Regarding Keaton's Batman, Flashpoint, and DC's Film Future

Batman fans know all too well that in addition to the work of influential creators like screenwriter Sam Hamm, production designer Anton Furst, costume designer Bob Ringwood and of course director Tim Burton, actor Michael Keaton played an extremely important and highly visible role in reforming the public image of the Batman as a vengeful creature of the night, at a pivotal point in the late 1980s when the public at-large still had visions of Adam West’s bright and campy TV series bouncing around in their brains.

The 1989 Batman film was a powerful pop culture event of legendary proportions that has had few equals in the three decades since, with its box office take being outdone by its massive merchandising sales which led to widespread — or in modern terms, “viral” — cultural ubiquity.

Beyond the capitalist benchmarks that the 1989 movie event reached, though, the film’s reformation of the Batman character in the public consciousness was largely shouldered by Keaton’s performance. While not as visibly representative of his character’s longstanding appearances as someone like Christopher Reeve as Superman from the prior decade, Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne was far more psychologically representative of the character from the source material.

So...now that the entertainment trades are reporting that Warner Bros. is in negotiations with Keaton for him to reprise his role specifically as Bruce Wayne, what might we expect from such an appearance?

Consider the source material

According to the newsmaking report at The Wrap, Keaton is specifically up for the role of Bruce Wayne in a film starring Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/the Flash, reportedly an adaptation of the 2011 comic book event series Flashpoint written by Geoff Johns and penciled by Andy Kubert.

The choice of going with Flashpoint as the basis for a Flash film suggests a couple of things right upfront: one, that WB may be interested in repairing what is now something of a fractured collective continuity, potentially hitting a sort-of “reset” button to allow for the studio and the creators at DC Films to perform a bit of maintenance in order to align its shared universe with what they have in upcoming films.

At the end of Flashpoint #5, Barry tells Bruce that as far as he knows, nothing about his home universe has changed even though both he and Batman are wearing different costumes, and the flow of events has been irrevocably altered.

Now, don’t take this as anything other than speculation considering the story that the filmmakers are choosing to use as the basis of their film, but doing such maintenance would allow them to maintain the now-long standing cast members that continue to be held over from the Zack Snyder era — namely Miller as the Flash, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman and (hopefully) Henry Cavill as Superman — while also facilitating potential future appearances from characters that either have been, or in the future are likely to be recast.

For those already recast, that namely applies to Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, or whomever ends up being the next version of the Joker.

Something similar to exactly that kind of shared universe maintenance was exactly what the original Flashpoint was designed to do in the first place, since it was the story that bridged the gap between the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths version of the DC Universe and allowed it to morph into what became the version led by the “New 52” initiative, where every single previous DC Comics title was canceled in favor of new titles and restarted volumes of perennial books, all with new #1 issues.

Considering the major creative shake-ups that have taken place at Warner Bros. and in its DC-based cinematic slate — which in its current form was first led by the timeless icons of Batman and Superman before negative critical receptions handed the reins to Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam — enlisting a universe-altering comics event as the basis of a film to accomplish what might be the same goal doesn’t sound very far-fetched.

The original comic book story even ends with Barry Allen and Bruce Wayne in the Batcave, talking over what had apparently just happened, as the Flash specifically says that he can tell no difference between the universe he inhabited at the start of the story, and the universe he lived in at the end of the story in spite of the fact that the worlds looked clearly very different to the readers.

So then, how does Michael Keaton’s role as Bruce Wayne fit into all this?

Batman returns?

The original story at The Wrap is quick to say that Keaton’s potential return as Bruce Wayne is “far from a sure thing,” and that the Flashpoint film will aim to introduce DC’s movie audiences to the concept of the multiverse — an idea that was first introduced to comics fans by the Flash back in 1961’s The Flash #123 written by Gardner Fox and penciled by Carmine Infantino.

