Batman Returns is celebrating 25 years in 2017 and star Michael Keaton and screenwriter Daniel Waters have revealed that the film’s Batman was originally intended to be a lot chattier.
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According to Waters and Keaton, more than half of Keaton’s lines from Waters’ Batman Returns script were cut at Keaton’s request.
“My version of the script had more a lot more Batman and Bruce Wayne speeches,” Waters recalls while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter. “Michael Keaton would go through the script and say, ‘Hey, that’s a great line, but you gotta cut it. This is a good speech, but you gotta take it out.’ He wanted to have very minimal dialogue, especially in the Batsuit. When I saw the final film, I realized he was exactly right.”
Keaton wanted his now iconic Batsuit to say more and for Batman himself to say less.
“Once I realized how powerful the suit was in terms of an image on screen, I just used it,” says Keaton.
While the Batman Returns Batsuit was impressive in its day, it did come with its own set of limitations, including the fact that Keaton could not turn his head. Keaton adjusted his acting to compensate, turning his Batman into a hero of bold statements and actions and few subtleties.
“It was a practical move early on to move in a certain way because they hadn’t refined the suit and it wouldn’t function properly, ” says Keaton. “I got around that by making bigger, bolder and stronger moves from the torso up, and it worked.”
In Batman Returns, the monstrous Penguin (Danny DeVito), who lives in the sewers beneath Gotham, joins up with wicked shock-headed businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) to topple the Batman (Michael Keaton) once and for all. But when Shreck’s timid assistant, Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), finds out, and Shreck tries to kill her, she is transformed into the sexy Catwoman. She teams up with the Penguin and Shreck to destroy Batman, but sparks fly unexpectedly when she confronts the caped crusader.
Released in 1992, Batman Returns was the second Batman movie directed by Tim Burton. Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Danny DeVito as the Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Christopher Walken as Max Schreck, Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth, Pat Hingle as Commissioner James Gordon, and Michael Murphy as the Mayor of Gotham City.
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