This is one of those quote-piranha stories that happen when any famous person says any sentence that includes a few key words, in this case “batman,” “origin,” and “Nolan.” Still, Batman fans and movie fans that enjoy pondering the “could have beens” with enjoy what Keaton had to say to Marc Maron on his (typically awesome) podcast WTF about his vision for a third Batman film in his franchise. Essentially he claims that he was pushing for a trip back to Batman’s origin, and that it would have been the sort of tone-rebooting, precise film that Nolan ended up making a decade+ later.

What’s hilarious is that he says all of this with praise for Nolan and co., before immediately admitting he hasn’t seen any of them.

“The guy who’s doing them now, Chris Nolan, he’s so talented, it’s crazy. [Christian Bale] is so talented. It’s so good. But I say that like I’ve seen them, and I actually haven’t. I didn’t even see much of the second one that I did… You look at where he went, which is exactly what I wanted to do when I was having meetings about the third one. I said you want to see how this guy started. We’ve got a chance here to fix whatever we kind of maybe went off. This could be brilliant.”

All of that to say he totally wanted to make the kind of franchise that would be popular and end up making billion.

Indeed, Mike.

Still, kudos on dipping out when things started looking south all those years ago. That will continue to go down as a truly prudent exit of an actor from a franchise.