Michael Keaton On Struggling to Understand Spider-Man’s Adrian Toomes and the DC Multiverse

Michael Keaton is one of the busiest guys in comic book movies. He’s not only set to reprise his role as The Vulture in Spider-Man: No Way Home (Rumored), and in Sony’s new Morbius film with Jared Leto, but he’s also going to reprise his role as Bruce Wayne/ Batman in the new Flash film for Warner Bros. The funny thing is, that he’s had a little trouble understanding the roles according to a new interview with THR.

Here’s what he told The Hollywood Reporter about the Multiverse in the Flash movie:

“I had to read it more than three times to go, ‘Wait, how does this work?’ They had to explain that to me several times. By the way, I’m not being arrogant, I hope, about this. I don’t say it like, ‘I’m too groovy.’ I’m stupid. There’s a lot of things I don’t know about. And so, I don’t know, I just kind of figured it out, but this was different.”

And here’s what he had to say about his Spider-Man role:

“I’m nodding like I know what the [frick] they’re talking about. I go, ‘Uh-huh.’ And I’m thinking, ‘You may as well be explaining quantum physics right now to me. All I know is I just know my guy. And I know the basics.

So finally, they were looking at me, and they just started laughing. They said, ‘You don’t know what we’re talking about, do you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t, no idea what you’re talking about.’”

As a bonus, we also got a chance to hear what it was like to go back and play Batman 32 years after his original take on the character with Tim Burton:

“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherf***er. And so I thought, ‘Well, now that they’re asking me, let me see if I can pull that off.’”

“What’s really interesting is how much more I got [Batman] when I went back and did him. I get this on a whole other level now. I totally respect it. I respect what people are trying to make, I never looked at it like, ‘Oh, this is just a silly thing.’ It was not a silly thing when I did Batman. But it has become a giant thing, culturally. It’s iconic. So I have even more respect for it because what do I know? This is a big deal in the world to people. You’ve got to honor that and be respectful of that. Even I go, ‘Jesus, this is huge.’”