Happy Sad Confused - BATMAN BEGINS 20th Anniversary special with David Goyer

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

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Batman does not appear until after an hour into the movie. I mean, like, Warner Brothers had to be in a very interesting spot because you can't fathom a studio saying, sure, let's wait for half our running time before we see our hero in costume. Yeah, and we, no, and they were not happy about that. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now.

Hey, guys, it's Josh, and welcome to another edition of Happy, Say I Confused. Happy 20th birthday to one of my favorite movies, Batman Begins, and we are celebrating with writer David Goyer. That is the main event on the podcast today. Thank you guys, as always, for checking out the show. If you're listening or watching, I appreciate you. Before we get to the main event today, as always, a reminder, check out all of our stuff, early access, autograph merch, all sorts of cool stuff on our Patreon. Patreon.com slash happy, say I'm confused. I mention it every week because it is important to keeping this train running to let us make more of the cool stuff we do week in and week out.

And I appreciate you guys for even checking it out and seeing if something makes sense for you. Patreon.com slash happy, say I confused. Okay, let's talk about Batman. What a job I have when I got to just talk about Batman. So I was looking at the calendar and I saw the 20th anniversary was coming up for one of my favorite movies. Favorite Batman movies, favorite movies, period.

I love Batman begins so much. I don't need to tell you about Batman begins. But just to contextualize a little bit, this was, of course, Christopher Nolan joining the big leagues. I mean, obviously, Memento was huge. And then he did Ensomnia, which was his first studio movie. But then being given the keys to the kingdom of Batman and then delivering like he did, casting Christian Bell in this iconic role, Liam Neeson, Killian Murphy. I mean, there are five, as I say in the conversation, I think there are five Academy Award winners in this cast. and I think three other Oscar nominees.

Cast a hell out of it. It is such a well-told story. And David Goyer is a huge part of that, as huge as anyone outside of Christopher Nolan. He got the story credit for this. He is a co-writer on the film. And look up his resume. David Goyer has done it all.

Having written so many comic book projects, but also even currently right now, you can check out MurderBot, which he's an EP on, Sandman, and Foundation. Three ginormous shows right now with David Goyer's major credit on it. This was a great deep dive into Batman begins from its inception, from how it began, from how they determined what villains to use, the casting, the reception.

If you'll have Batman, if you'll have Batman begin specifically, you're about to enjoy the hell out of this conversation, I guarantee it. 45 minutes of Batman going in your ears and eyes right now. Enjoy my conversation with the one and only Mr. David Goyer. Mr. David Goyer, it's good to see you, man. And for a very good occasion, almost 20 years to the day, Batman begins. Feel like 20 years, 2 years, 1,000 years? How are you feeling, man?

On one hand, it feels like I can't believe it's been 20 years. On the other hand, when I think back to what was going on in my life back then, it feels like another century. So, yeah, 20 years and then perhaps like another three years prior to that when we started it. of course. Right, right. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today. These are the almost my most fun kind of conversations

because, like, I didn't get a chance to obviously do the junket at the time and dive in. And now with some distance, we can really dive in, hopefully, in a fun way. First, I mean, like, we've talked before about many accomplishments in your career. Like, where does this one stand for you? Does this one have a special place in your heart in terms of how it all came together? Yeah. Batman begins. It's, well, first of all, it's, for a variety of reasons, my favorite film of the trilogy.

And it's certainly in the top three things I've ever worked on in my career, things that I'm the most proud of. It's also an instance, which is so rare in Hollywood, where everything lined up right. and played out the way it should. And it almost never happens that way. So the whole thing was very dreamlike and magical. And it was a, obviously, an incredibly influential film in terms of the superhero genre, comic book genre. It very much put Chris, I mean, obviously he had made films prior to that,

but it it catapulted Chris and myself and really everyone involved into, you know, a whole other level. So, and then personally for me, it was just this culmination of my life's journey as a comic book reader growing up in Michigan and very much having been weaned on, even before the Miller,

Batman's sort of Denio Neal Adams stuff. And so the whole thing was just a surreal experience to have to sort of port myself back to what it was like when I was 11 years old, you know, going to the local comic book store, writing letters to, you know, Marvel and D.C. and then flash forward where I was involved in. participating in making this sort of seminal movie that changed Batman and that changed comic book movies. So you alluded to this a little bit. I want to give folks that weren't maybe around or aware at the time, a little context of where everybody was at the time. So Chris, you mentioned, right, has Memento.

