“The Flash” sees Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen travel to an alternate universe in a bid to prevent his mother’s death, unknowingly causing untold multiversal chaos in the process. In this alternate timeline, Michael Keaton’s Batman awaits, ready to help Barry on his quest to right his wrongs and restore order. And as the various Bat-suits in “The Flash” trailer reveal, this version of Keaton’s Dark Knight has had quite the storied career since we last saw him, before hanging up the cowl for good and retiring.
“The Flash” director Andy Muschietti and producer Barbara Muschietti have spoken about Keaton donning the Batsuit once again, recalling how the actor wanted pictures of him as Batman to show his grandson. They also remembered Keaton taking a quiet moment to himself when he first stepped onto the Batcave set, constructed at England’s famous Leavesden studios, suggesting the significance of the whole thing wasn’t lost on the veteran star.
After this reintroduction to the role, it seems Andy Muschietti basically turned things over to Keaton, giving him free rein to rediscover that troubled loner from “Batman” ’89 and “Returns.” The director spoke about this in a recent interview with Pink Villa, where he revealed he’d had in-depth conversations with Keaton about the character prior to shooting and was determined to hear all the actor’s thoughts on how to portray a Bruce Wayne who was 30 years older. By the time it came to actually filming, the filmmaker explained how he “tried to not interfere too much with [Keaton] as an actor,” adding that he was “so happy [Keaton] was there to portray Bruce and Batman.”
