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Batman Returns

Tim Burton

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Free the nip? Or maybe not. Director Tim Burton, who birthed the big screen Batman franchise for DC and Warner Bros. with the 1989 film Batman and its 1992 sequel Batman Returns, reflected on his films ahead of his latter’s 30th anniversary in a new interview with Empire. Not shy in his response, Burton didn’t hold back as he addressed the campy approach of the follow-up films.

“They went the other way,” said Burton. “That’s the funny thing about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go fuck yourself.’ Seriously. So, yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film.].”

After Warner Bros. and Burton parted ways, the studio then hired Joel Schumacher, who brought a style similar to Adam West’s Batman TV series for Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. And if you’re still traumatized by the thought of Bat-nipples, Schumacher and his lead sculptor, Jose Fernandez, are the ones to blame for the infamous design on the Batman costume.

“It wasn’t fetish to me, it was more informed by Roman armor — like Centurions,” Fernandez told Mel Magazine about the legendary point-stickers. “And, in the comic books, the characters always looked like they were naked with spray paint on them — it was all about anatomy, and I like to push anatomy. I don’t know exactly where my head was at back in the day, but that’s what I remember. And so, I added the nipples. I had no idea there was going to end up being all this buzz about it.”

Ultimately, Burton is still fond of the work that he created with Warner Bros. and his contributions to the Batman universe, although he feels like he didn’t go too far into his darkness, despite what some critics might say. “I’m not just overly dark. That represents me in the sense that… that’s how I see things. It’s not meant as pure darkness. There’s a mixture,” he told Empire. “I feel really fondly about it because of the weird experiment that it felt like.”

Next up for Burton is Wednesday, the Addams Family reboot on Netflix. But will Lurch have prominent nipples on the show? Probably not.