Caffeinated Clint
Hinting that something might already be afoot (though he says it hasn’t), “Batman Begins” writer David Goyer says he isn’t ruling out returning to the superhero franchise sometime in the future.
Though Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of ‘Batman’ films – which Goyer shared writing duties on with Jonah Nolan, the director’s brother – is complete, Goyer tells Collider that he hasn’t officially retired from the world of Gotham City-living crime-fighters but he hasn’t received any offers yet either.
“Um, I don’t know, honestly. I worked on Batman for 10 years, so that’s a lot of Batman. I’m not sure… I don’t really know, I haven’t been asked that yet so we’ll see.”
Goyer wrote “Man of Steel”, the upcoming ‘Superman’ reboot, which Nolan produces, so there’s a good chance – when it goes – that he might be involved in the movie that teams both Superman and Batman, “Justice League”. That film has experienced a hiccup – the studio apparently rejected writer Will Beal’s latest draft of the script, meaning it’s not likely going to make its proposed 2015 release date… unless, of course, someone is roped in to quickly put something decent together!?
There’s also the possibility that Goyer will be asked back when Warners decide to do a new solo “Batman” movie – which they will. Recent rumours suggested that a new Batman movie – one separate from the Nolanverse Batman series – might even make it to the big screen before “Justice League”, since it’s not as ready as the studio had hoped it would be. The hard-to-believe part of that rumour suggested that Christian Bale might even be asked to reprise the role of Batman in a new solo film – even though the new movie will have nothing to do with the previous three “Batman” movies. Also, Bale would reprise the role of the Caped Crusader in that aforesaid “Justice League” movie too, despite ‘the Batman’ of it being a completely different Batman to Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy. Odd, right!? Whatever the case, a good chance Goyer (and particularly Nolan, since he’s salvaged the DC Movie Universe) will be asked to get involved somewhere along the line.
Having been involved in the “Blade” series, an abandoned “Flash” movie, and of course the ‘Batman’ and ‘Superman’ reboots, Goyer’s not one to shy away from any sort of superhero movie so if Warner come to him with an offer to get involved in a new ‘Batman’ – or this “Justice League” movie – you can pretty much guarantee the letters ‘N’ and ‘O’ won’t be coming out of his smiling mouth.
Goyer once told me that, upon reading his script for “Batman Begins” (which he wrote in about 7 weeks, suggesting he probably could put something together rather quickly for “Justice League” if he had to), Warner Bros came to him and pretty much offered him the keys to the superhero kingdom there. He had his pick of the litter – and this was back in 2005! (before the success of “The Dark Knight” and whatnot)
“They look after Batman, Warner Bros, and they came to me and said ‘You did a great job on Batman, the next big one we want to get up and running is The Flash or Green Lantern – are you interested?’. I said I would love to do The Flash.”
Not surprised he became a go-to guy with WB (even Paramount wanted him at one stage; he was doing some work on “Thor”), Nolan’s work on the “Batman” movies was impressive. I still recall him telling him his original pitch for that first Nolan-directed “Batman” movie (1995’s “Batman Begins”) and his script followed through – tonally and story-wise – with what he promised from the get-go.
Said Goyer, “My argument with Warner Bros was that if we can have people invest in Bruce Wayne, as a character, they won’t care, but when he does put on the suit – they will care more. That’s what our purpose was. We didn’t want to just be marking time. Remember that photograph of JFK junior at the burial of JFK? Saluting? We were thinking of Bruce Wayne as a young kid. Bruce Wayne was the loneliest boy in the world because he lost both his parents and he’s the heir of this multi-billion dollar fortune, and he’s got all these people surrounding him, he’s almost like a prisoner of Wayne Manor. His childhood was spent terribly, terribly lonely. So much of his life has been filled with fear too – fear of failure, ultimately fearing to live up to his father, because his father was sort of an impossible guy to live up to. He has all these fears about letting his father down in terms of Wayne Industries, and what we’ve tried to do in the new Batman movies is tie the Waynes into the history of Gotham, and his father tries to instil in him a sense of stewardship for Gotham, a sort of responsibility.”
He delivered on that, right? And from all accounts, he’s written a terrific Superman movie (one with as much heart as it does action) in “Man of Steel”.
But I’d also like to see Goyer do something smaller, too. He shot a terrific movie – which he wrote and directed – a few years back called “ZigZag” starring Wesley Snipes and young “Smallville” actor Sam Jones III. Really powerful little indy film, and one that offered Snipes a real performance – as opposed to anything he was given the opportunity to do in that tired, third “Blade” movie. But I suppose when there’s bigger fish to fry, you’ll fry ’em.
What I would like to see from that fourth “Batman” movie, if Goyer does decide to write it, is something that leaves Nolan’s wholly super trilogy alone. It needs something new. Something different. Maybe a jump-forward in-time scenario, so we can get that “Dark Knight Returns” storyline we’ve all wanted to see (in live-action) or even a human-fleshy take on “Batman Beyond”. They’re different enough plots. And there would then be a reason not to bring back Christian Bale – as good as he was. The ending of “Dark Knight Rises” was just so perfect, it doesn’t need to be tardily lengthened for the sake of building stout currency mountains.
