Val Kilmer's Excitement About Playing Batman in BATMAN FOREVER Was "Crushed" Because of The Batsuit
Amazon Prime Video recently released Val Kilmer’s documentary Val, which offers us an intimate look into his life and career. It’s a fascinating documentary that features footage that Kilmer shot himself over the course of his life. In one of the sequences, Kilmer opened up about his time playing Batman in Batman Forever. While he was initially excited to play the part, it ended up being an awful experience for him and one of the main aspects of that was because of the batsuit. He explains:
“I was in shock and disbelief, mostly because I had just been exploring a remote bat cave. By Hollywood standards Batman is the ultimate leading role and a dream come true. I took the part without even reading the script.... But whatever boyish excitement I had going in was crushed by the reality of the Batsuit. When you're in it, you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down. You also can't hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, it's very isolating. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realized that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to."
He went on to talk about his co-stars in the film and how they weren’t limited by their masks and costumes like he was:
"Actors like Tommy Lee Jones had designed this whole performance, and so had Jim Carrey... It was just so huge I think it made no difference what I was doing. I tried to be like an actor on a soap opera. The way I would turn to Nicole. Go count how many times I put my hands on my hips. I don't how they come up with this style of acting but they seem to go 'Go to soap opera school.'"
Kilmer also shared his previous history with Batman as a kid and how when he was in the second grade his family was invited to the set of the classic Adam West Batman TV series. He said that he has a distinct memory of his dad picking him up and putting him in the classic Batmobile.
I’m not really a fan of the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, but Kilmer was a solid choice for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. It’s a shame that it was such a bad experience for him. Being in that Batsuit does not sound fun at all!