The Dark Knight Returns

[The Dark Knight]

I completely relate to Miller's mindset here.

Then a really strange thing happened to me. All of the sudden I realized I was about to turn 29 years old, Batman's age. Then I realized I was one year away from turning older than Batman. The more this year went on the more it bothered me that I might be older than him. So finally I [decided] to fix that, and make him older than me once and for all. So I conceived of a story where Batman was at the impossibly old age of 50.

Mixed in with this I'm not interested in the younger generation or appealing to them at all. My focus is on the people I grew up with, the journey we're on and what's happening with us now. The reality of getting older I suppose, but indeed, these feelings clicked in hard for me recently.

[The Laughing Fish]

Back in 2016, Frank Miller described how symbolic Batman is in the midst of the all the chaos and political subtext in DKR, and dismissed suggestions that Batman is a fascist.

One of the things that led you to create Dark Knight Returns was a series of muggings. What happened?

There's something demeaning about the first time you're knocked to the ground and punched in the stomach and have a gun waved in your face and realize that you're completely at somebody's mercy. And they can take your life. And at that point, you'll do anything. There's something so humiliating about that. And to me that made me realize that Batman was the most potent symbol DC had in its hands. Sure, Superman can fly, but Batman turns me back into that guy who is scared and at the same time the guy who can come and save him. It's a perfect myth.

What makes him so mythic?

Batman isn't interesting because he has a cool car. It's great that he has a cool car. But he's interesting because he straightens the world out. And he brings order to a very chaotic world. Especially when you're a child. You need somebody, even if it's a fictional character, to tell you that the world makes sense and that the good guys can win. That's what these heroes are for.

Some have said you turned Batman into a fascist. Agree?

Anybody who thinks Batman was fascist should study their politics. The Dark Knight, if anything, would be a libertarian. The fascists tell people how to live. Batman just tells criminals to stop.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/a-rare-interview-frank-miller-871654/

[Slash Man]

No complaints there; I think he still understands what makes Batman great, even if it doesn't always come across in the writing. Superheroes were always about wish fulfillment, but Batman seems to have best adapted that to an older audience.

[The Laughing Fish]

Zack Snyder interviewed Frank Miller for Inverse.com, and they talked in depth about superheroes being a modern-day mythology. This interview is more about Miller looking back at his career and his work influenced comics as a more sophisticated medium, and DKR bore a chunk of the conversation.

Some of the highlights include Snyder and Miller on "deconstruction", rebuilding Batman and the differences between him and Superman:

Zack Snyder: I have this theory that in the modern world, we lost myth, and so we use comics and superheroes to kind of decode the problems of our times. That is to say, in the ancient world, if a volcano went off, you'd be like, "Oh, there's a god in that mountain and he's mad." Now, if a terrorist flies a plane into the World Trade Center, it's harder to make a myth out of it, but comics might allow that sort of thinking. I don't know how you feel about that.

Frank Miller: Well, I believe the birth of religion and mythology was basically a cave dweller not understanding lightning and having to anthropomorphize nature. Religion was the precursor to science.

Along the way where all these gods and heroes were created. The Greeks just couldn't stop puking them out. They had a legion of superheroes going on their own, and those really stayed in people's heads. And the superhero universes essentially are this wild amalgam of sort of recreated Greek, Nordic, and Hebrew mythologies.

Zack Snyder: Yeah, they've really endured. And so, is your feeling that to talk about mythology in comics is really kind of 101, because we're all still living in the shadow of those gods? So maybe that's what it is, if you deconstruct, you kind of peel away, and by peeling away you really get to the mythological part of it.

Frank Miller: That's the best way to put it. I've always found "deconstruct" to be a problematic term because people usually assume that when you deconstruct something, you're tearing it to pieces, and that's only half of what deconstruction really is because it's tearing its essence and then rebuilding it stronger than ever before. I mean, I wrote Batman cynically, in order to mock the character. I basically was just looking to get rid of all the sh*t and restore him to the kind of stature he had in my mind when I was seven years old.

Zack Snyder: The Dark Knight Returns is often credited with revolutionizing how Batman is perceived. But also my takeaway from Dark Knight Returns is exactly the same as you just stated it. Some people would say it's deconstruction, and I understand that you might say that, but for me it was restorative. I'm like: That's my Batman. The Batman I want to see is that Batman, not the bullsh*t Batman who's a joke. What were your key influences when creating a darker, older, more psychologically complex Batman?

Frank Miller: The notorious old TV show, the one with Adam West and Burt Ward. I mean, that was a goof. It was basically a snide take on stuff that I remember that I absolutely loved. I loved the comic book characters and the TV show was constantly telling you how stupid the comic book was.

Zack Snyder: Yeah. Because it was counterculture against authority and they sort of saw Batman as the man. And so I just felt like they were making the man out to be sort of an idiot.

Frank Miller: Yeah. So, without question, I was rejecting that damn show more than anything when I did Dark Knight Returns.

Zack Snyder: You were like, literally, this is the opposite. This guy is the opposite of what you think he is.

