How Michael Keaton created his own universe in the 1990s
The unstoppable rise of the comic book adaptation in the early 2000s eventually morphed into the shared universe model, an approach that’s seen countless properties even outside of the superhero bubble trying their hands at wrangling an interconnected mythology, and it’s an arena Michael Keaton was already familiar with long before he dipped his toes into no less than three of them.
Having already played Adrian Toomes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, the actor then showed up in the post-credits scene of notorious box office dud Morbius, which technically occupies an entirely different space as part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which Marvel Studios has nothing to do with outside of Tom Holland’s web-slinging capers.
Outside of that, when Keaton returned as Bruce Wayne and suited up to soar back into action alongside Ezra Miller in The Flash, he was officially welcomed into the DC Extended Universe, too. Not many stars have appeared in three separate sandboxes, but it wasn’t even his first time.
Recruited by Quentin Tarantino to star as Ray Nicolette in 1997’s Jackie Brown – an adaptation of Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch – Steven Soderbergh then brought Keaton in to make a fleeting cameo appearance as the exact same character in fellow Leonard adaptation, Out of Sight, the following year, establishing that both crime thrillers took place in the same world.
Of course, this was in an era where cross-pollination between disparate movies was hardly a regular occurrence, never mind in a pair of standalone features hailing from notable auteurs. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Keaton revealed that he was the one who pushed for Nicolette to look identical to his previous outing: “I said, ‘I’ll do this on one condition. He has to have at least most of his same exact wardrobe, the same haircut, the same look, so you go, ‘Oh, that guy.'”
Proving prescient given his future associations with both Marvel and DC’s universes, Keaton explained why he was so keen to make the connection crystal clear: “The notion that a character shows up again in a whole other movie, whole other studio, whole other director, that’s the fun of all this stuff for me,” he said, although it helped immeasurably that he was “a huge Steven Soderbergh fan, and the script was so good.”
Even though it’s been a quarter of a century since Out of Sight was released to anoint the Elmore Leonard Universe as a certifiable cinematic entity, the concept was barely expanded until earlier this year, when yet another unexpected adaptation of the author’s bibliography entered the fray.
Paul Calderón played Raymond Cruz in Out of Sight and returned for a guest appearance opposite Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens in the limited series Justified: City Primeval, which by any reasonable deduction means the six-season TV show that preceded the revival is also set in the same continuity as Jackie Brown, too.
