From the Rental Vault: The Dark Knight Returns

It may be hard to believe in the era of the Nolan-Bale Batman, but in 1986 the most familiar picture of the Caped Crusader was of the wry but not particularly heroic Adam West. West played Batman in the campy 1960s TV series and the character had long existed in that version's long shadow.

Until 1986, when artist and writer Frank Miller created the four-issue limited series The Dark Knight Returns, and neither the Batman nor comic books were ever the same again. Miller's vision of an aging Bruce Wayne finally unable to fight off his obsession to battle crime in cape and cowl cemented the character as driven, taciturn and probably more than a little unbalanced. The grim and gritty storyline he used set the tone for years of bad comics in which heroes could barely be told from villains -- and if they could, it was certainly not because of their methods. Miller also brought the world of comics into contact with the real world around us. Along with Alan Moore's Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns tried to show what it might be like to have people in our world who actually wear colorful longjohns to fight crime.

So it's surprising that it took until 2012-13 for DC Comics to bring the legendary title to the screen via its successful line of animated features. Released in two parts, the feature directed by Jay Oliva contains most of Miller's storyline and features Peter Weller as the voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Ariel Winter as the new Robin, Carrie Kelly, David Selby as Commissioner James Gordon, Michael Emerson as the Joker and Mark Valley as Superman.

Now long retired after political pressure groups made it too difficult to operate, Bruce Wayne spends much of his time recklessly blowing his fortune and trying to do some good as well. In his absence, Gotham City has become largely lawless, with the new Mutant Gang committing horrific crimes as a prelude to their own grab for political power. Eventually overcome by his obsession to capture and punish criminals, Wayne dons the cape and cowl of Batman once again for a final face-off with his greatest foe, as well as someone who was once his greatest friend.

Oliva deviates from Miller's version in several places -- he doesn't use the ironic internal monologue that Miller writes for the character. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Weller's somnolent delivery is bad enough in the relatively smaller dose. He may have been aiming for the deadpan voice of Miller's comic, but what he gets is a dead-and-buried pan that just makes him sound bored. Emerson is appropriately creepy as the Joker, and Valley stalwart and true as the Man of Steel.

Part of the problem is also that some of Miller's story hasn't aged well. He wrote it as a product of the 80s, with an amiable dunce Reagan stand-in as president as a part of his satirizing of the shallow, self-obsessed media culture. But the real media culture has rendered the satire obsolete -- how can you mock a permissive fictional culture that would put a mass murderer like the Joker on a talk show when you've got two actual scripted TV series focusing on serial killers as lead characters?

Visually, the animation team does well at capturing Miller's blocky impressionist style, also keeping to his self-limited mostly blue-tinged pallette. But both parts lack enough impact to overcome both their own limitations and the ones imposed on them by the source material.