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I have a comic vlog on YouTube in which I discuss mostly each week's comic releases, but occasionally I throw in a subject video about this or that, and one that I felt that I was compelled to do was one about the year 1986, or as I call it, The Year That Changed Comics Forever. You had two major releases in the same year. One was Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' WATCHMEN, which for the first time, really introduced the deconstruction of the superhero to the comic book world, and holds the spot for the only comic book to be considered one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. The other was from a very popular writer/artist who had come from an extraordinary run on DAREDEVIL to DC Comics in 1985 with a strange and wonderful avant-garde fusion of a dystopian future blended with ancient Eastern mythology called RONIN. This still-young artist then, in 1986, decided to create a future vision of one of DC's most beloved and iconic characters that was brutal, dark, uncompromising and socially conscious. That man was Frank Miller, and that book that he created is one of the undisputed masterpieces in Comic Book history: BATMAN - THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS starts with a simple premise: It's the future, and it has been exactly ten years to the day that Gotham City and the world had their last sighting of Batman. And although it's not explicitly discussed, it is due to a few different things; the main reason being the implied death of a partner, and the other (and this is only an assumption) being that all of Batman's rogue's gallery as well as all elements of organized crime have either left Gotham, are behind bars or dead, or are in Arkham Asylum. So we have Bruce Wayne, a somewhat empty shell of a man trying his best to enjoy his retirement. We also have Commisioner Jim Gordon, facing his own mandatory retirement. The two are friends moreso than they ever were before because Gordon now knows that Bruce was Batman. This future is far from perfect though. The criminals of this era are products of a very new generation. They call themselves The Mutants, and they are not a gang of unruly kids; they are thrill-seeker killers that run around the city butchering children and nuns and anyone they want to show their depravity. Bruce, still a haunted man, and still very much an obsessive man, can no longer continue to ignore the threat they pose. And on a storm-toss'd night, suddenly The Batman reappears to wage his one-man war on crime.
Now, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is far more than that description. It is epic in its scale of emotional storytelling arcs and the amount of characters it has; it's epic in its battles; it's epic because it needs to be. A return of Batman after a 10-year absence requires something of such a grand scale that a mere 70-odd minutes would not be enough to contain it. So the adaptation by Bob Goodman and the direction by Jay Oliva smartly divided this into two segments and this film is Part One, which covers the first two chapters (THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS; THE DARK KNIGHT TRIUMPHANT) of Miller's four-chapter tale. And sometime in 2013, we'll get Part Two. Unlike the previous Miller adaptation to be made by DC Animated, BATMAN: YEAR ONE, which was compact enough to be parsed into about 70 minutes of film, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is frankly too large for that.
Now, many of the less-than-or-moderately-positive reviews of this film from people who are fans of the source material are upset because they feel the film waters down so many of the elements of the savagery and biting social commentary that made the book into what it is. And I can totally understand and appreciate that point of view. There was stuff in the film that wasn't in the book and vice versa. There were lines of dialogue from the book I desperately wanted to hear the gruff voice of Peter Weller, playing Bruce Wayne/Batman, say on screen. But for the most part, they kept a great deal of the brutality in, like the scene with The Mayor and The Mutant Leader is the one that sticks out heaviest in my mind. There are moments of instantly recognizable panel composition from the book, including the immortal image of a silhouetted Batman brightly backlit by a lightning bolt. Much of the stylized street slang of the Mutants is present.
But film, live-action or animated, is a much different animal than comics. Comics can offer so many different styles of narrative. Such as internal monologue that you can read into the mind of your characters, giving you insight, and while that's great on the page, it can really hurt your momentum in a film. Oliva ignores almost all of the internal monologue, except for a pretty glaring scene in which he decides to use it. That moment is very important, but because we are treated to the internal monologue there, the viewer who is familiar with the source material wants more, leading to the aforementioned disconnect. It really proves the old chestnut of how you can please some people some of the time, but you can't please everyone all the time.
From a casting standpoint, Andrea Romano (who's been at this game for decades) assembles a list of great voice actors that are largely character actors that have appeared in some films and a lot of television. Weller is spot-on perfect. He has just enough of the world-weariness, but enough of the gravelly intonation that makes Batman a true bad@$$. David Selby, of shows like the original DARK SHADOWS and FALCON CREST, does an excellent job as the aging Gordon. Wade Williams, who has been in just about every television show from the 90's through today (and was even the Warden of Blackgate prison in Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT RISES) does a commendable job as the "rehabilitated" Harvey Dent. The real standouts here for me were young actress Ariel Winter as the voice of Carrie Kelley aka Robin and Michael McKean (THIS IS SPINAL TAP, and was even Perry White in TV's SMALLVILLE) as psychologist Bartholomew Wolper. Winter gives the youthful energy and strength that Carrie needs, and McKean gives the right air of pompous superiority as Wolper.
The animation style doesn't totally ape that of Miller, but it certainly shows its influence with its heavy use of almost cube-like faces and enormous hulking bodies that give the characters that even-larger-than-life aesthetic. Occasionally, in particular with vehicle sequences, the movement gets bogged down by CGI, which can be really jarring. But the fight and action choreography is very fluid and the big fights are very brutal.
DC Animated Films, under the auspices of mastermind Bruce Timm, have made quite a name for themselves since 1992, when BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES first premiered. That groundbreaking series made way for what is now considered the DC Animated Universe. They've recently been releasing a slew of nearly full-length animated films based on either some of the more famous characters or some extremely popular comic book story arcs, from characters like WONDER WOMAN and GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT or GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD KNIGHTS (which are not from a specific story arc) to SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES, JUSTICE LEAGUE DOOM, BATMAN: UNDER THE RED HOOD, THE NEW FRONTIER, and SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE. These have worked to varying degrees of success, but THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS PART ONE is one of the more successful attempts at bringing something to the screen that is something of an impossible undertaking. They know that there are legions of fans that consider DKR their "Batman Bible", and trying to please all of them by simply translating the book page-for-page would have been a disaster. You have to have enough surprising moments in the film that will keep the audience on its toes, or you might as well do a motion comic.
My main complaint with this film is that I don't know how successful it will be as a storytelling experience unless you're familiar with the source material. I think that there's too much included that, just from a style standpoint, is really going to be confusing for fresh eyes to see it. I have faith in the audience, but I think that the only reason that I'm giving this four instead of five stars is because I don't think that newcomers to this tale will be able to get as much out of it as they should because of its very faithful adaptation.
As it is, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS PART ONE should please longtime fans of the comic, but might not appeal to the newer fans as much as the Nolan Batman films have been able to do.
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Daniel Ivan Cohen
Live action filmakers please watch!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 28, 2014
Anon E Mouse
Forget the 'real' films!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 6, 2014Zack Williams
A Decent Batman Film
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 12, 2017Matthew
An absolute must for any Batman fan! Fantastic storyline and animation.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 5, 2016Amazon Customer
Brilliant -- lives up to the graphic novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 10, 2013
