Why Michael Keaton turned down Batman Forever

Before the MCU or even Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, a different superhero dominated the box office. The first Batman movie directed by Tim Burton starring Michael Keaton came out all the way back in 1989, yet its influence is still felt. To many, Keaton’s portrayal of Bruce Wayne/Batman still stands as the best we’ve gotten, and considering that actors like Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, Val Kilmer, and even George Clooney have all taken their swings at the part, that’s saying something. The fan love for Keaton remains so strong that he’s even returning to the mask and cowl in the upcoming Flash movie.

The last time Keaton played Batman was in 1992’s Batman Returns, also directed by Burton. But when Joel Schumacher took over for 1995’s Batman Forever, Keaton opted not to come back. Now that enough time has passed, Keaton is talking a bit more openly about why he decided to leave Bruce Wayne behind: apparently he disagreed with Schumacher’s much campier vision for the character.

Michael Keaton turned down Batman Forever over creative differences

Keaton recently talked in detail about his decision to turn down Batman Forever on the Backstage podcast. To Keaton, it all came back to his understanding of the character.

“It was always Bruce Wayne. It was never Batman,” Keaton said. “To me, I know the name of the movie is Batman, and it’s hugely iconic and very cool and cultural iconic and because of Tim Burton, artistically iconic, [but] I knew from the get-go it was Bruce Wayne. That was the secret. I never talked about it. [Everyone would say] Batman, Batman, Batman does this, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘Y’all are thinking wrong here.’ [It’s all about] Bruce Wayne. What kind of person does that?… Who becomes that?”

This clashed with the vision of Joel Schumacher, who wanted to go in a more comic book-ish direction. It marked a large departure from the darker noir tones evoked by Tim Burton’s two films. “And then when the director who directed the third one, I said, ‘I just can’t do it,’” Keaton remembered. “And one of the reasons I couldn’t do it was — and you know, he’s a nice enough man, he’s passed away, so I wouldn’t speak ill of him even if he were alive — he, at one point, after more than a couple of meetings where I kept trying to rationalize doing it and hopefully talking him into saying, ‘I think we don’t want to go in this direction, I think we should go in this direction.’ And he wasn’t going to budge.”

"But I remember one of the things that I walked away going, ‘Oh boy, I can’t do this.’ He asked me, ‘I don’t understand why everything has to be so dark and everything so sad,’ and I went, ‘Wait a minute, do you know how this guy got to be Batman? Have you read… I mean, it’s pretty simple.’"

You have to give credit where it’s due: Keaton stuck to his guns, and in the end it only made his take on the character all the more iconic. Could you imagine if he’d played Bruce Wayne through Batman Forever, or even the much maligned Batman & Robin? How would that have affected his legacy as the character?

Instead, he went out strong. And now, 30 years later, he’s returning to the role in The Flash this November.

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h/t IndieWire