There are a number of different places you can trace our current moment of utter superhero cultural dominance back to. It could be 2002’s Spider-Man, or 2000’s X-Men, or 2008’s Iron Man. If you go even further back, though, you could argue that the trend really started with 1989’s Batman, which was directed by Tim Burton and starred Michael Keaton.
Burton directed that movie to tremendous success, and he also directed its first sequel, Batman Returns. Since leaving that franchise behind, though, Burton has not gone back to the superhero well, and thanks to a new interview with Variety, we now know why.
“Like I said, I come at things from different points of view, so I would never say ‘never’ to anything,” he said. “But, at the moment, it’s not something I’d be interested in.”
Burton, who is currently promoting his decades-later sequel to Beetlejuice, is certainly not opposed to big projects or sequels. He emphasized, though, that he made Batman in an environment where franchises simply didn’t exist in the way they do today
“I was lucky because, at that time, the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist,” the director explained. “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.”
Indeed, Burton seems to have gotten a lot of leeway on the film, which is why it has such a distinct visual aesthetic. In the decades since its release, we’ve gotten plenty of movies from both Burton and the superhero genre.