He's just coming off of Insomnia, which is kind of his first big studio film, does fine. But then he's given the keys to Batman, where a few years removed from Batman and Robin, which kind of like over-indexed on kind of the pop... Whoopi. Adam West, Batman. Right. You're in the throes of your Blade trilogy. I think you're about to go off and direct, actually, Blade, Trinity. And the comic book movie world is in an interesting spot. The Spider-Man movies are going, so those are successful, but we're pre-MCU.

Give me a sense of, like, with all that context, so Chris comes to you, and we talked about this a little bit on our last conversation, but give me a little more info on like your reaction when he comes to you what those initial conversations were and what you thought of what he said to you when he brought this up well yeah eight years prior had been the last Batman film Batman and Robin which was fairly or not the most kind of maligned of of those four films and there was a perception well even when Tim Burton's Batman came out that was darker and more serious than people had expected, but then the movies progressively got closer and closer and closer to the Adam West version, which was the public's general perception of what Batman

was. And in the intervening years, it just so happened that I was, happened to be personal friends with a lot of the people who had attempted to make the next Batman movie. I was friends I mean I still am friends with these people but I was friends with Mark Protisavich who'd written a fifth Batman movie that was supposed to be the next Schumacher

home. We had talked about that and I was friends with Boise Akeen who had written I think Batman Beyond script and I was friends with Andrew Kevin Walker who had written a Batman Superman and so I was kind of

sitting on the sidelines every once in a while having a meal with these guys hearing about these these next batman films that had all stalled and and and i think at one point there was even an attempt to do an r-rated aeronovsky in year one and um and and so i was just sitting here and kind of on the sidelines watching all these bandman movies get developed and then you know fall into development hell and and I just had assumed I'd heard that Chris might be developing a new Batman movie and I remember telling my agent well it's never going to get made

it's just there it's just brilliant writers these are like no slouches the people yeah yeah are like any of those guys could could get it made and and these other filmmakers and it's just sort of mired in and all this stuff yeah And, but the thing that I, and the irony, too, is that it appears that Batman was a consolation prize for Tim, for Chris, rather, that, because he'd been developing Troy. And then at some point, Troy was shifted away and given to, I think it was Wolfgang Peterson. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I, and, and I think Wolfgang Peterson had been developing Batman. Superman. So I think they did a swap. And that was meant to be the consolation prize, I guess. And Chris was not Chris Nolan at the time. So I thought he was immensely talented and I knew him a bit socially. But I didn't think it would be successful or it would get off the ground. And the thing that I hadn't counted on was a, the sort of

the pressure within Warner Brothers to get a new one going finally and that be the acknowledgement and this is a rare opportunity when this happens within Hollywood and Warner Brothers that Batman was broken that that something drastic had to be done something different and so it was sort of like the right time the right place because when we came in what we were pitching was the exact opposite of Batman and Robin. But the conditions were right for Warner Brothers to be open to that at the time. And when Chris first approached me, I said I was too busy and secretly I didn't think it would get off the ground.

And I remember I was in Jackson, Whole Wyoming. We had a long conversation, an hour and a half. He said, well, hypothetically, and I spitball a lot. lot of ideas and I think I mentioned the scarecrow and and rajah bull and I was in particular um I really wanted I just thought that one should use some villains that hadn't been used before to also signal to the world that we were doing something different um and so I remember going down the list of villains for Chris that I thought were still sort of tier A villains, but that hadn't been used in the ones that were interesting and whatnot.

