George Clooney jokes about his Batman cameo in The Flash

Of all the actors to play Batman, George Clooney is easily at the bottom of the list. Clooney only had one outing as Bruce Wayne, in 1997’s Batman & Robin, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hilarious Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman’s campy Poison Ivy. The movie is widely regarded as one of the worst of all time. And yet, despite admittedly loathing the flick, Clooney surprisingly reprised his role for a fun cameo in The Flash earlier this year.

Clooney’s cameo quite literally came and went in a flash; he only had six words to say before the movie ended. Just when Barry Allen thought he’d fixed the multiverse, he arrived home to find that Bruce Wayne had a different face. Rather than the version played by Ben Affleck, it was George Clooney’s iteration of the hero, his first appearance as the character in over 25 years.

George Clooney discusses his cameo in The Flash

As you can imagine, Clooney never got a callback to return as Batman. After the atrocity of his first movie, the franchise fell to pieces before it was later revived and refreshed by Christopher Nolan in his beloved Dark Knight trilogy. When The Hollywood Reporter asked Clooney if the cameo was a hint of further appearances, he said that requests are rarely made. “Oh yeah. Somehow there were not a lot of requests for me to reprise my role as Batman, I don’t know why,” he quipped.

And before anyone gets carried away, new DC head James Gunn has already stated that Clooney has no part in his future plans:

Clooney is more than a little embarrassed by his time as the Caped Crusader. “I always apologize for Batman & Robin,” he told The Graham Norton Show back in 2015. “Let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it. I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. Ummmmm, it wasn’t.”

All jokes aside, I’m glad Clooney decided to make one final bow as Batman in The Flash. It was a bit of fun, and a nice way to end his tenure.

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