Everyone knows Bruce Wayne is rich, but apparently, even he needs to pawn some of his old junk for a quick payday sometimes. The Batsuit that actor Michael Keaton wore in 1992’s Batman Returns has sold at auction for $41,250, as reported by Entertainment Weekly.
Keaton appeared in film twice as Batman: battling Jack Nicholson’s Joker in 1989’s Batman, and then reprising the role in Batman Returns. He then handed off the cape and cowl, and the role has now been played by a variety of other actors, including Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and, most recently, Ben Affleck. Although Keaton brought a lot to the role, the design of the suit itself actually had a huge influence on how the big screen Batman was portrayed.
In an interview with CBR, Keaton recalls the “Bat-turn,” where he would turn his entire body rather than just his head:
“This whole thing [where I moved my whole body like a statue] came out of — I mean, I’ll take some credit for it, but really, it was practical! It really came out of the first time I had to react to something, and this thing was stuck to my face and somebody says something to Batman and I go like this [turning his head] and the whole thing goes, [rriipp]! There was a big f****** hole over here. So I go, well, I’ve got to get around that, because we’ve got to shoot this son of a b****, so I go, ‘You know what, Tim [Burton]? He moves like this [like a statue]!’”
Although an anonymous bidder paying $41,250 for the Batsuit sounds like an awful lot of money, Christian Bale’s suit from Batman Begins sold for $250,000 at auction. How much do you think Ben Affleck’s will sell for?
Have you ever spent way too much on a piece of movie memorabilia? Let us know in the comments below!