And I said that's a catwoman and Joker off the table because they're just, and they've been mine so well. All of them, because I just said, we have to do something different. And then I said, but I don't want to do it. And so incredibly, this kid who. had dreamed of doing all this stuff i passed on uh what was a and then i don't know it feels like three or four weeks later chris talked to some other people then he called back and he said i've talked to some other people and i really feel it should be you you know working with me on this

and i was you know really flattered and uh we ended up working on it together um he already wanted to do an origin story and we were both intrigued with everyone, everyone had seen versions of like, you know, Joe Chill killing the parents and then the bat crashing through the window. But no one had seen, well, how did he get all those skills? And even Frank Miller's year one starts with him returning to Gotham City, having been away for a year or two. And it doesn't really talk about what happened during that period of time. So the other thing that's really interesting when you're adapting something that's very well known, whether it be a comic book or a novel, is narrative gaps are really enticing because

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that Batman does not appear until after an hour into the movie I mean this speaks to exactly what you're saying like Warner Brothers had to be in a very interesting spot because you can't fathom a studio saying sure

let's wait for half our running time before we see our hero in costume yeah and we No, and they were not happy about that. I can't imagine. I mean, but it was twofold. The first thing that we felt that no disrespect to the actors that had played Bruce Wayne prior to this, that as moviegoers in a lot of these superhero movies,

we were always just kind of twiddling our thumbs waiting for the character to get in the costume and for the movie to really begin. And so we said, well, why is that? And I think because unconsciously, a lot of work was put into sort of realizing the hero, but not the man or the woman behind the mask. And so we knew fairly early on that we needed to have the audience fall in love of Bruce Wayne and that we needed to have, we talked about this, an amazing action sequence

as amazing as something from Indiana Jones that involve Bruce Wayne and not Batman. And that if we, you know, we just said pretend Bruce Wayne is James Bond or Indiana Jones or whomever. If we can do a sequence that is just incredible and heart pounding and he doesn't have the mask on, then people won't care whether or not he has.

the mask on that'll just be the added sauce and so that's how we came up with you know that massive an escape from you know rajah ghoul's uh temple and and them sliding down uh the ice and you know almost all of that came from that and uh but even with that i remember we did a chart and we did donner superman and we did some of the batman movies and we clocked the minute into the film that the characters had put on the costumes and we weren't that much farther than that. Well, Superman, the Donor Superman starts way late.

He do not see him for a while. Exactly. And so we, because that we were ready to prosecute the case with Warner Brothers and said, look at these four movies. You know, here's the amazing, here's Spider-Man, you know, here's the first Batman, whatever it was. That having been said, the first draft of Batman,

Begins, it was always nonlinear, but the first draft of Batman begins did have a sequence of, that happens later in the movie where police are coming in and Batman's up top. I think he's in Arkham or somewhere else. And you see that famous shot of like the Cape spreading down and him through the stairwell. There was a version that had us actually starting with that So you saw Batman in the Cape almost immediately and then flashed back. But very quickly, thank God, we dispensed with that and started with, you know, Bruce in, in prison in Asia. I mean, I will say, I love the whole movie. Which is shocking.

Oh, that was the other thing. The other thing, sorry. Taking him out of Gotham, taking him far into like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was the other big thing is there was just a sense that Batman existed always in Gotham. which felt really parochial. Yeah. And made the world not feel real.

And add to that that so much of Gotham had always been shot like on the Warner's back lot, we just said, my God, we have to get him out of Gotham. And that led to us thinking, well, God, can we just start the movie outside of Gotham? Yeah. And just start with Bruce Wayne in Bhutan or wherever or China. And how wild would that be? because instantly you know that you're not in Kansas anymore. Right.

It's my favorite stuff in the film, to be honest, is him and Liam, the training, the montage, him on the ice, and Liam goading him and saying his parents' death is his father's fault is so emotional and so, like, powerful. And that's a credit to the writing. It's a credit to casting up, which I know is a big thing, like, you know, emulating, again, Donner and, like, going for, You have five Academy Award winners cast in this film.

I mean, it's remarkable to see. Do you have, I mean, when you would think of the film, like, do you have a favorite sequence, a favorite scene, a favorite character that you wrote for? What jumps out? I mean, I love this stuff in Bhutan as well. You know, originally it was meant to be Tibet, and part of the inception for that, pun intended,

I had trekked in Tibet when I was younger and we were casting around for where to have Bruce start and I showed Chris all of my photographs from Tibet I think I'd been in Tibet for six weeks and I believe because of the possibility of releasing it in China there was sensitivity to that And so that's how it would be Bhutan instead of Tibet. But it's, I never imagined that in some ways,

some of my personal experiences traipsing the world would make it into a Batman film. And so I have a lot of, you know, the temple where Raja Gould and Dukhar and Dukhar are hanging out is very similar to a lot of places that I've visited when I was in Tibet. And personally, the run of Batman that I had always enjoyed the most as a kid was the Denny O'Neill, Neil Adams run, and Roger Gould was a big part of that. So for all of those reasons, the League of Assassins, which we were forced to change to the

