Michael Keaton’s DCEU Future Risks Undermining His Batman Return

screenrant.com:

Michael Keaton's Batman returns – this time for The Flash and Batgirl – but the DCEU's plans for the character could lessen the impact of his appearance overall. Two decades after his last outing as Batman, Michael Keaton will reprise his role as the caped crusader now as part of DC's shared universe. While details on how Michael Keaton's Batman will appear in The Flash and Batgirl are still a mystery, it is safe to say that Flash's time travel powers and the strange rules of the Multiverse will play a role here.

Michael Keaton originally played Batman in Tim Burton's game-changing Batman (1989) before suiting up again three years later in the also Tim Burton-directed Batman Returns. Yet Burton leaving the franchise, coupled with Keaton and Joel Schumacher not being on the same page about the character's future, meant the actor did not return for Batman Forever. Val Kilmer was then cast as the new Batman, starting a long tradition of recasts and reboots of the Dark Knight.

Related: Michael Keaton Flashback & Batman 89 Retcon Hinted At In Batgirl Photos

Thanks to Batgirl's set pictures, which reveal Michael Keaton's Batman working with a younger J.K. Simmons' Commissioner Gordon, it is possible to infer that the events of The Flash will completely change the DCEU timeline. Instead of Ben Affleck, who originally starred opposite J.K Simmons in Justice League, it seems that Michael Keaton will now be the DCEU's Batman retroactively. That alone would explain why he, and not Affleck, is the one working with J.K Simmon's Gordon in Batgirl's flashbacks. Yet the problem is that, for Michael Keaton to have been the DCEU's Batman all along, most of the events of Batman and Batman Returns could have never happened. Keaton's Batman