A few months back, it hit the rumor mill that Warner Bros. was planning to bring back Michael Keaton’s Batman in the upcoming Flash movie starring Ezra Miller. Keaton’s Dark Knight would join Batfleck, another past Batman returning for the Fastest Man Alive’s big-screen standalone debut, in a story set across a sprawling DC multiverse. After the rumors remained unconfirmed for a while, Keaton revealed that he’d been offered the Flash movie, but that he was still mulling over the offer.
Earlier this month, right before The Flash started filming, Keaton was confirmed to be appearing in the movie. The movie will acknowledge the events of Batman and Batman Returns, but ignore Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, which technically took place in the same continuity, but featured a different actor as Batman (Val Kilmer and George Clooney, respectively). Keaton’s older Bruce Wayne will act as a sort of mentor to Miller’s Barry Allen after his attempt to travel back in time and prevent his mother’s murder has unexpected consequences on the larger spacetime continuum.
If Keaton enjoys playing an older Bruce Wayne in The Flash and his characterization in the movie manages to stick the landing, DC should follow it up with a live-action Batman Beyond movie. Not only would a Batman Beyond movie allow Keaton to stick around in the DCEU’s multiverse; it would allow an exciting young star to take on the Batman mantle in a futuristic setting. Since it began airing in the ‘90s, the series’ near-future setting is 2019, but it’s supposed to be roughly 20 years after Batman’s heyday. In a futuristic Gotham, an elderly Bruce Wayne trains a teenage ward named Terry McGinnis to take on the mantle of Batman.
Much like the series itself did when it hit the airwaves, a Batman Beyond movie could offer a totally fresh take on the Batman mythos in an overcrowded Bat-market. Thanks to Marvel’s success with the superhero genre and Batman’s legacy as possibly the most popular superhero in the world, Warner Bros. serves up a new Batman reboot every five or so years. As long as the studio is hellbent on amassing an army of Batman franchises, it might as well follow in Sony’s Spider-Verse footsteps and introduce alternate versions of its most iconic characters.
After 50,000 fans wrote complaint letters to Warner Bros. to protest his casting (setting a decades-long trend of Batman fans underestimating actors), Keaton emerged as the quintessential Bruce Wayne in Tim Burton’s groundbreaking 1989 blockbuster. He captured the character’s duality, humanized Bruce Wayne, improvised a bunch of his most memorable lines, and even created the “Batman voice,” now a staple of the character. Having made his name in comedy (the reason for most of the angry fan letters), Keaton has recently proven his abilities as a dramatic actor with his revelatory Oscar-nominated performance as a has-been movie star in Birdman. It would be interesting to see the nuance that Keaton would bring to old man Batman as a retired crimefighter passing on the torch.
Fans have posted a bunch of casting ideas for a live-action Terry McGinnis online, with Timothee Chalamet, Joe Keery, Dylan O’Brien, and Nick Robinson often coming up as popular choices. While these are all talented actors who would probably have an interesting take on the character, a Batman Beyond movie might benefit from finding a great unknown teen actor for the lead role. Keaton will be there to provide the star power. Terry doesn’t need to be played by a big-name actor; he just needs to be played by an actor who’s perfect for the part.
Since Batman is a quintessential film noir antihero and crime-ridden Gotham City is a quintessential film noir setting, Batman movies are often influenced by film noir. Christopher Nolan’s vision for The Dark Knight was heavily influenced by Michael Mann’s L.A. noir Heat. Matt Reeves has noted neo-noir classics Klute and Chinatown as major inspirations for his upcoming reboot The Batman. Batman stories are ideal for a noir framework.
But Batman Beyond’s sci-fi angle gives filmmakers the opportunity to create a Batman movie in the “tech noir” subgenre. A potential movie adaptation’s portrayal of a futuristic Gotham could take influence from the dystopian futuristic Los Angeles seen in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The series also goes beyond the noir elements and explores a lot of the motifs and themes of cyberpunk – a live-action adaptation would basically be The Matrix starring Batman.
If Warner Bros. learned anything from the failure of Batman & Robin followed by the success of Batman Begins, it’s that audiences prefer darker Batman movies. Although co-creator Bruce Timm insists it was conceived as a family-friendly cartoon, Batman Beyond was praised throughout its run for digging into darker themes and storylines than any other contemporary kids’ animated series. The series used its futuristic setting to examine technology’s impact on society and also delved into Bruce Wayne’s psychology in surprising depth.
As long as DC is leaning into the multiverse element of its franchise to offer multiple simultaneous incarnations of iconic characters, a live-action Batman Beyond movie seems like a no-brainer. Warner Bros. has been avoiding big swings since the unceremonious end of the SnyderVerse, but the DCEU could do with a couple of big swings. Diving into Gotham’s future with a teenage Batman could mark a radical change of pace for DC’s shared on-screen universe.