This could mean that Keaton is negotiating for little more than a cameo, a nod to fans so that they can see that Keaton’s time in the role of Batman is canonically preserved in the DC cinematic multiverse. It could also be more robust, with the filmmakers potentially choosing to recast the Flashpoint comic book series’ role of an older Batman as a grizzled version of Bruce as opposed to Bruce’s father, Thomas.

This doesn’t preclude Keaton from actually playing multiple versions of Bruce Wayne either, which the guy is absolutely capable of doing (c’mon, don’t tell me you haven’t seen Multiplicity). The trade says that we will actually see what Keaton’s Batman has been up to since the days of 1992’s Batman Returns, the last time the actor wore the mask.

Keaton’s Batman helped to define a new age of — and approach to — adapting superheroes to film, particularly when it comes to the psychology he displayed as Bruce Wayne and Batman.

In a lot of ways, Keaton helped define how to bring darker pathos into the superhero film, and took that further than the first two Christopher Reeve Superman films primarily due to the character’s more extreme personality. Keaton’s Bruce Wayne was kind of a tragic, neurotic shut-in, rarely seen in the public eye but nurturing and honing the pain and rage from the death of his parents into his outlet of vigilantism. We’ve of course seen him return to comic book cinema recently as, arguably, one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s best villains in Adrian Toomes/the Vulture, but a return to the character he helped elevate at such a pivotal moment in his history would provide an unusual and unique exercise for him as an actor.

While I’m not personally a big fan of Batman Returns, Keaton certainly brought the same dedication to his reprisal as Batman.

While Val Kilmer glimpsed greatness as Batman in 1995’s Batman Forever, George Clooney got no such opportunity two years later. It wasn’t until 2005 when Christopher Nolan cast Christian Bale that Batman was given a greater, in-depth cinematic look on par with modern comics appearances, in three separate turns which built the character of Batman as the major and primary focus of his films. Keaton’s appearances, by contrast, are defined far more by the villains and their tone is achieved almost by how little you see of Batman especially in quieter moments.

Keaton now has an opportunity to dive deeper into the psychological complexity he established over 30 years ago for his version of Bruce Wayne, while also confronting his relatively grounded sensibilities with a scenario his version of the character could not have possibly fathomed: hopping between universes with a guy who can run far faster than the speed of sound.

It’s an exciting prospect that leads to a lot of questions about both the future of the DC Comics movie as a construct, the potential future and fate of the shared universe first established by Man of Steel, and ways in which the cinematic multiverse might create other, seemingly impossible scenarios for fans and filmmakers to now realize.

Flashing backward

Ezra Miller’s Flash recently appeared with his CW counterpart. Now that we know the “multiversal” door is open at both ends, who knows what’s to come? Still, a solo Flash movie would be nice someday.

I’ve said it before in a lot of other places: the Flash is a character that should have had a movie a long time ago. While as a DC Universe fan I’m excited about what a Flashpoint adaptation could mean for the entirety of the DC film slate going forward, I’m also a little bummed out that we won’t just get...a Flash movie. Flashpoint is far more of a warped Justice League story than it is a solo Flash story. I’d have personally preferred Flashpoint to at least be a second film as opposed to a first.

That doesn’t mean that this won’t be good, of course, and I have a lot of general faith in Andy Muschietti after seeing his adaptation of Stephen King’s It. I’m not going to belly-ache much over the fact that we’re finally getting a movie featuring the Scarlet Speedster. Throwing a beloved and longstanding, even defining version of Batman into the mix telegraphs a major amount of ambition attached to this movie, which is cool to see.

It’s also hard to forget about the fact that Ezra Miller’s Flash recently cameo-ed on the CW crossover version of Crisis on Infinite Earths, perhaps opening the cinematic door to additional versions of the longstanding characters of the DC Comics Universe. It may not be out of the realm of possibility to see a giant movie version of Crisis one day where an abundance of heroes from all sorts of adaptations come together against the Anti-Monitor…but that’s just the goofy dream of a comic book fan.

Still...as interesting as all of these prospects are, here’s hoping that the Flash will someday be able to run on his own on the big screen. In the meantime...let’s get nuts.