Michael Keaton took a hell of a chance back in 1989. He took a pretty major-league career as an actor, both comedic and dramatic, after films like Beetlejuice and Mr. Mom and he put his fate in the hands of that quirky genius Tim Burton. He put on a rubber suit and he played one of the very first superheroes in one of the very first superhero movies: the first big-screen Batman, and a complete re-imagining of the character long thought as a kid’s product or a campy cretin.
And we all know what happened next: he kind’a made history.
Fast forward 25 years, though all those subsequent films, all the reinventions in film, print, and animation. Keaton goes one way, Batman goes another. And now Keaton’s coming back — sort’a, kind’a — into that slightly hallucinatory world of the Superpeople with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s truly bizarre dream, Birdman.
Barebones plot: An actor who played an iconic superhero named “Birdman” years ago has had a rough time of it since; he’s now trying to mount a new Broadway play. He’s more that slightly nuts and even more desperate; he’s having trouble separating reality from fantasy, and his friends and family are swept into his madness. (At least that’s what we’re seeing here.)
And just to make things even weirder, Keaton’s daughter in the film is played by Emma Stone, just now finishing her run as Gwen Stacey in the latest round of Spider-Man films, and his — um, buddy? rival? colleague? — is played by Ed Norton, who did a turn as Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk. It’s just … a lot to take in. Especially when Keaton himself admits that his own experience as the first modern-day Batman, and what it’s done to him, is part and parcel of this whole craziness.
Inarritu’s not an easy director. He’s made some extremely intense films, like 21 Grams and Biutiful, and Birdman promises to be that and much more. Even this trailer, as non-linear as it is, is almost hypnotic. It’s hard to look away, even multiple times. And when Keaton takes thel eap off that building…
What the hell have we got here, people?
We’ll find out. ni October. And, we suspect, not a moment before. Here’s that trailer:
