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BATMAN |
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With Batman Forever, Warner Bros. wanted to appease the family audience, but more importantly, their merchandising partners, who didn't necessarily want their products associated with characters that crack whips and spew bile. So the film was kinder and gentler than its predecessors, and part of this ''reinvention'' was the character of Batman itself. Schumacher's effort at reinventing the character was aided by recasting the lead role. ''I though I was making the movie with Michael Keaton for quite a long time,'' he recounts. ''He had a lot of unresolved issues about the last two movies, which had nothing to do with me. So, I did not know I was going to have a new Bruce Wayne/ Batman, but when I saw Tombstone, I did fantasize about Val being in the role, though I didn't think that was a possibility. Then a few months after that, Bob Daley of Warners asked if I ever considered anybody else besides Michael.'' |
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''So I called Val's agent, and Val was in Africa, doing research on a script he was writing about a man who spent time with primitive tribes in Africa. It took three days, and - believe it or not - when they finally found him, he was in a bat cave. Val and I had met on previous movies; and, without seeing a script, without talking to me, he said yes.'' |
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Schumacher felt ''totally'' liberated from the previous films by the new recasting. ''Then we were in a new comic book,'' he explains. ''Of course, when you have a 34-year-old Batman/ Bruce Wayne with Val, it's a different story.'' Ironically, the new Batman, like Michael Keaton in Nightshift, had first gained attention in a comedy, Top Secret (in which he co-starred with Michael Gough, Alfred of the Batman films). Schumacher is fond of pointing out that the term for the film's source material (at least before ''graphic novel came in vogue) is ''comic book'', not ''tragic book'', which he offers as a justification for exploiting the comedic abilities of his star. And as an excuse for an attempt to return to the campy style of the 60's TV series with Adam West. At least ''partial'' this time (in Batman & Robin the turn to camp was full). Is the humor, then, not an attempt to completely lighten up the Dark Knight? ''I hope not! I think the Dark Knight is aptly named and will always be a dark character,'' says Goldsman. However, he adds, ''Sometimes very serious situations are also very funny. The thing about Gotham City is that everybody is really, really smart. It's a world where, if you have a psychological dysfunction, you create phenomenal machinery in order to work through your difficulty: rather than go to therapy, you build a batmobile and a suit that gives you virtually superhuman powers, and you have a lifelong catharsis. Very smart people I think are also very witty. So this movie has a lot of wit, but the issues themselves we take very seriously. At the same time this movie doesn't edge into horror, so it won't be as dark as some moments in Batman Returns. But I am a tremendous fan of Batman 1.'' |
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