League of Shadows, but it's fine. It was just all the things were sort of clicking into place for me. It was like the Batman that I had always wanted to see. I also find it fascinating, like, you know, the way you guys were able to ground the story and yet still kind of teeter on the edge of comic booky stuff, certainly towards the end, especially. It starts to be a little comic booking in the best way. You still have, like, you know, a hallucinogen dropped into the water.

And it gets, it embraces that a little bit more. But, like, you don't do the Lazarus Pit. You never kind of go over. We talked about it. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, I think there might have been a Lazarus Pit in one of the early treatments. Did talk about it.

But again, cleaving that sort of Chris's ideology, it was a question of like, was the Lazarus pit just a ceremony or did Rosel Gould Ducard actually rise from it? It wasn't clear. Right. Well, there's even the cheeky reference. towards the end, he talks about is Razogul truly immortal? And it's just sort of like you guys kind of address it in your own in your own way.

Another thing that makes this stand apart, especially given where we're at in comic book movies now, is there aren't references to Superman or, you know, Green Arrow or anything outside of the Batman world. I mean, you could have easily, you know, mentioned Oliver Queen or Metropolis

or something. Was that ever discussed? Were there ever other references outside of Batman War? I'm sure. I'm sure. I brought up one or two, and Chris probably nixed them. But we would have a lot of debates about, about one of the reasons why Chris had me involved is because I was so immersed in the canon and, you know, it was like the liniment and McCartney thing or whatever it was. You know, I was definitely like the poppier of the two of us.

And we would debate, you know. I remember Chris wondering if we had to have the utility belt. I was a guest. It doesn't have to be yellow. And I said, I think so. It was like, well, what if we dull it down? And there was a lot of healthy debate back and forth. And I think he arrived kind of at the right place, you know, the right recipe, you know, between all of that.

Chris's big thing at the time, which I loved was he just wanted there to be a utility to everything. So that's where, you know, I was talking to DARPA and the memory fabric came from that, you know, you apply an electrical signal to the cape and it becomes rigid. That had all come from my research with DARPA and the, the Batmobile being this sort of bridging Humvee that came from that. And even there's a moment with that, you know, why does he have the bad airs while there's these sort of like mini cell phone types? You know, honestly. Did, was Harvey Dent ever in the first one? Was, did you consider including Harvey and Batman Begins? I don't believe so.

Okay. I don't, he might have been in some of the conversations, but I don't, I don't believe so. I mean, one of the few characters, like original characters you create is Katie Holmes' character, is Rachel, right? I mean, that could, again, you could have done Vicky Vale. It could have been Selena Kyle in a different context. Yeah, we talk, we talked about Vicky Vale. there were a couple of other, like Silver St. Cloud, I think is another character. And Vicki Vale partly was, you know, taking, again, nothing away from the other movies,

but we were saying, okay, this is a different beast. And Silver St. Cloud just felt like a thing that was too comic booky. but I remember sort of going through the roster of potential names and we just didn't find anyone

in the canon that made sense and it wasn't also it sort of broke that naturalistic aesthetic that we were attempting to carry off one of the things I love about

this film and it's in your work with Chris it's also doing the work he's written by himself and with others is like there's such great symmetry and callbacks he loves Chris loves kind of like a callback to like a theme a line a moment and this one is loaded with them and I love them all it's like the the minor surroundings why do we fall didn't you get the memo it's not who I am but what's underneath that defines me yeah I mean do you remember that is that was that something like that was I don't know integral to the conversations like we have to like set these up to knock it down in the third act yeah yeah that I mean

