Why did Michael Keaton’s Batman retire in The Flash?
Andy Muschietti explains a screenplay hole.
It is one of the biggest flops in the history of DC Comics : the thirteenth blockbuster of the cinematographic universe,The Flash, did not convince. A long and laborious production, a hectic promotion, many postponements, a timid start at the American box office to which was added a certain weariness on the part of the public for superheroic productions and then, finally, the observation of a failure and an unprecedented financial loss for DC Studios And Warner Bros.. A rather catastrophic assessment for the film that james gunn announced as “one of the greatest superhero movies ever made”…
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Each of the characters in the plot of The Flash also seems to symbolize the end of an era. Especially Michael Keatonlegendary performer and veteran of Batman who had not donned the costume since 1992 (Batman: The Challenge). While fans expected to find the Dark Knight at the top of his game, he was instead embodied as a tired and retired superhero. In the movie, Bruce Wayne’s character simply admits that Gotham doesn’t need him anymore.
It’s in a new behind-the-scenes featurette of Batman’s return that the director Andy Mischietti finally spoke about the premature sidelining of the emblematic hero. He explains that he wanted “defying people’s expectations of where Bruce Wayne is 30 years later”and deepen its history:
“If Bruce Wayne, as the story goes, has been retired for 25 years, what happened? I’ve always said something had to happen to him to make him want to stop being Batman. My idea was that he had done something that was against his code – like killing a criminal in front of his child. Unintentionally, but he did it anyway, which reflects exactly what happened to him when his parents were killed in front of him at the Monarch Theater, and who created the monster that is Batman.”
Michael Keaton was very moved to return to do Batman for The Flash
It is therefore this tragic event, which we should have discovered in a scene finally deleted, which would have forced him to retire. The director added that Bruce “(could) not cope with this situation, and that’s why he decided to turn off his other side, Batman”before enlightening fans on the current situation of the character:
“He hasn’t been able to forgive himself, and the way we find him (In The Flash) is a bit of the evolution of this trip. He is a tragic character. He is a character in search of redemption, who ends up finding a way to achieve it by helping Barry (Ezra Miller).”
A rather melancholic subversion of the original story of Batman to which is therefore added a new disappointment: we probably won’t see Michael Keaton as Batman on the big screen again, given that the saga is currently being rebooted under the supervision of James Gunn and Peter Safran…
After The Flash, he will be the new Batman of the DC Universe
