Pierce Brosnan got candid the way you’re supposed to during his Reddit AMA to promote his new movie The November Man. The much-admired and ridiculously handsome Brosnan told a little story that illustrates how very much things have changed in Hollywood in the last quarter century. Back in the late 80s, Brosnan met with director Tim Burton about playing Batman. Brosnan hadn’t yet become James Bond, which was the mint role for a debonair leading man at the time, but he still turned down the caped crusader. Presented with Batman, the actor said: “I just couldn’t really take it seriously. Any man who wears his underpants outside his pants just cannot be taken seriously. That was my foolish take on it. It was a joke, I thought. But how wrong was I?” Pretty wrong. These days James Bond does okay in theaters, but Batman trounces 007 every time. And today any A-lister asked to choose between the role of a comic book superhero or a famous English spy wouldn’t make the decision lightly.
And it wasn’t because Brosnan doesn’t admire Batman‘s first director either. Brosnan acted for Tim Burton in the strange and wonderful Mars Attacks. He told the AMA crowd at Reddit: “I love the world of Tim Burton. I just think he’s a unique storyteller and director on the Hollywood stage, or any kind of cinematic stage, come to that. I thought that the idea of turning bubblegum cards about Martians taking over the world, making it into a movie with an ensemble cast, was just a brilliant idea.”
