MICHAEL KEATON RETURNS (or at least in discussion) AS BATMAN

[Sawyer]

Interesting thought, but I’m not buying it.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

I cannot see it. And although Bale just edges out Keaton as my favourite Batman, for what they're (apparently) trying to do, I hope they get Keaton.

 

[Sawyer]

Using Bale would require undoing Nolan’s ending for the character. Can’t see WB wanting to rock that boat.

 

[Airwings]

Could see a return of the Bat-glider

Of course of course
How could I forget about it? We really must

Some of Keaton's best moments have involved him sitting at the batcomputer and researching/spying, he's just so damn intense.

Now that you mention it. I agree with you!

Imagine that kind of scene if it's together with 35 year old Dick Grayson from 66-verse (like I have suggested). Oh, those differences in personality. It will be fun to see.
But Grayson, by that age, in 1986, should be a little more close to Bruce 89, mood-wise, than he was 20 years earlier when he was an all-happy kid sidekick

 

[Airwings]

I'm just throwing names that are/aren't likely to come on board Flashpoint. Hell, I'd be happy with only three Batfamily cameos.

For "Batfamily" cameos, it should be from the three most successful incarnations of the character. Not all of them should be from Schumacher's films. But I will think it's nice to get a little glimpse of Chris O'Donnell.
From Burtonverse, we already have Keaton.
From Nolanverse, we could actually get a villain instead
From 66-verse, I'm in love with the idea of having a 30+ Robin (even it means a younger actor must replace Burt Ward)

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

From a couple of days ago (sorry if anyone's/everyone's already seen it). Pure speculation throughout but I found it an interesting read...

DCEU Theory: The Flash Sets Up Michael Keaton's Batman Beyond

... what if The Flash isn't just a setup for Batman Beyond, but the inklings of something much bigger happening at DC? What if Barry catching a glimpse of the Multiverse is the DCEU gearing up for their own Crisis-style event? If that were the case, then the DCEU's Justice League would need all the help they can get, which means more appearances from other famous incarnations of certain heroes, Terry McGinnis included.

 

[Airwings]

I agree, Shipp's Flash certainly shares that Burtonverse aesthetic. If there had been a regular Flash in that universe I'm sure he would have looked just like Shipp does there I remember reading that Batman '89 was an influence on the Flash show, even to the point of getting Danny Elfman and Shirley Walker (she worked with Elfman on Batman) to do the music.


It's a heavy sci-fi concept, but the DCEU embraces that (Cyborg, Mother Boxes, alien invasions!) so that could work.








Definitely like that idea.


Always enjoy reading your theories and ideas!

1. Shipp's costume looks above TV standards. It could have been done for an actual movie around 1990.
Heck, it's 30 years ago and the suit looks even better than Ezra's clunky armour. Way better!
Now that you mention the inspiration, I can see it.

2. Scarecrow can be angry that he didn't get his final revenge on Bats before he "died". Imagine what would happen when he learns about multiverse, and goes to another world, and there's a Batman there too (Keaton)

3. Burtonverse splitting in half by Flash messing with time... I have to explain one thing about my plot suggestion.
When the split happens, it made Keaton's Bruce getting his own continuing in that world. It created an alternate timeline.
If the split didn't happen, the same world would have gone into Schumacher films.
Well, it still does. But the split created a sidetrack to original timeline. In the sidetracked timeline, things happen differently. Maybe the world get thrown into chaos? Or not.
To explain what a sidetrack timeline is, it's sort of what happens in BTTF 2 (old Biff stealing the sports magazine)

4. Thanks for liking my ideas
I just got to think about another thing regarding 66-verse Grayson. As you know, his world should be in the year 1986 when the multiverse stuff happens in my idea.
It's the 80s. Can you imagine THAT character in the crazy 80s
There's something more to it, too. When I first presented my idea about him being included this way in Flashpoint, I said he could have taken over Wayne Industries.
Then, what's the first thing that comes to your mind about business leaders in the 80s?

 

[mclay18]

For "Batfamily" cameos, it should be from the three most successful incarnations of the character. Not all of them should be from Schumacher's films. But I will think it's nice to get a little glimpse of Chris O'Donnell.
From Burtonverse, we already have Keaton.
From Nolanverse, we could actually get a villain instead
From 66-verse, I'm in love with the idea of having a 30+ Robin (even it means a younger actor must replace Burt Ward)

I'm curious who they would aim for.

Liam Neeson said earlier this year he was tired of the genre. Cillian Murphy criticized the sheer number of superhero movies several years ago. Tom Hardy would probably do it, ditto for Marion Cotillard. Anne Hathaway has said several times she would love to do it again.

