Michael Keaton is back as Batman in The Flash, but wait, is that Christian Bale?

polygon.com:

After years of waiting, Warner Bros. finally seems prepared to release The Flash, starring Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen, to a theater near you. And with a release date comes trailers, and with a new trailer comes the first look at Michael Keaton in the batsuit for the first time since 1992’s Batman Returns.

The trailer shows the older Batman teaming up with two versions of the Flash, facing off against Kryptonian baddies like General Zod and rescuing at least one Kryptonian hero, Supergirl. Also, Ben Affleck’s Batman is there.

Yep! Keaton was in conversations with Warner Bros. about appearing in the film as early as mid-2020, although in 2021 he was still uncertain of whether he’d take the job. Keaton will be playing Batman, and judging by the trailer, he’ll be back in a suit quite comparable to his famous all-black duds with a yellow symbol.

What’s not guaranteed is whether Keaton will be playing Bruce Wayne. The Flash is reportedly based on Flashpoint comic event, in which Batman is actually Bruce’s father, Thomas Wayne.

Flashpoint is a 2011 DC Comics series — written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Andy Kubert — in which Barry Allen traveled back in time to prevent his own mother’s murder, which unintentionally created a strange new timeline in which everything was unequivocably worse. And one of those worse things is that in this timeline, Bruce Wayne was gunned down in Crime Alley, and his parents survived. So, it’s entirely possible that Keaton is playing Thomas Wayne, an even sadder version of Batman than the usual. But Ben Affleck is definitely playing Bruce Wayne from the Snyderverse. We know that.

In the comics, Flashpoint was used as editorial leeway to reset the DC Universe in a line-wide reboot called the New