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If you walked out of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman feeling curiously nostalgic for a superhero movie franchise that never existed, prepare to have your mind blown.
The fake trailer for 1992’s Birdman Returns — Riggan Thomson’s second outing as the entirely fictitious superhero — is worryingly spot-on for the period, from the hilarious narration (“1992 is the year of the Bird… man,” indeed) to the fuzzy video quality and what sounds like part of Danny Elfman’s score to the 1989 Batman movie… which starred Michael Keaton, who would later go on to play Thomson in this year’s critically-acclaimed Birdman.
To double-down on the meta-textualness of the whole thing, in 1992, Keaton was busy starring in Batman Returns, the second of Warners’ Batman movie franchise. Does this mean that we can assume that in some alternate universe, Christopher Nolan has already made Birdman Begins?
Birdman is in theaters now. Birdman Returns exists solely in our hearts.
Read more Specialty Box Office: ‘Birdman’ Soars to No. 2 Theater Average of 2014
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