You know…maybe this bit of very integral backstory should’ve been indicated in the movie. Just a thought.
Hell no, it shouldn't have. I'm glad it didn't make it in. Better to leave things unexplained than to give a reason that isn't very good. Although I don't follow along with that "Jake Skywalker" crowd, I do agree that it's a bummer to find out your hero became such a failure that they quit... but if you're making a film that's all about them, then I'll let it slide, because you can presumably make the entire film a satisfying redemption arc.
In a film where Keaton was just a supporting character? No thanks. Imagine if the film was exactly the same, but they had kept in that element? It wouldn't have felt like he had truly redeemed himself or sufficiently gotten over it. That's a heavy enough detail that he really should have had more focus to increase any possible payoff, and the last thing a
Flash movie ought to be doing is taking the focus too far away from Barry and his journey.
I mean, I take issue with the very idea, anyway. If you look at just Burton's two films, Batman has very little in the way of an arc. Without
Batman Forever to re-contextualize the events of '89 and
Returns (and it does), Batman has no sense of remorse for the killing he's done. Sure, he hasn't murdered anyone in front of a child... but I don't believe somebody that thinks killing is okay would be put off by anyone seeing it. Unless you're going to tell me he mistakenly killed an innocent man, Keaton's Batman probably would have felt justified all the same. But say I'm willing to roll with that--it's more depressing that instead of it being the incident to let him cement a new moral compass and establish a no-kill code for himself, he just walks away. He doesn't choose to be better, he quits.
Frankly, it's why, in my heart,
Batman Forever will always be the proper continuation of that universe, because the writers actually cared enough to put Batman on a better path, accepting the mistakes of the past but forging ahead. While it was wonderful to see Michael return to the role, as far as I'm concerned, the Keaton we see in
The Flash is rightfully an offshoot variant that wasn't meant to be. It was okay enough because something better was on the horizon--he was going to be playing a new version going forward who had become a better man. Not lonely, not broken... a grand patriarch in a world of superheroes, with a Bat Family of his own. But that was stolen from us.
At least,
canonically to
The Flash's own sequence of events, we're painted a better picture--that this variant of Wayne succeeded in saving Gotham and had earned the right to retire. It's heartening, it's uplifting and satisfying. This BS idea for backstory was
wisely deleted.
