Michael Keaton Batman’s Four Different Timelines Explained

With events in as many as four different DC Universes, the Michael Keaton Batman films have spawned many sequel and offshoot properties. Crucially, financially, and culturally, 1989’s Batman was a massive triumph for DC and Warner Bros. It established itself as a pop culture phenomenon and changed the way big blockbuster movies were promoted. At least initially, Batman Returns, the 1992 follow-up to the movie, fell short of the same spans as its predecessor. Return was a divisive movie whose graphic and sexual elements, together with notable changes from Batman comic source material, angered many audiences.

Though mostly with fans looking back with fresh eyes, admiring the live-action Batman movie and its audacious decisions and aesthetic aspects, Batman Returns does hold up in many respects. Though the movie generated considerable uproar, it was hardly the end of the original series. With many of Michael Keaton’s Batman stories occurring in several worlds and 1989’s Batman and Batman Returns crossing the canon, the narrative of his character persisted in many other properties. While overlapping continuity and alternate timelines abound in superhero literature, each of the several Michael Keaton Batman worlds has a unique and intriguing motive for existing.

Batman Movies by Joel Schumacher Were Originally Sequels

Batman Returns’s divisive reception caused Warner Bros. to decide to produce the Batman movies in a more family-friendly manner, therefore Joel Schumacher replaced Tim Burton. Though their more cheerful tones and deliberate camp resulted in worse response than the Burton duology, Schumacher’s two pictures, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin are presumably more comic-accurate than Burton’s flicks. Michael Keaton was replaced by Val Kilmer (and later George Clooney) as Batman; Billy Dee Williams was replaced by Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face; the Schumacher flicks significantly rebuilt Gotham City as a brighter, more contemporary setting.

Still, the Schumacher pictures are Burton’s successors. There are also some continuity cues as Michael Gough and Pat Hingle respectively replay their roles as Alfred Pennyworth and Commissioner Gordon. Dr. Chase Meridian mentions Catwoman and Bruce Wayne’s cautions to Dick Grayson against killing Two-Face in Batman Forever, therefore implying he killing The Joker. Alfred’s remark concerning the Batmobile in Batman & Robin could potentially allude to Batman’s vehicles being wrecked in the Burton movies. Batman Triumphant, a scrapped fifth movie, would have had the Burton and Schumacher films’ enemies show up as hallucinations brought on by Fear Toxin.

Batman ’89 Comics Reflect The Keaton More Closely Batman Films

Sam Hamm and Joe Quinones’s Batman “89 comics debuted in 2021; although they are not part of Joel Schumacher’s Batman films, they also follow the events of 1989’s Batman and Batman Returns. Though Daniel Waters replaced the original story treatment for Batman Returns with a quite different narrative, Sam Hamm wrote the script for 1989’s Batman and is therefore the perfect And he has penned the next Batman ’89 that is so much more on the nose in terms of how the events and characterization will play out with the Burton films.

Set to perform both Harvey Dent and Two-Face in 1989’s Batman, Billy Dee Williams’s role vanished from view following Tim Burton’s movie.


Batman ’89 develops Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon in line with continuous callbacks to the Burton movies. Retaining Billy Dee Williams’s likeness, Harvey Dent becomes a very different Two-Face than Batman Forever’s interpretation. Inspired by Marlon Wayans almost performing the Boy Wonder in Batman Returns, Batman “89 also presents a fresh rendition of Robin (now the original character Drake Winston). Batman ’89 is ideal for people who might want to see what prospective Batman successors would look like under Tim Burton’s direction.

The Flash Almost Made Keaton’s Batman Part Of The DCEU Future

Michael Keaton himself came back to the Batman part, this time in the DC Extended Universe movie The Flash. Barry Allen unintentionally generates an alternative timeline by traveling back in time and saving his mother’s life, therefore loosely adapting the Flashpoint comic scenario. With Keaton’s Batman substituting Ben Affleck’s version, this new chronology seems to be a combination of the primary universe and the DCEU. In this DCEU Flashpoint universe, years past saw the events of 1989’s Batman, Batman Returns, and maybe even the Batman “89 comics.”


The Flash closes with Keaton’s Batman dead in combat against General Zod’s Kryptonite radicals, then with Barry Allen fixing the timeline wiped. Fascinatingly, The Flash was originally intended to finish with the DCEU still a combination of the pre-Flashpoint reality and the Burton Batman universe. Keaton would have taken over from Ben Affleck as the DCEU’s Batman, and parts of the Burton-era mythology would have followed into the new post-Flashpoint DCEU. These ideas were eventually shelved, and the DCEU would only partially resurface into the forthcoming DC Universe.

Keaton would have returned as Batman once more in this post-Flashpoint DCEU for the aborted Batgirl picture.

Batman: Resurrection carries on the tale from Batman ’89.

Other Burton Batman movie continues to lack a well-defined continuity. A Burton Batman reality shows up during the Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths television event, with a newspaper headline indicating Batman has apprehended The Joker—apparently having returned from the grave. Recent DC comics have also featured Michael Keaton’s Batman and Jack Nicholson’s Joker; one prominent instance being the first issue of Dark Crisis: Big Bang. Although these features seem to deviate from the Burton movies, it’s not apparent if they live in the same continuity as Batman ’89, for example.
Batman: Resurrection by John Jackson Miller will premiere in October 2024 and fall between the events of 1989’s Batman and Batman Returns.

Resurrection will most likely not refer to, let alone dispute, the established characters or mythos of the Schumacher movie or the Batman “89 Comics,” as it will be more focused on linking the narrative of the two Burton films. This might let Resurrection live on all of the branching Batman timelines, therefore creating a third instance of overlapping continuity between the first two Michael Keaton Batman films and their several successors.

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