The modern superhero blockbuster as we know it really started with Tim Burton‘s Batman in 1989. Burton also directed the first sequel, 1992’s Batman Returns, but after that, both he and star Michael Keaton exited the franchise. Burton hasn’t made another superhero film since, and in a new interview with Variety, the director said he isn’t interested in returning to the genre anytime soon.
“Like I said, I come at things from different points of view, so I would never say ‘never’ to anything,” Burton told Variety. “But, at the moment, it’s not something I’d be interested in.”
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Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
Burton is obviously not averse to revisiting his old films in general, because he’s currently promoting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The upcoming film is a long-in-development sequel to his original horror-comedy classic Beetlejuice, which came out a year before Batman and shared Keaton in the titular role.
Sam Raimi, whose Spider-Man movies with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the early 2000s were also seminal examples of modern superhero blockbusters, recently returned to the genre with 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But Burton isn’t interested in doing the same, at least not right now.
The director pointed out that the environment in which he made Batman was very different from the current studio landscape for superhero movies. Before Batman, the biggest DC superhero movie was 1978’s Superman, and Burton replaced that film’s elegiac Americana with violent crime-fighting set against a Gothic aesthetic inspired by German Expressionism — influences that permeate much of his other films as well. Such unique artistic expression is much harder to achieve in franchise films these days, with studios more interested in keeping their brand consistent.
“I was lucky because, at that time, the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist,” Burton said. “So Batman felt slightly experimental at the time. It deviated from what the perception [of a superhero movie] might be. So you didn’t hear that kind of studio feedback, and being in England, it was even further removed. We really just got to focus on the film and not really think about those things that now they think about even before you do it.”