If anyone reprises a Nolanverse role, it will probably be a minor someone like Tom Wilkinson (Carmine Falcone), Chin Han (Lau) or Eric Roberts (Sal Maroni). WB will probably want to save the big money for the Burtonverse folks like Keaton and Pfeiffer.

 

[Filmfreak]

I don't think there is any chance we see anyone from the Nolanverse in the Flash or any future movies.

 

[mclay18]

I don't think there is any chance we see anyone from the Nolanverse in the Flash or any future movies.

We won't know until the movie's out.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

1. Shipp's costume looks above TV standards. It could have been done for an actual movie around 1990.
Heck, it's 30 years ago and the suit looks even better than Ezra's clunky armour. Way better!

I thought it still looked good in the CWDC crossover Elseworld's a couple of years back.

2. Scarecrow can be angry that he didn't get his final revenge on Bats before he "died". Imagine what would happen when he learns about multiverse, and goes to another world, and there's a Batman there too (Keaton)

I like that

3. Burtonverse splitting in half by Flash messing with time... I have to explain one thing about my plot suggestion.
When the split happens, it made Keaton's Bruce getting his own continuing in that world. It created an alternate timeline.
If the split didn't happen, the same world would have gone into Schumacher films.
Well, it still does. But the split created a sidetrack to original timeline. In the sidetracked timeline, things happen differently. Maybe the world get thrown into chaos? Or not.
To explain what a sidetrack timeline is, it's sort of what happens in BTTF 2 (old Biff stealing the sports mazagine)

I'm not over-familiar with the BTTF movies (I've seen each one once, I think), but what you've described there sounds like DC's Hypertime idea. But with Hypertime it would be possible for those divergent timelines to then reconverge at some point! That could be interesting! It would allow Keaton's Batman to meet with a Chris O'Donnell who had been Robin

4. Thanks for liking my ideas

No worries! I love multiverse/Crisis stuff and discussions around the possibilities. It's one of the things that draws me to DC the most

 

[Airwings]

I'm curious who they would aim for.

Liam Neeson said earlier this year he was tired of the genre. Cillian Murphy criticized the sheer number of superhero movies several years ago. Tom Hardy would probably do it, ditto for Marion Cotillard. Anne Hathaway has said several times she would love to do it again.

If anyone reprises a Nolanverse role, it will probably be a minor someone like Tom Wilkinson (Carmine Falcone), Chin Han (Lau) or Eric Roberts (Sal Maroni). WB will probably want to save the big money for the Burtonverse folks like Keaton and Pfeiffer.

Sad to hear. Of them all, Scarecrow would have fitted best in Burtonverse (Neeson second best).

It can't be Hathaway because her Catwoman retired with Bruce.

What about JGL? His character had a future, expanding beyond the trilogy.

 

[mclay18]

What about JGL? His character had a future, expanding beyond the trilogy.

Since he has kids, he's doing one film a year now. I don't think he'll bother with a cameo.

 

[Filmfreak]

We won't know until the movie's out.

Nolan didn't want to continue his universe and doesn't want anything to be associated with his take. WB wouldn't want to compromise their relationship right now and I doubt any actor would want to reprise their roles without him on helm, anyway. While technically not impossible I feel chances for any character from those movies appearing anywhere else are pretty much slim to none. Everything else is on the table, though.

 

[Boom]

The Bale thing sounds like wishful thinking and nothing more.

Rumor was he turned down a big pay day to return to the DCEU in the first place. I don't see why his mind would have changed.

His Batman is retired and set in a self-contained universe. Bale is on the record as saying he's out if Nolan is out.

It sounds like Keaton is on board and his Batman feels a better fit for the heightened, comic-booky nature of the DCEU anyway.

 

[Airwings]

I thought it still looked good in the CWDC crossover Elseworld's a couple of years back.


I like that


I'm not over-familiar with the BTTF movies (I've seen each one once, I think), but what you've described there sounds like DC's Hypertime idea. But with Hypertime it would be possible for those divergent timelines to then reconverge at some point! That could be interesting! It would allow Keaton's Batman to meet with a Chris O'Donnell who had been Robin


No worries! I love multiverse/Crisis stuff and discussions around the possibilities. It's one of the things that draws me to DC the most

1. It did. It's the best live action Flash's suit. Ezra's the worst. Even the campy golden age Jay Garrick suit looks better live action.

2. Like that too.
Nolan-Scarecrow vs Keaton-Bats
But it would be fun to see some villain from Burtonverse as well. Which classic Bat villain would suit that world?
The one that first comes to mind is Riddler. Not sure what that should have been like, only that it would have been way more dark and twisted than Carrey's.
If they go with Riddler, he will also be older. Keaton-Bats clashed with him in their prime, somewhere after BR.
When old Bats suits up again, Riddler steps out from the shadows as well.