I think that is one of the reasons why when every time Chris and I are working together, I mean, I think we both like that kind of storytelling where you're very clear, you know, one of the things that happened with all the Batman films and even the Superman film was that we identified what kind of story we wanted to tell irrespective of the villains before we started. then we found villains that helped tell that story, which I think is the exact opposite of how most comic book films are made, right? We said, we want to tell a story about Bruce overcoming his fears and his biggest fear is growing up in the shadow of his father and disappointing his father and squandering

these riches, and I mean it in every sense of the word that his father. father built, you know, the house. That's why we decided to burn down Wayne Manor because he's foolhardy and then he, has of his efforts, literally, uh, his father's home burns on the house that his father built. Gotham burns down. And so that, that was the story we wanted to tell. And it was influenced by a story called the man who fell, uh, but, you know, Bruce falling down the well. And, uh, and so that naturally led to fear, which is the scarecrow. And it, and then we talked about, well, is there someone in the Rogues Gallery of Ben that is a patriarchal character? And the obvious one is Raj Aguil because that's, that's the, the, um, the function that the Raj

fulfills, you know, in the comic books. And, and, and, And so it made sense. Yeah. Let's talk a little on the casting front, again, an amazing cast here. And there are a lot of famous what-ifs to this group. It's pretty well known, I think, by now, on Raj that, like, you guys were also talking about a contemporary version of that character, a contemporary to Bruce. And I, from what I read, what I gather, is Guy Pearce, the one that was kind of, like,

also seriously being considered for Raj? Yeah, I mean, those are the two. It was Guy and, um, Liam, I think Chris had sort of narrowed it down to those two. And I remember him calling me and us having a long conversation about which one. And Chris had his own reasons. But I just remember thinking that Liam made a bit more sense because he was older. And I just thought instead of a fraternal, we were telling a story about, you know, Bruce growing up in the shadow.

of his father. So it just made more sense to me. Right. The for, do you remember for Scarecrow? Killian obviously auditioned for for Bruce for Batman? First, do you remember that? Do you remember that screen test watching that? I'm thinking that he made sense. I know, I never saw the, I never saw the Killian one. Um, uh, and I know that Chris had spoken to you, but I don't believe he ever tested to, um, Heath. He'd spoken to Heath about Batman. Right. Um, yeah, the screen tests that I saw were were Christian and one of my blanking. Well, we talked about Jake one. Jake Gyllenhaal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny because I was, I remember Jake trying to get to me through some people that we knew together. And look, it's hard to imagine. They both would have been great. It's hard to undo Christian bail now because he's, in my mind, created like the iconic Bruce Batman. Yeah. Do you remember, I mean, obviously, Cavill ended up in your man of steel, but supposedly Cavill was also in the mix.

He might have been. I don't know. I don't know. Generally, Chris would, I mean, we would have the conversations about who might be good when we were in Chris's office and we were working on script. Yeah. sort of pie in the sky conversations and then generally when it was like narrowed down Chris would loop me in and say what are your thoughts on this or that do you remember when oldman came up because I mean he he was kind of on that daddy run and

that's an exciting shift for him and again from what I read and I remember this I think Chris Cooper was like the guy they that you guys or Chris went to at first which would have been great too might have been I remember being very surprised at the choice of, and I wasn't in the meeting when Chris met with Gary. I remember being very surprised, primarily because Gary had played so many bad guys. But now that I'm a more experienced filmmaker,

I realize that it's really exciting to cast against type. And it's exciting for filmmakers and it's also exciting for the actors. Yeah. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant, or is it croissant? No matter how you say it, start your day with freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery, flaky croissant. Try it with maple brown butter today at Tim's, at participating restaurants in Canada for limited time. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats.

What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no. Nana. That's a yes. A nice tan. Sorry. Nope. But a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine. No. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. let's talk about the the um a couple things about the ending we i mean the the the the ending for rajagul um on that train you know you've you've had your experience with with superheroes who are responsible for the death of people and causing controversy was there a big debate about whether like how responsible he should be does batman kill does he let him die like what that kind of

discussion was for Raja Gould on that train? Yeah, I remember that, you know, Chris and I had gone to New York for a few days and met with the editorial board of DZ Comics and outlined our plans and said, you know, in your opinion, what are the kind of stations of the cross that we should hit for a good Batman story? And what are the things that we really should not do? and one of them was having used a gun and I could be misremembered but I'm pretty sure one of them was

that he shouldn't directly kill someone out of revenge and and I don't remember whether or not forgive me this was 23 years ago that was also a concern of Warner Brothers part but it felt like

