They actually want to be him … not necessarily play him in a movie.”

“Whatever boyhood excitement I had was crushed by the reality of the Batsuit. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realised that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to. “You also can’t hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, it’s very isolating. “When you’re in it, you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down,” Kilmer says. It turns out the actor felt so restricted by the costume that he experienced a sort of on-set alienation from the rest of the cast. In the new Amazon Prime documentary Val, Kilmer explains why he turned down the chance to return in Batman & Robin.

His understated performances in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and the 1992 sequel Batman Returns helped transform the image of superhero movies from throwaway paycheck flicks to the kind of weighty fantasy cinema that now attracts the Hollywood A-list. Keaton, meanwhile, is close to the top of polls when it comes to the public’s favourite big-screen caped crusader, perhaps behind only Christian Bale.

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