Or maybe you prefer Two-Face? Can they convince Billy Dee Williams to come back?
His Harvey Dent never went rouge. Would be interesting to get to explore that transformation (in flashbacks).
Other Burtonverse actors have been suggested to return in the thread, but I can't recall anyone wanting Billy Dee..

3. I was not a big fan of O'Donnell's Robin. I only want the actor doing a little cameo because of his past role in a DC film. And then, only as Grayson, not Robin.
You know, I want them to cram in everyting
Check out BTTF trilogy

4. For me it's the superhero stuff by itself that makes me a DC fanboy
Since my last post, I have come up with more for 66-verse Dick Grayson in 1986. He can behave like Bale did during the lighter moments of DK trilogy.
Arrive at a party with two girls by his side, totally taking on a playboy persona. He can combine it with his yuppie daytime life. Just so that nobody would suspect he's a masked crime fighter.
And driving sports cars, and perhaps doing doing a similar stunt and saving someone's life by using his car as a shield, and it gets demolished. And then he acts clueless, and Gordon asks him if he doesn't follow the news. Too bad this was already done in a film. If it wasn't, it should have happened here.
How do you think his Robin suit would have been upgraded the past 20 years? Would it fit in the the 80s of his 66-verse world?
Or perhaps he would have evolved into a 66-verse Nightwing? Perhaps at one point during the 70s?

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

But it would be fun to see some villain from Burtonverse as well. Which classic Bat villain would suit that world?
The one that first comes to mind is Riddler. Not sure what that should have been like, only that it would have been way more dark and twisted than Carrey's.
If they go with Riddler, he will also be older. Keaton-Bats clashed with him in their prime, somewhere after BR.
When old Bats suits up again, Riddler steps out from the shadows as well.

Or maybe you prefer Two-Face? Can they convince Billy Dee Williams to come back?
His Harvey Dent never went rouge. Would be interesting to get to explore that transformation (in flashbacks).
Other Burtonverse actors have been suggested to return in the thread, but I can't recall anyone wanting Billy Dee..

I'd love to see Burton's take on Ventriloquist, Man-Bat, Clayface, Court of Owls (imagine Burton's version of those Owl nests, hidden for years in those 'Old Gotham' buildings!).

How do you think his Robin suit would have been upgraded the past 20 years?

In the '66 world, I honestly don't think it would have altered much at all In a Burton, Schumacher, Nolan, or Snyder world, I think it would definitely start to incorporate some armoured protection. A Nightwing suit in the style of Keaton's Batman Returns suit could be a cool concept.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

I've seen a few rumours that as well as Keaton coming back to the role, DC intend to publish a series of tie-in comics showing some of Batman's adventures over the intervening 30 years. I really hope that's true!

 

[Iceman]

I've seen a few rumours that as well as Keaton coming back to the role, DC intend to publish a series of tie-in comics, showing some of Batman's adventures over the intervening 30 years. I really hope that's true!

That sounds awesome. Great idea.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

That sounds awesome. Great idea.

I wouldn't know whether to keep the trade on a book shelf, or on my DVD shelf between Batman '89/Batman Returns and Flashpoint!

 

[Iceman]

I wouldn't know whether to keep the trade on a book shelf, or on my DVD shelf between Batman '89/Batman Returns and Flashpoint!

Haha, you always have this problem. I hope for your sake that they have order-freak, uber-geeks at the forefront of their product presentation strategy.

 

[bigbalboa]

Hey all,
not posted sinse 2011 but all the news has compelled me out of retirement (bit like keaton)
Ok so I was wondering if someone could explain to me how (1) two batmen can exist within the same space? And/or (2) have batfleck wiped completely from continuity?
I'm a massive fan of the DCEU movies but have only covered specific comics /graphic novels of particular interest, so without trapesing through all the multiverse stuff I was wondering if someone could enlighten me? I get quantum physics to a degree and string theory but as far as I'm aware shouldn't it only be speedsters that can jump time lines and parallel universes? How can other metor humans meet their alternate selves? And if the flash movie is a hit and wb decide to make keaton the DCEU Batman? How can he exist in the earth of GG WW? , JM AM? HC SM? and so on? Wouldn't they all be like why has batman and Alfred disappeared? And whos this short 70 year old in a bat suit? Or would flash be working with an alternative JL in the Burton verse?

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

Haha, you always have this problem. I hope for your sake that they have order-freak, uber-geeks at the forefront of their product presentation strategy.