that was the way we arrived at that was kind of like the right massaging morally of of how to do it to be continued on man of steel which would become a whole other thing oh yes oh yes

so the final scene is fantastic Gordon and Batman on that rooftop and really the relationship has been cemented and truly feels like the origin story is complete and of course you end on this amazing tease despite the fact that like Chris is very famous for always saying one movie at a time I'm not making I'm not for sure something for a sequel so what was was there a lot of debate I mean that is like teeing up very overtly this is going somewhere I guess talk to me through

like what I don't know what the discussion was about that final scene it just felt like what we wanted to hint at was the escalation yeah and and and copycats and Batman becoming a symbol that both positive and negative people would latch on to and that that was the the

way to complete the arc and so we did not know how the movie would do we did not know that there would be another film we didn't have necessarily ideas for another film. I mean, we were hoping maybe there would be, but we didn't know. And so we felt, okay, this works, the reveal of the card works, whether there's another film or not.

So there was no concrete talk at that point about even like, who would be a great joker? What kind of a story we could tell? You left that. You said, look, we'll talk after this weekend and beyond, and then we can go from there. I remember doing an interview after the film would come out and I can't remember who the interview was with and someone said well do you have an idea for a sequel and I said not really and they said if you had to spitball and like an idiot I spitballed in the interview and that of course became this is what they're planning and and Chris quite rightly was annoyed because he said did you did you spitball what eventually became dark night at all or no is it?

Not really. I mean, only in the vaguest sense of, you know, I was spitball. It was not, it was, that's not what one should do in an interview. What do you remember about the reception? It was critically very well received. It was a big hit. But like from your perspective, what did it feel like those, that weekend, the weeks after they came out? It just felt that we had, uh, we had turned a corner with Batman in those kinds of films. And the thing that excited. me was that people who did not consider themselves to be Batman or comic book fans enjoyed the movie. And, you know, I remember, at one point when I was working on the project, I was engaged to a woman. We didn't end up getting married and we had parted ways. And I remember her emailing me she had

was traveling the world for about four months and she emailed me she was in Cairo and she saw Batman Begins and she said oh my God I get it now I get what you were working on I had no idea I had no idea and it was those were kind of

fun emails to get I just had no idea like do you remember the first time you saw the film complete the music I do but prior to that there was a really special screening where um because I was only on the set a few times where Chris and Emma arranged to show me some dailies and some scenes they were still making the film so I went to one others and they screened about 20 minutes of material for me and I just left my body you know, when I saw it because I was just

a lot of the stuff in Iceland and I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and God, I don't remember the first time I saw the whole movie all the way together, which is crazy.

You've, you, this film has been very influential. I mean, in a thousand different ways. And like we've seen it in the comic book genre. We've seen it outside of the comic book genre. I mean, like I remember like, Casino Royale came pretty, a couple years later, and everybody was like, this is, in a good way, it's Batman Begins for Bond.

I mean, did you immediately clock the influence of this film in the subsequent years? Sure, because what would happen is the same thing that happened after Blade is I would go out on these meetings three or four months after the film had come out. And suddenly, everyone was talking about how, you know, we want what you did for Batman Begin. but for this character.

It became a, we want the Batman Begins for X. We want the Batman begin, which meant, I guess, this sort of restructuring, you know, re-expression back to the basics. Casino Royale was very much viewed as the Batman Begins for Bond. And a lot of films were made and or attempted made that way. and then I had the same thing with Blade which is like

oh we want we want to do what you did for vampires but with werewolves or you know are there any wrong lessons do you think that any films took from yeah of course because the wrong lesson is is you can't chase the fad because by the time you get a movie made it'll be three or five years from now and the conditions that the world isn't could be completely different

And, but that's, Hollywood is always reductive, that way is they just, oh, now everything's going to be the Batman begins version of something or with the dark night. It's going to be the dark night, but we're going to make the darker night or the even darker night still or the even, which is why, you know, it will be interesting now to see like the gun version of Batman come out, which will probably be a very different version. and probably a welcome version because now there's been 20 years of really dark Batman. Yeah, between you guys and what Matt did, obviously,

it almost feels like it's time for an interesting pendulum shift back towards Adam West. People have said, how are you, you know, how are you reacting to the trailers? I've not seen the film yet for the new Superman film. And I love them.

