Keaton BATMAN 3 maquettes?

[d_osborn]

I'm not as familiar with the different suit concepts as some of you. I saw this posted on io9 today and it got me a little curious. It claims to be early B3 costume maquettes, being designed for Keaton.  It was my understanding that the project wasn't far enough along when Keaton dropped for suits to be designed/developed.

Does anyone have insight on this thing?  Were they just using a Keaton head for early sculpting on the Kilmer suit? The article mentions is might possibly be from RETURNS, but the bat logo definitely has the FOREVER look-- sorta concave V shaped, not flat like the 89/RETURNS logos.  I really don't remember seeing any concept suits that resembled that for RETURNS.

http://io9.com/heres-what-michael-keatons-batman-3-batsuit-would-have-1674688371

[Slash Man]

That's awesome! Very interesting concepts there. While I don't have any new info, I do see more Forever in these suits than Returns. The sharper design of the first one is very similar to the Sonar Suit, while the second, organic look seems like a precursor to the Panther Suit.

[Paul (ral)]

We saw these back in 2008.

They were from Batman Forever.

[d_osborn]

We saw these back in 2008.

They were from Batman Forever.

So do you know if the Keaton head was just a placeholder?  Hell, is that even a Keaton head?  The more I look at it, I can kinda see Kilmer in there. 

From what I know from an acquaintance knows Keaton, he was out after the very first meeting with Schumacher.  Surely they weren't already sculpting maquettes that early in the process. 

We can tell that there were at least two suits planned at this stage, pre-nips. Did the early draft that's floating around have both suits?  It's been forever since I've read it.  Pun intended.

I dig these designs WAYYYYYYYY more than what wound up on film.

[Cobblepot4Mayor]

I get the impression this might be a rejected concept from Batman Returns. Because if you look at the wall behind the suit all of Bob Ringwood's research concept art is stapled up. If you remember they looked at shapes of trains and what looked like toasters, all strange strange concepts, in redesigning the suit for the second film. All to get a sense of a more machined look. Why would all this be up for Batman Forever? I guess Ringwood may have culled some from the previous film but the early Batman movies were never big on recycling the same things remember. Especially the third one. A movie I remember reading a quote at the time describing it as: "...nothing but nothing would be the same as the previous films..." It seems very strange they would stick around.

It's possible Ringwood brought back elements of the design for the third time around. They do say never waste an idea. I like this strange, discovered suit because it incorporates elements of then all three films. It has the Returns sharp chest symbol. A touch of the original film's muscular anatomy. And the sharper muscle rivets of the Forever armor.

[Furstmobile]

You can see Tim Flattery's Batmobile design being used as a reference in this pic.


The Sonar suit is designed with the new Giger-esque techno-organic MTV aesthetic to compliment the new vehicle designs. Some intern that maintains the IronHead Studio site put these pics into the Returns section because they have Keaton heads and yellow oval emblems. Either that or there has been some mega corporate suppression to cover up that the Forever Batmobile and suits were just some rejected Returns designs that were dusted off for the third movie.

Another clue: The book Giger's Alien is being used as a reference in these pics. The book wasn't published until '94.


Jose's appearance matches up with how he looked when he sculpted Kilmer's cowl.


And you can see a fully painted black maquette between's Jose's face and the cowl. One of the other familiar maquettes is also in the photo.

[d_osborn]

Cool post!  I checked out Ironhead.  Cool stuff!  Impressive resume!

Has there ever been other designs leak out from Giger's work on FOREVER? I've seen a few of his Batmobile sketches. His thoughts on the suit would be interesting.

With all of the visuals, it's a damned shame that there weren't ever any 'art of' books for the older films.

[eledoremassis02]

I see keaton in the back. Were they just using it even after Keaton dropped?

[Furstmobile]

Yep.

[Seantastic]

After watching some new BF interviews that have surfaced in the last week or so, its really starting to seem that Keaton dropped out late in the game, so maybe these are legit, maybe Keaton's involvement was much longer than anyone has every really let on.

I cant really imagine Keaton in either of Kilmer's suits, it worked for Val cause he kinda had the body for it and was much more bulky and built than Keaton was