Michael Keaton Bluntly Explains Why He Passed on BATMAN FOREVER
Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin films don't get a lot of love from fans. Why? Because they kinda sucked. It's a shame that Warner Bros. took the film franchise in this weird and cartoonish direction. What Tim Burton was doing with the franchise was great! It's what many fans wanted to see at the time. Unfortunately, that's not how things turned out.
Of course, Warner Bros. wanted to keep Michael Keaton on board ,but when he read the script for Batman Forever he ran away. During a recent interview with THR, Keaton said:
"[The script] sucked. The script never was good. I couldn't understand why he wanted to do what he wanted to do. ... I knew it was in trouble when [Schumacher] said, 'Why does everything have to be so dark?'"
Yeah, with a statement like that, you wonder what the studio was thinking! The character is known as The Dark Knight, and he was wondering why everything had to be so dark?! He was obviously a fan of the classic 1960s TV series, which is great! But, the character was way past that Batman brightness when Schumacher jumped in on the franchise. Burton made sure of that.
I'm just happy that Keaton didn't stay on the franchise for the money. He could have easily stuck around for another big paycheck, but he decided to make the right decision and leave. This is what we were left with...