Christian Bale Wishes He Could Play Batman Again

During the whole process of recasting and rebooting the Batman movie franchise we were all told that Christian Bale was ready to hang up the cowl and move on from the character. Christopher Nolan had retired from Batman film making and DC was starting over with a shared universe. But then Empire magazine did an interview with the former Bruce Wayne…

"I’ve got to admit initially, even though I felt that it was the right time to stop, there was always a bit of me going, ‘Oh go on… Let’s do another.’ So when I heard there was someone else doing it, there was a moment where I just stopped and stared into nothing for half an hour."

Uh oh. It seems that the parting wasn’t as mutual as we were lead to believe. I imagine that learning you’ve been replaced as Batman is inversely as impacting as finding out you’ve been cast as Batman. Bale continues:

"But I’m 40. The fact that I’m jealous of someone else playing Batman…I think I should have gotten over it by now. I haven’t spoken with Ben, but I emailed him offering bits of advice that I learned the hard way. I would imagine he is doing everything he can to avoid anything that I did."

Like the advice about peeing that he gave Affleck.

Had Bale continued as Batman the new movies would have far different implications. Especially since they’d have to answer a whole helluva lot of questions regarding the end of The Dark Knight Rises. Did he unretire, WHY did he retire? Did he just come back and say, ‘surprise! I’m not dead!’? Maybe they’d have been better off just using Joseph Gordon Levett.