Cillian Murphy: Losing Batman audition to Christian Bale was “for the best”

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is often regarded among best movie trilogies ever created, and star Christian Bale is widely remembered as one of the greatest to ever don the iconic Batman costume. However, it all could’ve been so different. Back in the day when Nolan was casting the role, none other than Cillian Murphy tried his luck.

While Murphy didn’t impress Christopher Nolan enough to play Batman, he’s playing the title character in Nolan’s new movie Oppenheimer. Murphy’s Batman audition has resurfaced online after his standout performance in Oppenheimer. While not exactly bad, his audition certainly underwhelms a bit compared to Bale. He lacks the intensity and that deep, gravelly voice. See for yourself:

Cillian Murphy weighs in on his Batman audition

Looking back on his failed Batman audition, Murphy admits that he never felt like he was going to get the part, and he’s ultimately happy that Bale landed the role. “Yes, I think it was for the best because we got Christian Bale’s performance, which is a stunning interpretation of that role,” he told GQ Magazine. “I never considered myself as the right physical specimen for Batman. To me, it was always going to be Christian Bale.”

That said, Murphy still managed to land a memorable role in the Dark Knight trilogy: he plays Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow. According to Nolan, he was the perfect casting: “All the previous Batman villains had been played by huge movie stars: Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, that kind of thing,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “That was a big leap for them and it really was purely on the basis of that test. So that’s how you [Cillian Murphy] got to play Scarecrow.”

The two would go on to become frequent collaborators, from Dunkirk to Inception and now Oppenheimer. You can catch Oppenheimer in theaters now; the reviews are pretty stellar!

Why Michael Keaton’s Batman is retired in The Flash

As long as we’re talking about Batman, Warner Bros. Discovery recently released a video all about Michael Keaton’s version in The Flash, which came out earlier this year. In that movie, Keaton’s Batman is retired. But why?

According to director Andy Muschietti, it’s because Batman did something he couldn’t forgive himself for. “I always said something should have happened to Bruce Wayne to want to stop being Batman,” he said. “And my idea was, he did something that goes against his code – he killed a criminal in front of [the criminal’s] child. Not knowingly, but he still did it.”

So basically, Batman does to a kid what some random criminal did to him back when he was little. “He just couldn’t cope with it and that’s why he decided to shut off his other side – The Batman,” Muschietti continued. “He hasn’t been able to forgive himself and now the way we find him [in The Flash] is an evolution of that.”

The Flash is technically still in theaters, although by this point it’s probably been crowded out of a lot of them. It’ll be available to stream on Max sooner or later.

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