Batman: Year One - The R-Rated Reboot That Almost Was (ft. Frank Miller)

in 1997 director joel schumacher's batman and robin was released to negative reviews boy was i shocked by the new batman movie and i would give it two stars how many would you that's exactly what i'm getting right okay fine it's like there's a pinball machine with all five balls on the machine at the same time it was the campy neon tinged death knell for the cycle of batman's big screen adventures that had begun with tim burton's 1989 classic it was also the beginning of a fallow period for the caped crusader that would see him absent from movie theaters for eight years the honest answer is we saw that that version had run its course and that we were going to have to embrace another course we were disappointed in the financial realities of what occurred with it although we actually made a little bit of money so it wasn't like we were coming from the point of view of oh my god what a disaster or what are we gonna do oh we lost all this money it was more a recognition of creatively we had run out of room on that direction it's batman so many people have to approve anything to do with a with a with a trademark of that value that the odds are that anything is going to be squashed we were a little ahead of the curve i think in the sense of like we were prepared to investigate a few different directions as opposed to one and one of the most intriguing of these would-be batman movies was surely darren aronofsky and frank miller's batman year one conceived as a violent low-budget r-rated version of the dark knights legend that was more french connection and taxi driver than superhero adventure the version he did in frank is very true and very interesting it just happened to ultimately be far too dark this is the story of year one the batman movie that almost was [Music] interior bruce wayne's apartment night the tv news plays in the background as bruce applies a fake scar onto his cheek bruce vo november 8 dear father the pimp knew my face a distracting scar will hopefully mask my identity bruce puts on the overcoat and wide brimmed concealing hat tonight i begin your revenge i will rid this city of its cancer i will draw the scum to me and make them pay bruce holds up his fist and on it his father's signet ring father tonight i am declaring war your loving son bruce before batman and robin was released a fifth film in that series was under consideration george clooney was under contract to return to the cape and cow and a script was written featuring the scarecrow and harley quinn the daughter of the joker in this incarnation variously referred to as batman unchained and or batman triumphant schumacher would have returned to direct but studio execs declined and yet the need to change up the bat formula was obvious several new concepts were explored including batman dark knight yeah that's just one word and 1k in an adaptation of the popular futuristic animated take on the character batman beyond by the year 2000 a variety of high-profile hollywood directors were reportedly pitching batman stories but it was the unique team of indie film darling darren aronofsky and comics legend miller who were ultimately hired to take the wheel of batman year one one of the things we thought about was okay what do you you know what is that going back to frank miller look like and darren being such a talented young voice it was a clear you know signal that we were willing to take a a shift aronofsky was the 31 year old hotshot who had stunned audiences at sundance with his feature film debut pie two years earlier the tale of a brilliant but troubled mathematician the film was a gritty black and white treatise on the very nature of the universe itself but shot from a ground-level brooklyn perspective who better to steer the dark knight away from his recent unfortunate technicolor fate my pitch was death wish or the french connection meets batman aronofsky would later say he wanted to quote bring an independent gorilla flavor to batman certainly the original comic that the film would be based on was a more down to earth take on batman depicting as its title suggests the first year of young bruce wayne's ups and downs as a crime fighter the story also tracked jim gordon's struggles as an honest cop adrift within the corrupt ranks of the gotham pd the relationship between batman and the future commissioner gordon would begin here even as miller told a more adult story that included things like prostitution brutality and infidelity interior james gordon's apartment bathroom night thunder rolls on the night air in the sweaty palm of james gordon rests six bullets gordon sits in his boxers on the toilet in his mouth he holds his service revolver honey come to bed gordon looks up at the door he puts the gun with its wet barrel into a holster with a badge clipped to the side and leaves the bathroom i'll say it at minimum at warner brothers and perhaps and if you look at it across our business it might be one of the first times where you know somebody like frank miller is brought in specifically to get to the heritage of what this thing is you know dc had worked with the creators of batman and worked with the but it was never treated the same way it was definitely a different sense of importance in the book tales from development hell aronofsky says i told them i'd cast clint eastwood as the dark knight and shoot it in tokyo doubling for gotham city that got their attention the filmmaker says quote unquote only half joking when you're alone at night your rage takes over and you want a revenger what face do you put with your enemy it seems the eastwood concept never made it further than that but it wasn't enough to get aronofsky and warner synced up on year one and frank miller who had written the original graphic novel as well as the groundbreaking the dark knight returns which in itself was a major influence on tim burton's batman was a natural fit to write the script having also recently worked with aronofsky on an unproduced screenplay based on his graphic novel ronan fans were generally excited by the notion of this dynamic duo rebooting batman and aronofsky made it clear from the start that he was planning on reinventing the franchise he told empire quote frank miller is writing the screenplay with me but it's going to be very different than anything in the book year one and anything you've seen toss out everything you can imagine about batman everything we're starting completely anew and to salon he said i think it's an amazing story that touches very deep in the american consciousness there's something about vengeance and justice that are really deep issues for americans and vigilantism once the pair got working on the script miller whose depiction of batman is known for its ruthlessness and violence found himself in a unique position it was the first time i worked on a bad man project with somebody whose vision of batman was darker than mine my batman was too nice for him we would argue about it and i'd say batman wouldn't do that he wouldn't torture anybody and so on enter the batman two options tonight you men can go to prison or to the prison hospital the choice is yours the first goon to recover levels a shotgun the batman throws a vicious kick to the guy's crotch before he can fire that's the one i helped you