Michael Keaton’s Batwing Has Been Painstakingly Restored, See The Close-Up Video
Michael Keaton flew the iconic Batwing and now it has been brought back to life.
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He is vengeance, he is the night, he is Batman. It’s been well known that Michael Keaton is confirmed to return as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, and celebration from fans has been ongoing since his return to the role of the Dark Knight was announced. Mythbusters star Adam Savage took his excitement to the extremes and recreated the Batwing, Keaton’s custom Bat-Plane from Tim Burton’s Batman (1989).
Savage took a trip to the Prop Store where the warehouse auctions off Mythbusters props to the general public for charitable causes. Fans are able to bid on and buy Mythbusters-related props and other iconic pieces from the long-running show, taking a piece of television home with them. The Batwing, of Michael Keaton fame, is kept at the Prop Store and is built to 1/4 of the scale model. The model has a “bat”-shaped head with clippers designed to steal the Joker’s gas-filled balloons away from him. Included is a Batman figure that allows its head to rotate and face the camera, which is ironic, considering Keaton was unable to move his neck while wearing the Batsuit.
The original production had the Batwing drawn up at 27′ in width, and while there’s a significant change in size, there’s enough room to seat a shrunken-down Michael Keaton behind the controls. The quarter-scale miniature was restored to show off the lighting and motorized effects that once took the big screens in the late ’80s during the climactic final showdown.
Savage treats viewers to an in-depth look at the model while making a spectacle of its missiles that pop out and its flappable wings, showing off its near-perfect condition, almost begging Michael Keaton himself to take it for one last ride. Warner Bros. has been fairly tight-lipped about how involved Keaton’s Batman will be in The Flash, as he’s not the only Caped Crusader to cross paths with Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) as the timelines become tangled. The Batmobile has been teased for an on-screen reprise of its own, and there are hopes that the Batmobile could make its way into the superhero movie.
Batwing-piloting or not, Michael Keaton is no stranger to comic book movies. His DC fame hails from his time as the Batman, and he took on the role of the villainous Vulture in Jon Watt’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, which kicked off Tom Holland’s solo Spider-Man trilogy. The trilogy made Holland the second Spider-Man to earn a three-part solo saga of his own (sorry, Andrew Garfield) and will release its third leg in December 2021. The Flash may not be the last time that Keaton will don the cowl in the DC Extended Universe. We here at Giant Freakin Robot have reported that Keaton is planning to stick around for the Batgirl movie that was ordered as an HBO Max exclusive. It has been alleged that DC Films president Walter Hamada is in favor of Keaton reclaiming the role of Batman beyond The Flash as Ben Affleck departs from the studio. The Flash will serve as Affleck’s sendoff from DC Films.
In the meantime, Tested continues to restore props from Batman and other staples in pop culture with and without ties to Michael Keaton. The Flash speeds into theaters on November 4, 2022.
