Michael Keaton remembers the moment that he landed the role of ‘Batman’
After the comic book series on television with Adam West, Michael Keaton was the first actor to bring a serious take on Batman to the silver screen. Now set to reprise his role in the new movie Flashpoint, Keaton remembered the first time he donned the cape and cowl.
Speaking to Empire, Keaton remembered Tim Burton connecting with him after working with Keaton on Beetlejuice, recalling: “He said, ‘I wanna talk to you about something… I just want you to read this, because I think I’m gonna make this movie’. I don’t know that I’ve ever asked him this, actually, but something gave him the idea and so he said, ‘go home and read it’”.
As Keaton described his take on the character to Burton for the first time, he remembered Burton having a version of Batman more in line with the Frank Miller incarnation of the character, explaining, “He was already seeing it and it was basically the Frank Miller stuff. And I wasn’t aware of all that stuff, I just knew what it was, but I knew I had to read the Miller stuff. And I thought, ‘oh, this could be interesting'”.
To make the character come alive, Keaton also discussed the mindset of Bruce Wayne that he had in mind. He said: “He’s got two personalities. The guy is not psychotic but not far from it. Controlled psychosis. In order for me to justify all this, he probably ends up going into some deep, deep trance, which is a scene that I don’t think ever made it in”.
That trance-like state also fed into the iconic Batman voice, which Keaton attributed to the altered mindset, saying, “It’s cheesy but I figured once he’s in the trance, he doesn’t think like he does like Bruce Wayne, doesn’t act like he does”.
Although fans were pushing back on Keaton starring in the movie before it came out, his incarnation became known as one of the definitive takes on the character, operating against Jack Nicholson’s equally iconic take on The Joker. Despite Burton having his issues with Nicholson, Keaton was highly complimentary of his clown-faced co-star, remarking, “I thought, ‘this is going to be really interesting.’ And you’re standing there looking at a guy dressed — you’re both dressed in these outrageous things. But he immediately was cool, we immediately got on”.
In the latest incarnation of the character, Keaton is set to put on the mask in Flashpoint, playing an older version of Batman in an alternate dimension opposite Ezra Miller’s Flash. Flashpoint is set to hit theatres on June 16th, 2023.
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