What Tim Burton Thought of the Nipples on the Batsuit

Tim Burton’s Batman movies are some of the most beloved of his career. After the Nightmare Before Christmas visionary left the franchise, Batman got a suit with nipples. Here’s what Burton thought of that.

Tim Burton contrasted the nipples on the Batsuit to his ‘dark’ Batman

Quick Batman history: Burton made two Batman films: Batman and Batman Returns. After the latter was deemed too dark, director Joel Schumacher was given control of the franchise and took it into family-friendly territory. During a 2022 interview with Empire, Burton looked back on the controversial tone of Batman Returns. “It is funny to see this now, because all these memories come back of, ‘It’s too dark,'” he said. “So, it makes me laugh a little bit.”

“I’m not just overly dark,” he added. “That represents me in the sense that… that’s how I see things. It’s not meant as pure darkness. There’s a mixture. I feel really fondly about it because of the weird experiment that it felt like.”

The Ed Wood director was not a fan of an infamous design choice. “[Back then] they went the other way. That’s the funny thing about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. OK. 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 f*** yourself.’ Seriously. So yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film].”

Was there bigotry in the fan backlash to Joel Schumacher taking over from Tim Burton?

Here’s a question nobody seems to ask: Why are nipples on the Batsuit so bad? It’s not like we haven’t seen shirtless men in plenty of action movies. For some reason, actual nipples are fine but the simulacrum of nipples are upsetting to people.

It’s hard not to see the backlash to the nipples on the Batsuit as partly homophobic. Schumacher was an openly gay man. People felt there was something homoerotic about Schumacher’s portrayal of Batman in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. In the 1990s, LGBTQ people were far less accepted (legally and socially) than they are now, so adding any gay undercurrent to Batman was seen as an insult to the character and the audience.

Of course, the world has changed. Go on social media for five seconds, and you’ll find many examples of people (many of whom are not LGBTQ themselves) writing fanfiction or making fan art about Batman and Robin as a gay couple. A Batsuit with nipples probably wouldn’t receive a wholly hostile reception today that way it did when Schumacher was in the director’s chair.

Nobody has to like any Batman movie

Of course, that is not to say that anyone (including Burton) is obliged to enjoy Batman Forever or Batman & Robin. If you ask me, Batman Forever is merely fine while Batman & Robin is a movie that won’t entertain anyone over the age of 5 unless you like to watch movies that are so-bad-they’re-good. All I’m saying is that going after those movies for an alleged gay subtext is wrong. Who cares?

In other words, the Batsuit nipples are not the problem. The problem is the Bat credit card. That wasn’t funny in the slightest. No matter how accepting the world becomes of LGBTQ people, that credit card joke will remain one of the most embarrassing moments in the Caped Crusader’s history. 

Love or hate Schumacher’s Batman films, the suit was not the real problem with them.