| | Michael,
Glad to meet a fellow fan... and you know, this very miniseries -- which was originally published in 1984 (a telling year) -- was actually the series that brought Batman back, and was actually the reason for the Michael Keaton movie. Before this, Batman was a largely camped-out, forgotten character.
Frank Miller brought him back by literally injecing a heavy dose of Howard Roark into Batman, and made him very Blade-Runner-ish. The character is utterly self-reliant, sometimes dipping into the realms of paranoid psychosis... which is, of course, part of the territory when you're a person of consummate logic and integrity, surrounded by a world of anti-logic corruption.
After reading The Dark Knight Returns, and when I heard that a Batman movie was being planned, I immediately assumed that the obvious would be done: that it would be done Frank Miller-style, with the entire Blade Runner sort of feel... complete with rainy streets, music by Vangelis, the whole kit and caboodle.
But noooooo. Of course, the arrogant, cocaine-linked nepotists of Hollywood had to worship their golden calf, the god "Recent Craze", and give the project to Tim Burton... who, of course, in compliance with the principles of Hollywood nepotism (which also of course override real quality and objectivity), dictated that he cast comedian Michael Keaton as Batman (lousy choice number two), and who would then also pick that composer of circus clown music, Danny Elfman, to do the musical score (lousy choice number three... we have a tri-fecta!). At least they got Jack Nicholson, which was one right move.
Once you top it all off with a tacky set of songs by Prince, what you're basically left with is an overall package that is the equivalent of taking a public dump at a wedding, and then smearing it on the bride's dress in front of the entire wedding congregation.
But hey, if Hollywood does it, it's automatically right... right?
I mean, they could have hired Ridley Scott (of Blade Runner) to do the directing, who would likely have picked Vangelis to do the musical score (which would have been unbelievably amazing), and Scott might have picked Tom Beringer to play The Dark Knight (Go back and rent the movie Sniper and tell me that Beringer can't play paramilitary, silent, obsessive, and cerebral)... Imagine Tom Beringer as Batman, opposite Jack Nicholson (or Gene Hackman) as The Joker. Those would be gritty men, playing a real gut-busting chess game of wits and sheer will against each other.
Anyhow, now that the vainglorious stumblers-through-the-dark of Hollywood have completely burned the Batman movie opportunity to the ground, they may have learned somewhat from their mistakes. So they're casting Christian Bale as the new Batman, and the Batmobile is now the tank that it was in Frank Miller's novel.
However, if you ask me, the best film version by far that I've seen yet, was done by an associate Hollywood producer named Sandy Collora, in a seven-minute short he produced to advertise his talents, in a featurette called: Batman: Dead End. The link for the movie is here. Enjoy:
http://www.theforce.net/theater/shortfilms/batman_deadend/
After you watch it, I'm sure you'll agree that all the other Batman movies thus far have been just plain crap.
(Edited by Orion Reasoner on 11/09, 11:43pm)
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