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This piece was originally published in June.
We are recirculating it now timed toThe Flashs streaming debuton HBO Max.
That excitement must be vindicating, on some level, for the star.
Because it wasnt always this way.
Back then, Im Batman wasnt guaranteed to earn cheers.
To make their disapproval heard, they had to put pen to paper.
Warner Bros. issaid to have received some 50,000 letters complaining about Keatons casting.
Signed petitions also made the rounds.
But it wasnt just that Keaton didnt look the part.
His sensibility seemed, to the average fan, all wrong for the caped crusader.
But audiences at that point knew Keaton primarily for his work in comedies likeMr.
The concern was that Burton planned to walk that image rehabilitation back.
Such worries would prove unwarranted.
Perhaps thats one reason fans came around to Keaton.
Or maybe they just needed to actually see him in costume and in action.
The actor looks dashing enough in a tuxedo, wandering Wayne Manor during a charity gala.
Keaton, in other words, makes Wayne a rather likable weirdo one of Burtons signature sympathetic misfits.
Youre not exactly normal, are you?
asks love interest Vicki Vale, which puts a fine point on it.
Catwoman, tiptoe into a fledgling courtship while trading blows on rooftops.
Theres even a slight comedic quality to Keatons Batman.
What Keaton really brought to the part, though, was a human dimension.
This is what the filmmakers saw in him.
Of course, the premature hate for Keatons casting would prove influential as well.
Our most recent Batmen, Ben Affleck and Robert Pattinson, both took their social-media licks.
In fact, if theres a through-line in these instances of fan chilliness, its a masculine paranoia.
Wasnt that the big issue with Keaton all along, that he wasnt macho enough?
Maybe theres a lesson here in not kowtowing to the diehards in advance.