pick batman leaps into the fray talon claws sink into a man's shoulder he screams as he's thrown through a window another thug swings a bat the batman kicks him in the chest grabs his bat from midair and flings it crunch into the face of another gunner across the room a guy gets the drop on the batman with a machine gun batman vo there are seven working defenses from this position three of them disarm with minimal contact three of them kill the other just hurts crack he throws the naming sidekick into the guy's hip indeed the batman in the draft of the screenplay which can be found online these days and which appears to be legit based on quotes and references from various personnel involved in the project including aronofsky and miller depicts a very different bruce wayne and a story that fans will barely recognize from the original year one comic the goal was to avoid typical hollywood trappings to not shoot on sound stages but instead in real american inner cities and to have quote unquote real fights exploring according to aronofsky what happens when two men actually fight which you just don't see and yet the goal was to also still quote ask that eternal question what does it take for a real man to put on tights and fight crime there bruce wayne is a withdrawn loner working in the auto shop of little al an african-american working-class version of alfred bruce is tormented by nightmares and writes letters to his dead father which we hear as vo asking for guidance while fighting the urge to right the wrongs he sees on the streets of gotham one early target of his is a pimp called chichi who has a prostitute working for him named selena when he finally does embark on his vigilante ways bruce wears a signet ring with his father's initials tw which predicting the branding element that would appear 16 years later in batman v superman leaves a bat-shaped scar on his victims as his crusade against crime continues he loses all his front teeth so yeah picture that batman and evolves his approach developing a homemade bat suit that includes a painted cut in half hockey mask and hurts a lot of gangsters and thugs badly eventually he works his way up the criminal food chain and forms an uneasy alliance with lieutenant gordon one of the only honest cops in the city to take on the corrupt police commissioner familiar faces show up or are hinted at including harvey dent who's still gotham's da at this point and briefly a certain green haired patient in arkham asylum by the end bruce has reclaimed his rightful inheritance to the wayne fortune has set up a makeshift batcave in a subway tunnel and has found his true calling as the batman oh and he gets himself dentures too so problem solved there exterior dark streets night a black lincoln continental drives through the bleak barren streets of gotham at breakneck speed it is no ordinary lincoln continental it's the batmobile its windows are tinted opaque heavy steel bumper modifications have been welded to the chassis the hood has been chopped back to make room for the supercharged school bus engine that powers it and it drives without headlights like a car possessed reckless and demonic what aronofsky and miller had conceived was a batman like no other a hardcore bloody tale featuring a truly damaged anti-hero and realistic violence the studio unsurprisingly balked at the script i think i heard a shriek of horror at first miller recalled of the studio's reaction they were shocked at how bold it was and wanted to be softened as much as it could be and then we wanted it to be as hard as it could be eric watson who produced aronofsky's first three features told the la times in 2005 that warner execs should have known what to expect saying quote this was the way we pitched it and that was the script we delivered they knew what was coming so their response was definitely confusing darren wrote one version and i wrote one version neither got produced it has to be agreed upon by by the entire united states congress before it before it proceeds of course a batman movie has to serve many masters and that's why an r-rated film that reads more like death wish with a cape than any kind of superhero story was destined to never get made especially in the early 2000s indeed one of the corporate needs from a movie like this especially back then was toys batman and robin mr freeze wants the shivering shockwave but he scanned batman's thermal sensors make free sweat and now the blazing bat hammer lights up the night and can't you just picture a collectible thomas wayne signet ring complete with gangster flesh stuck in its grooves because yeah that's in the script too ironically the very thing that in part led to batman and robin's disastrous fate the merchandising of the property also meant aronofsky and miller's year one would never get made reports would follow that high-profile players like joss whedon and the wachowskis pitched their own versions of the batman origin story but nothing ever came of those by 2002 aronofsky and miller had moved on as well as a proposed batman vs superman from director wolfgang peterson became the hot new dc property at the studio eventually that project fell apart too fans finally did get their batman origin movie in 2005 when christopher nolan's batman begins was released the film found a way to balance a more realistic dark knight without taking things too far out of the pg-13 realm nice but that doesn't mean shades of aronofsky and miller's year one script didn't find their way into nolan's trilogy i don't remember what chris did or didn't read as he jumped in but anytime you do a draft like that everybody reads that draft who comes aboard right so those ideas can filter in you know anne hathaway catwoman was that affected by the aronofsky draft i have no idea i find that in the process of developing any big franchise little ideas somehow find a way when they're good of never dying no matter how many drafts no matter how many filmmakers somehow they keep coming back in you know and i i have no doubt that the exploration of darren's version impacted everything following it to some degree now you tell me how much that's a hard one exterior overgrown garden dusk bruce wayne stands in a vast classical garden amid weeds and tall grass flickering fire firelight illuminates his face in the gathering gloom of night bruce vo december 18 dear father you've taught me well showed me who i am and what it takes to be a man in this world for that i am grateful bruce looks down at his cardboard shipping box full of letters burning in a brick fire pit but i am ready to find my own way now i will make the most of my inheritance and i will always honor your memory bruce holds a final letter in his hands he looks at it for one more moment and let's slip into the flames night is falling i've got work to do your loving son batman [Music] it's batman you

Channel: IGN

Views: 300,682

Keywords: IGN, movie, Reboot, R-Rated, Feature, Unmasked, Superhero, screenplay, making of, Frank Miller, Year One movie, Clint Eastwood, secret history, Batman & Robin, Darren Aronofsky, Batman: Year One, behind the scenes, unmade Batman movie, dark knight returns, Warner Bros. Pictures, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, top videos, ign inside stories

Id: koejbuY2UNg

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020