Kevin Smith Reveals What He Would Do With Batman In The Movies

Filmmaker Kevin Smith has always injected plenty of comic book references into all of his projects, even going on to helm episodes of various superhero shows for The CW. Smith has yet to make the jump to a feature-length superhero film, though were he to help bring a film featuring the Caped Crusader to life, he'd want to focus on a more insular story than worry about connecting to a shared universe.

"I would do what [Warner Bros.] are doing right now, which is, let's just start making movies that aren't connected. Don't worry about that universe, don't worry about tying things together," Smith revealed on the Fatman on Batman podcast. "They were masters at this sh-t. They mastered the comic book movie in the '70s with Superman, in the late '80s, early '90s with Batman, they have the f-cking Dark Knight trilogy, they should be able to do this in their f-cking sleep."

While Smith understands how profitable a big budget version of Batman can be, he thinks that taking the character back to his roots would be a more effective direction.

"The notion of the Todd Phillips Joker movie is kind of interesting to me. Matt Reeves' solo Batman movie is interesting to me. I don't think they should just be making f-cking 200 million dollar f-cking Batman movies. They don't need to," Smith explained. "You can do a f-cking 15 million dollar cool horror version of that movie, sh-t, for even less. Arkham Asylum, if they were ever gonna do Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, takes place in one f-cking location, man. Bunch of spooky rooms with the rogue's gallery. Everybody's f-cking in it."

While some approaches to superhero films involve tapping A-list talent, Smith points out that recognizable actors aren't an integral component of the genre.

"Unless you don't overpay for talent, which you really don't f-cking need to because a lot of people are in makeup and sh-t like that, you can cast that movie pretty simply and shoot that movie for like 15 million bucks," the filmmaker detailed. "If a Batman movie can make 800 [million] to a billion [dollars] and it does it on a 200 million dollar budget, it's just more profit in a 15 million dollar film and something to talk about because it sounds like it could be an interesting project as well in smaller hands with a tighter vision. Different from, 'Let's just make it big and over the top!' I think they need to pirouette. They need to f-cking pivot and do something different. The rumors are that Reeves is doing the Dark Knight detective, old version of Batman. That might be interesting as opposed to the same f-cking thing that we've seen over and over again."

Fans will have to wait patiently for any version of Batman, as the character might not appear in any film until 2020.

Do you agree with Smith's approach to the character? Let us know in the comments below!

[H/T YouTube, Kevin Smith]