Thank you! My life is a nightmare!

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

From a few hours ago

Is Michael Keaton's Batman Return Setting Up DC's Crisis Movie Event?

DC Fans were shocked by the news that Warner Bros. has cast Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman in the upcoming Flash movie. Keaton will be returning to his Batman role to act as a 'Nick Fury' type, appearing in various new DC movies - a development that raises a whole slew of new questions. Fans have begun speculating that Warner Bros. could be using The Flash movie and its "Flashpoint"-based storyline to start building the franchise towards an entire Crisis movie event. On a recent episode of the ComicBook Nation podcast, we broke down exactly why Michael Keaton's Batman return presents that opportunity.

ComicBook Nation host Kofi Outlaw sees something like a live-action DC Crisis movie could be the very thing that both straighten out the franchise's convoluted continuity, and open the franchise up by fully embracing its multiverse nature:

"It's like DC has this kind of big potential franchise to have a much more varied franchise than even Marvel does. They've been testing waters with things. You can make your Aquamans, your Wonder Womans, but you can also make your Jokers, and they kind of been doing that and we said, 'Well, you have all these weird continuity snags because of the half-finished Snyder stuff, and all that, and what do you do with all this?' And I think one of our options that Matt hit on the head was you basically gotta do Crisis as a movie event, right? Something that brings all these different franchises together kind of puts them through a bologna sheet that comes out the other end and says, 'Okay, now this is the real new established continuity,' and you can fix a lot of things on along the way. You can fix who your Batman is, who your Superman is. All that stuff, you can close off some of the old stuff, start some new stuff, and it seems like, I mean, this is all still early but it seems like that's kind of what we're putting together here."

Host Matt Aguilar sees another opportunity in DC doing Crisis as a franchise retconning movie: beating Marvel to the punch!

"I would love, and it looks like this is kind of the direction they're going in, but for DC to just swoop in and embrace the concept of the multiverse and just knock it out of the park because you know, you know when it works, 10 years later, Marvel's gonna do it. When it works, it's like those Crisis events, when they're great--"

One clear example of that was the recent Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event that aired as part of the CW's Arrowverse. Kofi sees that as a small-scale test that could lead to big-screen success:

I think that's a good point because I think that was a testing ground where people were like, where they showed, there's a lot of testing DC loves to do. It used to be the animated wing, they used to test all kinds of stuff. They got us the Suicide Squad movie and things like that. The Crisis was a test, they put some money into it, they were like, okay, they allowed all the kind of crossovers, and there were even more... that we didn't get to see, that were even crazier that they were doing - including bringing Batman '89 into it and everything. And it was such a big event and people did kind of bite, and people didn't run away or have their head explode because of all the multiverse stuff. People got it and were able to hang with the comic-bookiness of all that. So yeah, I mean, it's easy to do. Just make whatever B movies you're making, and then at the very end, just have Michael Keaton's Batman show up and be like, 'Sorry to bum you out, but something's comin', gotta prepare.'... And then you do a Crisis movie that's like your Avengers: Infinity War, Endgame, like a two-parter... and just hop through all kinds of fun references. Get Ben Affleck back in here, get Cavill in here, get everybody in and at the end, you just have a new DC movie universe. Some things are the same, well, we get to pick and choose 'cause that's the greatest thing about Crisis: just cherry-picking exactly what you wanna keep from DC and exactly what you don't..."


As Matt points out, "Crisis" events are DC's time-honored way of cleaning the slate:

"Rebirth was essentially one giant Crisis. They just branded it a different name. But that's what DC does every four years, is like, 'Okay, well, let's wipe this off the board, let's pick the best parts of The New 52 or whatever, we'll keep that, that worked. The rest of this was trash...' whatever... But that's like that's so DC, right? When I think of DC Comics, the multiverse is so inherent to just DC in general that this is a no-brainer."

 

[TheBattinson]

Keaton always should've been the advanced aged Bruce Wayne in the "shared cinematic universe" ...

For starters his universe was still "comic booky" enough to be plausible enough to fit in with the other characters, unlike Nolan / Bale's realism based isolated trilogy.

Keaton's Gotham would be visibly distinct enough from Metropolis, Atlantis, and the Amazon. He could've been the irritable, old but motivated Bruce Wayne.

Not only that, but Keaton is cool. Keaton is likable. Keaton was menacing. Keaton has swag. Someone you could root for. All things Affleck lacked.

Not to mention to keep up with the MCU, the only actors on the DC side capable of similar range, and level of acting chops to carry a film or franchise as an elite actor like a Robert Downey Jr ... is Michael Keaton and Christian Bale.

And the latter would've never been an option.