He’s quick to nip it in the bud.
Famed director Tim Burton slammed the entire Batman franchise 30 years after departing the DC Comic universe with his movie “Batman Returns.”
In a new interview with Empire Magazine, the Oscar nominee recalled being told the film was “too dark” three decades ago. Now, looking at Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” makes him “laugh a little bit,” Burton said.
“[Back then] they went the other way. That’s the funny thing about it,” Burton said about the iconic movies. “But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go f- -k yourself.’”
Burton, known for his eerily dark films, vowed to never direct another Batman film after the 1992 piece of cinema. But following his adaptation of the infamous DC Comic hero, Joel Schumacher’s nipple-enhanced 1995 “Batman Forever” took a more colorful turn.
“I’m not just overly dark. That represents me in the sense that … that’s how I see things. It’s not meant as pure darkness. There’s a mixture,” he said. “I feel really fondly about it because of the weird experiment that it felt like.”
But stepping away from Batman films hasn’t slowed Burton down. He now directs an upcoming Netflix spin-off of “Addams Family” titled “Wednesday,” which dropped a teaser clip on Monday. Leading its star-studded cast is Jenna Ortega, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Wednesday’s parents, Morticia and Gomez. Christina Ricci, who memorably played the titular part in previous franchise films, reportedly has also joined the show in another role.
Meanwhile, “Batman Returns” star Michael Keaton will reprise his version of the Caped Crusader in “The Flash” from Warner Bros. with embattled Ezra Miller in the spotlight Justice League role – despite fans’ opposition. While Keaton was originally slated to continue to be the infamous Dark Knight, he quit due to Burton’s absence and not seeing Schumacher’s creative vision.
“I kept trying to rationalize doing it,” Keaton once revealed in an interview with Backstage, indicating that Schumacher planned to go in a different “direction” from which “he wasn’t going to budge,” according to the actor.
“I walked away going, ‘Oh boy, I can’t do this,’” Keaton revealed. “[Joel Schumacher] asked me, ‘I don’t understand why everything has to be so dark and everything so sad,’ and I went, ‘Wait a minute. Do you know how this guy got to be Batman?’ I mean, it’s pretty simple!”
