After playing The Dark Knight in 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns, Michael Keaton opted not to suit up again for Batman Forever. And looking back on it, that was clearly the right choice given how the film turned out. But why did he walk away from the role?
Well, in a recent interview, he took a deep dive into the decision, and it seems a lot of it had to do with creative differences. Here’s what he shared:
“To me, I know the name of the movie is Batman, and it’s hugely iconic and very cool and cultural iconic and because of Tim Burton, artistically iconic, I knew from the get-go it was Bruce Wayne. That was the secret. I never talked about it. [Everyone would say] Batman, Batman, Batman does this, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘Y’all are thinking wrong here.’ [It’s all about] Bruce Wayne. What kind of person does that?… Who becomes that? What kind of person [does that]? And then when the director who directed the third one, I said, ‘I just can’t do it.’
And one of the reasons I couldn’t do it was—and you know, he’s a nice enough man, he’s passed away, so I wouldn’t speak ill of him even if he were alive—he, at one point, after more than a couple of meetings where I kept trying to rationalize doing it and hopefully talking him into saying I think we don’t want to go in this direction, I think we should go in this direction. And he wasn’t going to budge.”
Continuing on, he explained:
“But I remember one of the things that I walked away going, ‘Oh boy, I can’t do this.’ He 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.’”
Keaton’s reasoning is certainly fair, and again, seeing as Batman Forever was a bomb, he obviously made the right decision. If you want to see for yourself, though, how big of a bullet he dodged, you can stream the Joel Schumacher-directed flick over on HBO Max.
Source: Heroic Hollywood
