bigger deal to play Batman now than it was in the late eighties. The hype is elevated, the fans are more demanding, and social media will eat Keaton alive if he doesn’t deliver the goods.
When asked for his thoughts about how superhero movies have changed in the years since he was a part of the action, Keaton said the following:
“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. 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.'”
The Flash is set to race into theaters on November 4, 2022. In addition to Keaton, the film also stars Ezra Miller, Ben Affleck, Sasha Calle, Ron Livingston, Temuera Morrison, Kiersey Clemons, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Maribel Verdú, and Rudy Mancuso.