Michael Keaton on Why He Walked Away From Joel Schumacher's BATMAN Sequel
Michael Keaton is my favorite version of Batman. I loved those two Tim Burton Batman films he starred in. He was given the opportunity to continue playing the character in the Joel Schumacher-directed sequel, but thankfully he turned it down. Those movies are awful. I didn’t care for those Schumacher Batman films then and I don’t really care for them now.
Keaton has talked about why he decided to walk away from those films in the past, but with the actor coming back to reprise his role in the upcoming Flash and Batgirl films, the questions of why he left the franchise back then are coming up again.
While speaking on Backstage's In the Envelope: The Actor's Podcast, Keaton opened up on the matter again, saying:
"At one point, after more than a couple of meetings where I kept trying to rationalize doing it and hopefully kind of talking him into saying 'I think we don't want to go in this direction, really I think we want to go in this direction,' and he wasn't going to budge. I remember one of the things that I walked away going, 'Oh boy, I can't do this'. (Joel Schumacher) 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.'
"To me, I know the name of the movie is Batman, and it's hugely iconic and very cool and culturally iconic and because of Tim Burton, artistically iconic. I always knew from the get-go it was Bruce Wayne. That was the secret. I never talked about it. 'Batman, you have to be Batman, Batman does this,' and I kept thinking to myself, 'Y'all are thinking wrong here.' It's about Bruce Wayne. Who's that guy? What kind of person does that? Who becomes that?'"
So, Keaton made the right decision and left. Schumacher definitely took those films and the character in the completely wrong direction. I’m still not sure what in the hell the executives at WB were thinking when they bought into Schumacher’s pitch, but I’m happy it’s over.