Frank Miller: Yeah, this guy is no joke.

Zack Snyder: One of the things you do in Dark Knight Returns with the voiceover, in the sort of very specific language that he uses in combat and how he analyzes the combat that he's in, you go like, "OK, this guy is 100% more complicated in his combat style even, than you you can imagine."

Frank Miller: I look at Batman as the self-made superhero. Bruce Wayne made himself Batman by studying, training, and exploring. Extraordinary feats come easily to Superman. He can fly and then the rest. I mean, just in terms of Superman, it's like you think you can do it. He can fly for god's sake. Whereas Batman needs a goddamn car. I enjoy an effort.

Zack Snyder: The one thing I really loved about the way you did Superman also was, he's sort of a tool of the U.S. government, but the Superman also in your version is self-aware. He knows what he's doing. Because everyone's like, "Oh, he's like a big boy scout." Well, it's like, no, he understands the political complexity of the whole thing, and he's just done the math and goes, "Look, this is the only way we are able to exist is if we do it this way."

Frank Miller: Superman is an apologia worrywart and he's concerned with keeping the world from blowing itself up. Batman's this Dionysian character who's out for blood, and they're perfect opposites in that Batman is the reckless ego and Superman is the fearful superego.

Zack Snyder: That's cool. I really love it, because I love that Superman is in charge of keeping this... In a lot of ways, the children are tearing the preschool down, they're setting it on fire, and they're out of their minds, and he's really just trying to wrangle us so we don't kill ourselves and Batman's just like, "No, that's what it is to be alive," you know? That's cool.

Frank Miller: Batman is the happier character.

Zack Snyder: 100%. Yeah! 100%.

Another exchange involves Snyder and Miller talking about canon and their criticism over absolute rules for characters only stifle creativity. In this instance, Miller explains his thought process behind Batman using guns in DKR.

Zack Snyder: That's cool. Look, you know how I feel about the work. It's incredible. So, the heroes in your stories are often morally ambiguous or even sometimes antiheroes. How do you view the evolution of the hero in modern storytelling, and why do you gravitate toward these more complex heroes?

Frank Miller: I regard defining the hero as being the center and purpose of my work, and in order to find something you have to test it, prod it, attend it, and find new ways to portray it. And I find sometimes having a hero do wrong or take a wrong course is the best way to ultimately define what a hero is, especially with my Daredevil and my portrait of Superman. It's again the deconstruction thing where you can get to a character's essence by having them wander far astray. With Daredevil: Born Again, he essentially has a nervous breakdown. He loses control of his violence and his darker tendencies and essentially has to lose everything before he can turn into a better character.

Zack Snyder: Yeah, that's cool. For me, if someone says in a hero's canon, he's not allowed to do blank, I immediately want him to do that thing because I feel like if a character can't withstand breaking his own canon, then he's not really worth anything, you know?

Frank Miller: Right. And then what defines him? I mean, at first, Zack, I approached this kind of thing almost like just a rebellious adolescent. I was told Batman could never fire a gun. I was told by the editor with absolute conviction. So, I came up with an excuse for him to fire a rifle, even though it was just a grappling hook into the side of a building, but it was just to get that picture of him holding it. I don't like these absolute dicta.

Zack Snyder: Well, it's cool because if you can create a scenario where Batman has to shoot a gun and someone says, "Well, Batman can't shoot a gun." And you're like, "Well, what should he do in this scenario then?" And then if someone says, "Well, don't put him in that scenario." I'm like, "Well, that's a weak character." You can't have a character where we're modifying this scenario because he can't exist in it. That's not realistic. Now we're just creating scenarios that his morality can work inside of, rather than the other way around.

Frank Miller: Absolutely right, Zack. That's not creative.

Zack Snyder: And I think that's what Dark Knight did for me, it was like, "Oh wait, Batman can actually live in my world," which I think was cool.

Frank Miller: Batman can't shoot somebody dead, he cannot murder, but that's a completely different issue than using essentially a tool.

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/frank-miller-zack-snyder-interview

It's a great interview. I agree with both men when it comes to the argument that certain characters should never be written in a scenario at all. Looking for a deus ex machina or copping out just to uphold absolute ideas is cheap storytelling. Whether the execution has been pulled off, however, is another story.

I'm still not crazy about the idea of Superman as a government agent, but then again I can still acknowledge he's in a no-win situation - if he overthrows the government, he's abusing his power. I don't necessarily agree with the criticism of the Sixties TV show Batman as an idiot, but like it or not DKR and its impact was a response against the public perception of Batman at the time.

[The Joker]

Interesting interview.

Snyder is a Miller/Moore disciple through and through, and although Snyder has been more associated with Frank Miller thanks to "300" and clearly being influenced by Miller with Snyder DCEU films, it's kinda a shame that "MiracleMan" was sold to Marvel rather than DC, ect. I think Snyder would've likely made a earnest adaptation of Moore's MM tenure, where a MM movie is even less likely to ever be explored under Disney in the foreseeable future.