Reminder: Michael Keaton’s Batman Was A Crazy Dick
Yesterday it was reported that Michael Keaton is in talks to reprise his role as Bruce Wayne in the upcoming Flash movie, causing nerd hopes and black turtleneck stocks to skyrocket. Frankly, we couldn't be more excited; Keaton was arguably the best screen Batman who never smuggled his costume off-set for use on the car show circuit. But as iconic as he is, and forever shall be, upon reflection, wasn't Keaton's Batman was also a big creep?
Watching Tim Burton's Batman today, it's clear that Bruce Wayne was both A) crazy and B) a kind of a dickhole. And it's not just the endless series of often shockingly unnecessary murders.
Even putting aside the occasional homicidal rampage, Bruce Wayne is surprisingly douchey. For example, right off the bat, at the beginning of the original 1989 movie Vicki Vale wants to meet Bruce Wayne, she randomly stumbles into him, but then Bruce lies about his identity for no other reason but to be a gaslighting asshole.
So naturally, he quietly stalks her and Alexander Knox as they trash-talk him, eventually revealing his identity in an effort to humiliate two of his guests.
Luckily, he's rich and handsome, so Vicki still agrees to go on a date with this weirdo. And they immediately sleep together, even though we see that Vicki is so drunk she's stumbling and Bruce Wayne is stone-cold sober, in a cringey scene that was thankfully never commemorated on a single Taco Bell collector cup.
Bruce also spends the night sleeping upside down like a bat, which is ... weird. Traditionally, Bruce Wayne emulated a bat to strike fear into the hearts of men, not to freak out sexual partners.
Even more unnerving, when Batman brings later Vicki to the Batcave, he is super creepy, claiming that she has "something else" he wants before enveloping her in his cape. Then the movie cuts to the next morning; Vicki is unconscious on her bed.
She realizes that Batman took the roll of film she had hidden in her bra.
Let's just break down this sequence of events; Batman lures a woman to a literal cave, wraps her up in his cape, presumably doses her with some kind of bat-roofie, then paws around in her underwear in order to remove any photographic evidence of himself. He could have literally just asked her for the film! And he could have, at the very least, placed her properly in her bed. Why did he lay her down perpendicularly at the end of the bed as if she were an elderly house cat?
Batman Returns, too, features some awkward interactions with women. When Batman first saves Selina Kyle, he blatantly ogles her then walks away without saying a word. Imagine, say, a mall security guard behaving like this and not seeming like a sleazeball.
Later, Batman fails to save Gotham City's Ice Princess, who falls to her death in front of his eyes. The Caped Crusader so aggressively doesn't give a shit about this violent, preventable death of an innocent civilian, that he's getting a bat-chub with Catwoman, her abductor, literally seconds after.
Come to think of it, Michael Keaton played a more emotionally well-adjusted character in the movie where he was constantly trying to murder Spider-Man.
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Top Image: Warner Bros.