And it's not Man of Steel at all. Right. But, and it, because I came from that world, it would not have occurred to me to use crypto, but when crypto shows up, I've just got a big grin on my face. Yeah. But crypto would have had no place in the vibe of what you were doing.

It wouldn't have, it wouldn't work. Yeah. So where are you at? When we last spoke a year or two ago, we talked comic movies, which were such a big part of your filmography, especially in kind of the first section of your career. And you were kind of like, I did what I did. I'm very proud of it. I'm in a new kind of part now.

Are you more receptive now? I know you were like Cheekly talked about Blade recently. Like, where are you at? I'm pretty much still not in the comic book Blase. I mean, I've got, you know, I'm executive producer of MurderBot, which is out right now. And Foundation coming back on July 11th and Sandman, which is comic book, coming out July 3rd.

But I think that's, probably. I've got a new project that I'll be going to market with next month. It is not comic book. It's still genre, but not comic book. But look, I go back and forth on all the time on social I see, you know, oh, they should have Goyer do the new blade. They should have Goyer do the new blade. Part of me thinks it would be fun, but part of me thinks I did so far the definitive a blade and it's a mistake. I don't remember Chris advising me not to work on the Affleck Batman.

Just because it's like you, you, it's confusing. You know, we did, we did one. Just stick with that. Yeah. What do you, what do you make? I mean, we were talking about Blade a couple years back. This is like the most plagued, like this is so, well, I don't know why they can't crack this.

This is insane. I don't either because in my mind, I think Blade is a relative. simple story, it's not complicated. And I always think about when you embark on a movie like this, you have to, you have to distill down what is the promise of the movie, right? So the promise of blade, a new blade is that it should have insane ass kicking. It should be pretty scary, might be R-rated.

And it doesn't have to be, it should not be complicated. It should be a simple story. So I don't know why. It's been so hard. I have no idea why. I'm baffled. I've sat on the sidelines and rehearse all he's an amazing actor. I don't know why.

I mean, kudos to him for sticking through all these different iterations. He's obviously devoted to this character. He wants to make it work. But I almost wonder if, like, Wesley stopped showing up and being such a crowd. pleaser and Deadpool Wolverine almost complicated it. They're like, wait a second. They still love Wesley. What do we?

And I thought that was cool too. But it's confusing also if you're trying to do another one. It's, it's, yeah, it may have been just an acknowledgement that, yeah, we can't crack it right now. I have no idea. I haven't been involved in the conversations. All good. All right. Well, you mentioned the project you're working on always a very full plate.

Sandman about to come back. Foundation now it's third season. I've really dug murder bought. I had a chance to catch up with Scars Guard recently. That's a great one. I watched that. I was trying to figure out if I could go to your event, but it didn't work out. But talking about casting against type, it's so delightful seeing Alexander be funny and awkward and weird.

And just he's clearly having the time of his life right now. Oh, yeah, which is honestly closer. You probably know him better than me, but closer to who he really is, like that sense of humor. He's a goofball. Yeah. He's a goofball. And a lovely, lovely guy. I remember one time we were doing a, a, like a marketing zoom with a, a bunch of

million boxes and he, he, he was, uh, there was an odd background behind him. And it turned out he was in his like daughter's bedroom or something like that. But, uh, it's great. He's so fun and so delightful. And it's also really nice. I know David Des Melchon, you know, fairly well. And he gets to play. once you get to the latter half of the season,

a very different role than he's known for, too, which is really lovely. And Paul and Chris could not be, I will say that's been another project that's been, God, most projects are so hard, and that one's been so easy and nice, and there's no friction, and it's just been delightful.

Yeah, good, smart guys. I didn't realize they were part of it until I started to, like, research for Alexander, and they haven't worked together forever, it feels like, directly, and it's been really cool to see them come back together. Yeah. for this um thank you man as always for uh for the chat and reminiscing this is again for a very good cause 20 years almost to the day batman begins came crazy changed your life thank you for your

show and your advocacy it's that it's i'm a fan i i watch i watch most of the episodes i appreciate you buddy uh well in a few years we'll do the 20th for uh dark night and continue and continue perfect all right thanks man as always thank you so much And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pushing to do this by Josh.

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