Iron Man & MCU’s Success Is Rooted in 1989’s Batman, Producer Says

Superman: The Movie and Batman (1989) are credited with being two of the films that started the superhero movie craze, and they have long since set the standard for how both of those characters should be portrayed. Michael Keaton has long since been argued to have the greatest Batman portrayal of all time, and he even says on multiple occasions that he is the one and only Batman. So much so that he returned as the character in The Flash after a 30-year absence. While The Flash may have ended up being a failure, Keaton’s performance was lauded throughout the entire movie. Now, one Batman (1989) producer is crediting director Tim Burton and the film for Iron Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s success. In a new interview with Traversing the Stars, producer Michael Uslan credits Batman (1989) for the success of the MCU.

“This is the game changer. This is the big idea that not only made Batman a success, but open the door to the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” Uslan said in the interview. “He said to me, ‘Michael, if we’re going to do the first ever dark and serious comic book superhero movie this movie cannot be about Batman.’ Okay. That was my the most apoplectic moment of my entire existence. And then he explained. He said, ‘This movie must be about Bruce Wayne. We have to show a Bruce Wayne, who’s so driven, so obsessed to the point of being psychotic that audiences around the world who have never read a comic book will go, ‘Oh yeah, I believe that that’s a guy who would get dressed up like a bat, and go out, and fight a guy who looks like the Joker.’ And his corollary to it was that Gotham City had to be the third most important character. Literally from the opening frames, we had to get audiences to believe in Gotham City in order to get them then to believe in a Batman and a Joker.”

“And he was absolutely right. Look at the Marvel movies. Stan [Lee] admitted this to me and I’m sure Kevin Feige would agree: the ‘Iron Man’ movies, I love them, they should be called Tony Stark. The ‘Spider-Man’ movie should really be called Peter Parker. So it’s an idea that has worked and brought comic books into a contemporary global world.” Uslan added.

Robert Downey Jr. Reveals Iron Man’s Improvised Moments

During a recent interview, Downey revealed that they actually improvised some of the script day by day so much so that they had to use cue cards.

“Anytime I was with Jeff Bridges and maybe even more so with Paltrow, you just felt that there was this chemistry where you always kind of got the definitive version of a scene, whether it was loosely scripted or a little bit more prepared,” Downey revealed. “Well there’s a scene where his doing a weapons test and he says ‘Is it better to be feared or respected? Is it too much to ask for both?’, and Jon [Favreau] and I were literally writing that line for line as we went along shooting it that day. And I put on sunglasses because it was all on the cue cards. It was that kind of thing where you go, it’s more important that we feel like we’re just coming up with this and we like it and there’s no trick we can’t employ to cover the fact that we’re kind of making it up as we go along. But again, because you have that huge cluster bomb explosion in back of him, because the air mover kind of pushed me forward and it was just one of those days.”

Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for more updates on Batman’s future and the future of the MCU as we learn them!

What do you think about Michael Uslan’s comments are correct? Do you like both Batman (1989) and Iron Man? Let us know in the comments below or by hitting up our writer @NateBrail on Twitter!