Why Calling Keaton "the main Batman" is frustrating

Being a DC fan is frustrating enough without dealing with the fact that people don’t seem to know how a multiverse works.

Ben Affleck recently made it clear in his press tour for The Tender Bar on Amazon Prime Video that The Flash would be his final appearance in the DC Extended Universe as Batman. In his words, it “put a really nice finish on my experience with that character.”

Since that interview from The Herald Sun in Australia was revealed, the more rational wing of the SnyderVerse fandom has started to accept the finality of Affleck being finished with the character. The toxic wing of the fandom has basically said “he’s not done until we say he’s done, and WB forced him to say he was.” Give the latter credit, they’re not trying to hide their destructive selfishness nearly as much anymore.

Now though, with the future of the role in question, the revelations that Michael Keaton will not only be Batman as well in The Flash film, but also in the Batgirl film, currently filming with Leslie Grace in the title role for HBO Max, DC fans are expressing their distaste with the idea of Keaton becoming “the main Batman” in place of Affleck, instead of recasting the role for someone younger or Affleck continuing despite his desires not to.

That’s frustrating. For a very semantical reason.

Why are we calling Keaton “the main Batman?” Why must he be a flat out replacement for Ben Affleck? Why are we assuming that the story that Andy Muschietti and Ezra Miller are telling in their Flash movie lends itself for a recasting of the “Batfleck” character at all?

This might seem like a silly thing to be frustrated over, but go with me on this for a bit:

First, it’s tiresome to be making assumptions about a movie that’s 10 months away, reportedly hasn’t finished a visible cut yet, and hasn’t produced a full teaser let alone trailer for us to see. The crap they gave us at DC FanDome back in October was cobbled together at the last second while the movie was still filming. Drawing definitive conclusions from that, or from any amount of scooper madness since then, is irrational at best, outright ludicrous at worst.

Second, knowing from the Muschiettis that The Flash will be taking inspiration from the Flashpoint comic, the movie is a multiversal story, not a time travel story. What’s the difference? Multiverse isn’t linear. “Replacing” isn’t the right word to use in the case of a character that is appearing from a completely different universe as opposed to a different point in time in the same universe. You might think that’s rationalizing, but here’s why it isn’t:

If Affleck were actually being replaced as so many are claiming him to be, then it would mean that Keaton is becoming an extension of the Batfleck character we saw in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Studio Squad(Suicide Squad theatrical and extended cut) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Is that what’s really happening, or are we just fearful of losing the remnants of Batfleck as a character going forward?

Nothing replaces Ben Affleck’s version of the character. Period. What he did on screen in BvS and ZSJL is there for all time, and so long as WB is stuck capitalizing on the world that Zack Snyder originally started, the roots of his character will remain no matter who puts on the cape and cowl going forward in the franchise. This isn’t subjective either, unless WB really does hire an army to destroy all of our physical copies of the Zack Snyder Trilogy and wipe them from our minds as well with a neuralizer from Men in Black, a helmet gizmo from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or a Doctor Strange spell. None of those are real, so no problem there.

At worst, subjectively speaking, Keaton is ANOTHER Batman, not the MAIN Batman. As has been pointed out, the guy is 70 years old, and despite his looking svelte lately and playing an action packed hitman in The Protege in 2021, the physical demands of playing a fully suited Batman for an extended period of time in a shared cinematic universe just don’t seem likely or logical, especially given what Affleck had to do to build his Batfleck physique in the first place.

But then who is going to be the DCEU Batman going forward? How can you have a shared cinematic universe without a full time Batman?

Simple. You let him have his own timeline outside of the DCEU with Robert Pattinson, directed by Matt Reeves.

It’s an old principle from WB, but keeping Batman separated from the other heroes worked well for them for 34 years. Right or wrong, they encountered…resistance the first time they tried to bring him together with the others, and despite how much many of us enjoyed it AND how much money was made in all of his appearances, you can’t fully blame WB for wanting focus on separating him again, even in the wake of everything else you can totally blame them for.

So that means as far as the DCEU is concerned, Batman won’t be a main focus going forward, and why should he be? The next six DCEU projects either in pre-production(Blue Beetle), filming(Batgirl) or post-production(Black Adam, The Flash, Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, Shazam: Fury of the Gods) focus on other characters in DC’s lineup for once. Is that such a bad thing? Not if you’re someone that is tired of Batman getting all the live action focus for the past 50+ years.

Batman fans really can’t complain either, because not only is one of the fan favorites coming back with Keaton, but Pattinson’s version is taking center stage in 2022 as a very real challenger for best Batman film of all-time, so Batman is hardly being ignored by any means.

But how do you have a Justice League without Batman? Ask the DC comics writers that have made it happen multiple times?

Lost in this whole argument is the obvious elephant in the room: Marvel Cinematic Universe envy. Fair or not, for the past 14 years we’ve been conditioned and programmed by Disney, the best brand builders and marketers on planet Earth, to believe that the MCU is the gold standard of shared cinematic universe construction. In the minds of many, it’s their way or the highway.

So when it comes to team-ups and discussing who the main version of a character is, it always goes back to continuity and connection, which many DC fans covet from the MCU design. They want the episodic storylines that lead to a bigger event with cameo appearances and mid and post credit scenes that get the audience cheering like a touchdown was scored, even though it’s a movie theater and not a football stadium.

That’s really why the Keaton thing bothers them, because they want a cape and cowl Batman in the DCEU for the long haul, not a Nick Fury-type that will guide more from the office a la Batman Beyond style, which is still most likely the case for Keaton’s new appearances in the franchise.

Now maybe all of this is wrong and Keaton is going to do his damndest to play the role as physically as possible for the next 10 years until he’s 80, he gets his own trilogy with an HBO Max spinoff for Robin and the rest of the Bat family, and is known as “the main Batman” in the DCEU for a long time. The thing is, why is it so difficult to wait until we actually see it play out in the movies first before passing judgment on it? Are we more interested in reacting to spoiled information than the watching the movies themselves anymore?

That might be the most frustrating thing of all.