As many of you know I’m a big Batman fan. I will give almost any adventure featuring the Dark Knight a shot. I didn’t really know about the The Dark Knight Returns movie until fairly recently. It’s actually based on an original comic book series by Frank Miller, and after I heard that I jumped at the chance to watch it.
The plot is set a few decades after Batman’s prime. Bruce Wayne is now 55 years old, and has retired as Batman for ten years. After Gotham’s greatest hero disappeared, the city’s crime has skyrocketed. While old villains are absent, a new group of criminals calling themselves The Mutants are terrorizing Gotham.
So after a couple of pushes, Batman returns to save the day. After defeating a few batches of mutants, he also must defeat his old foe Two-Face who’s now had surgery to fix the bad side of his face. Despite looking normal, Dent is still evil on the inside and gives the Dark Knight quite the challenge. But when the original danger is gone, an old enemy comes out of the shadows for a final showdown.
If the 2nd Part is as good as the first, this may be the best original animated film so far based on DC comics. It’s not canonical to the standard comics story-line (known as the Earth-One universe) so once you get passed that you can really enjoy the creative tale. I would say Batman’s ethics seem to be much darker than usual, but I can’t wait to see the second half.
