Michael Keaton Cut Half His Lines In Batman Returns

Michael Keaton thought Batman should be a man of few words. 

In honor of the 25th anniversary of Tim Burton's Batman Returns, The Hollywood Reporter ran a retrospective on the making of the movie, and screenwriter Daniel Waters revealed that Keaton cut out more than half of Batman's dialogue.

"My version of the script had more a lot more Batman and Bruce Wayne speeches," Waters said. "Michael Keaton would go through the script and say, 'Hey, that's a great line, but you gotta cut it. This is a good speech, but you gotta take it out.' He wanted to have very minimal dialogue, especially in the Batsuit. When I saw the final film, I realized he was exactly right."

Keaton said he wanted to let the Batsuit do the heavy lifting. "Once I realized how powerful the suit was in terms of an image on screen, I just used it," Keaton said.

Elsewhere in the article, we find out that Michelle Pfeiffer had a really difficult time acting in the constrictive Catwoman outfit, the scene in which Batman kills a clown with a bomb was added by Tim Burton, and the real-life penguins had their own refrigerated dressing rooms.

But one of the biggest reveals is that Burton said Warner Bros. wanted to push the franchise in a more toy-friendly direction with the follow-up Batman Forever, which Joel Schumacher directed. "I don't know if any ideas made it in," Burton said. "I realized halfway through my meeting with Warner Bros. that they didn't really want me to do [Batman Forever]. They kept saying, 'Don't you wanna go back and do a movie like Edward Scissorhands? Something smaller?' I said, 'You don't want me to do the movie, do you?'"

After Burton left, Keaton also departed the franchise, opening a revolving door of Batmen until Christian Bale took over in Christopher Nolan's trilogy. Of course, Ben Affleck is now the sitting Batman in the DCEU.

While we wait to see the character next in Justice League on Nov. 17, check out a few messed up things you didn't know about Batman.