Michael Keaton is a very busy man, okay?
In a new interview with Variety, the actor revealed that he's something of a unicorn, having somehow evaded watching a whole superhero (Marvel, DC or otherwise) movie in his lifetime, despite starring in multiple of them.
Keaton exists in the small centre of the Venn diagram of MCU and DC actors, having famously portrayed Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) — and he'll batsuit-up again with Ben Affleck in forthcoming film The Flash and HBO's Batgirl movie — alongside a more recent stint as Vulture/Adrian Toomes in 2017's Spider-man: Homecoming. Which perhaps makes it all the more impressive that the actor has never watched any film in the genre in full.
"I know people don't believe this, that I've never seen an entire version of any of those movies — any Marvel movie, any other," Keaton told journalist Emily Longeretta.
He went on to clarify that this is not his de-facto contribution to the insufferable discourse between hotshot Hollywood filmmakers "debating" whether Marvel movies actually count as cinema, first expressed by Martin Scorsese back in 2019 and echo-chambered by many since.
"And I don't say that I don't watch that because I'm highbrow — trust me! It's not that," Keaton spelled out. "It's just that there's very little things I watch. I start watching something, and think it is great and I watch three episodes, but I have other shit to do!" Representation matters.
Keaton explained that he decided to take on the role in The Flash to see if he could still answer the bat signal, so to speak. "I was curious what it would be like after this many years," he admitted. "Not so much me doing it — obviously, some of that — but I was just curious about it, weirdly, socially," he said.
The actor added: "The writing was actually really good. So I thought, why not? It's cool to drop in, and I'm curious to see if I can pull it off."
And he has absolutely no lexicon for how his performance will compare to his contemporaries in today's oversaturated, larger-than-life superhero movie machine anyway!
In a new interview with Variety, the actor revealed that he's something of a unicorn, having somehow evaded watching a whole superhero (Marvel, DC or otherwise) movie in his lifetime, despite starring in multiple of them.
Keaton exists in the small centre of the Venn diagram of MCU and DC actors, having famously portrayed Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) — and he'll batsuit-up again with Ben Affleck in forthcoming film The Flash and HBO's Batgirl movie — alongside a more recent stint as Vulture/Adrian Toomes in 2017's Spider-man: Homecoming. Which perhaps makes it all the more impressive that the actor has never watched any film in the genre in full.
"I know people don't believe this, that I've never seen an entire version of any of those movies — any Marvel movie, any other," Keaton told journalist Emily Longeretta.
He went on to clarify that this is not his de-facto contribution to the insufferable discourse between hotshot Hollywood filmmakers "debating" whether Marvel movies actually count as cinema, first expressed by Martin Scorsese back in 2019 and echo-chambered by many since.
"And I don't say that I don't watch that because I'm highbrow — trust me! It's not that," Keaton spelled out. "It's just that there's very little things I watch. I start watching something, and think it is great and I watch three episodes, but I have other shit to do!" Representation matters.
Keaton explained that he decided to take on the role in The Flash to see if he could still answer the bat signal, so to speak. "I was curious what it would be like after this many years," he admitted. "Not so much me doing it — obviously, some of that — but I was just curious about it, weirdly, socially," he said.
The actor added: "The writing was actually really good. So I thought, why not? It's cool to drop in, and I'm curious to see if I can pull it off."
And he has absolutely no lexicon for how his performance will compare to his contemporaries in today's oversaturated, larger-than-life superhero movie machine anyway!
