The consensus among the majority of fans of the Caped Crusader is that Tim Burton’s Batman films were great and then the franchise took a drastic turn for the worse. However, Michael Keaton says that the direction the franchise went was not at all what he wanted. Instead of the more glamorous Batman in Batman Forever, Keaton wanted the third film to be Batman’s origin, similar to Batman Begins.

Check out Keaton’s comments below.

“You look at where [Nolan] went, which is exactly what I wanted to do when I was having meetings about the third one. I said you want to see how this guy started. We’ve got a chance here to fix whatever we kind of maybe went off. This could be brilliant. …[Schumacher] didn’t want to do it, so I didn’t want to do it. I could see that was going south.”

While Keaton may say we have Schumacher to blame for having to wait to see Batman’s origin in a live-action film, I say we ought to thank Schumacher. Had they done a Batman Begins type story in the 90s, a reboot 8 years later, and one where the first movie was an origin, would have been unlikely. And had it not happened in 2005, there’s a very strong possibility that Nolan would have never gotten a chance to work with Gotham City, and we would be deprived of the masterpiece that is his Dark Knight Trilogy.

That being said, it certainly would’ve been interesting to see Burton continue on with the franchise and Keaton in another film as Batman. As good as Bale is in the role, Keaton was definitely an excellent Batman, and surely much better than Val Kilmer or George Clooney. That duo working on Batman’s origin likely would’ve made for a very good film, even if it wasn’t on the level of Batman Begins.

What do you think of Keaton’s comments? Would you have liked to see him do Batman’s origin or are you happy with how things turned out? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.