George Clooney Gets It About Batman & Robin

George Clooney has been in the entertainment business for a long time. From coming into our lives and homes as Doug Ross on the hit television show ER to making his name known in film, Clooney has had quite the career, and with that comes some misses. While I personally have a soft spot in my heart for the late ’80s and ’90s era of Batman movies, there were some choices that have an infamous history to them.

One of those choices? George Clooney’s Bat-nipples. The Batsuit in the 1997 film Batman & Robin has become something of a joke throughout the years, even though it was far from the most egregious thing ever done to the character, but still, it left an impression on the world and pretty much set the tone for the rest of George Clooney’s superhero career. (Meaning he never came back.)

At a Q&A at the New York City’s DGA Theater for his film The Tender Bar, George Clooney was asked about his career in a broad sense. The question was about acting in a big blockbuster vs. acting in character-driven films, and the Good Night, and Good Luck star reflected on his time as the Dark Knight. Clooney said, “I did one superhero movie and I f––ed it up so bad they won’t let me near the set,” in response to the question and went on to say that he didn’t “want to get into all the bat nipples.”

Eventually, he went on to honestly answer the question: “My work, where my bread is buttered, is the kind of films that I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, which is sort of the prime time for American filmmaking, which were all story-based.” But it is still sad to know that it probably isn’t likely that Clooney will come back to the world of superheroes.

The era of Batman movies that he came into started with the Michael Keaton and Tim Burton films and morphed into the fantastical world created by Joel Schumacher. Which … included nipples on the Batsuit. Would George Clooney do well in our modern era of superhero films? Yes, of course! He’d fit right in with the greats that we’ve had tackling these comic book characters throughout the last decade.

But from his answer, it doesn’t seem likely that Clooney is going to step into a cape of any kind any time soon. Come on, Batman & Robin wasn’t that bad. There were some good things about it. It just wasn’t the best superhero movie we’ve ever seen, and we’ve learned the hard way around that nipples and superhero outfits just don’t go together. Working with Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar, though, he did make it clear to Affleck that he shouldn’t have nipples on his suit.

(via Entertainment Weekly, image: Warner Bros.)

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