The Upcoming ‘Batman: Knightfall’ Animated Films Further Prove Warner Bros. Is Fresh Out Of Ideas
No one is asking for it, but Warner Bros. Animation is mining its DC back catalog for more inspiration to give us new films based on the Knightfall saga. I say “films,” plural, because it was announced at a New York Comic-Con panel that this endeavor would be a multi-part event similar to how the animated Crisis on Infinite Earths and Watchmen projects were structured.
This is good news if you like the stories that gave us “The Man Who Broke the Bat” in Bane and the insane suit redesign worn by Azrael. We also should consider that the impending films might be decent. They are inspired by the work of some of the best Batman writers of all time: Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, Dennis O’Neil, and Peter David.
The first film is also reportedly being written by Jeremy Adams, who penned the animated Superman reboot Man of Tomorrow, which was a strong start for the chapter of the Animated Universe it breathed life into. However, I’m only cautiously optimistic about the whole thing because, as I see it, albeit anecdotally, risk-averse Warner Bros. is strictly going back to the well for what worked for them in the past.
Yes, the arc is popular and still discussed to this day, and Bane remains one of the Dark Knight’s most recognized foes of the modern era, but let’s be real. This is typical Warner doing the predictable thing: relying on popular, recognizable stories, characters, and titles from 30-plus years ago. It sounds logical to them and makes business sense, but the fact that they keep exploiting what they know because it’s all they know is transparent to everyone.
They have been doing it for years and for so long, honestly, that it feels like they have been doing it forever. You don’t need to look any further than Watchmen and all its adaptations and spinoffs, whether they be comics, live-action, animated, or serialized. I don’t know about you, but I think we’ve had enough of Alan Moore, just from all the versions of this one work (which he has disowned, by the way).
However, you’ll find no better example of DC/Warner’s tendency to rehash things to death than Superman, and the one Man of Steel story that best mirrors Knightfall. In terms of era, scale, and resale value, nothing follows the pattern quite like The Death of Superman. Across multiple issues and titles, readers were introduced to a level of threat that pushed the MOS to the edge and forced him into a sabbatical he wouldn’t come back from right away.
That threat was Doomsday, whom we haven’t had a break from since the 90s. Like Watchmen, I’m a little sick of him. There’s not much depth to him beyond punching Superman to death, but that doesn’t stop WB from overrelying on him. When they felt the desperate urge to spice up the DCAU, DCEU, Smallville, and Superman & Lois, they brought in a variation of the killing to serve his only function or flirt with it.
This brings me back to Bane, i.e., Doomsday’s analog to the Bat Family. We all know what he was created for; it’s so academic at this point that a recent retcon made his purpose deeply ingrained, and completely on the nose. More to the point, everyone has seen him do it on the page and on the big screen in The Dark Knight Rises. Breaking the Bat became such a meme, Seth Green parodied it on Robot Chicken.
It’s obvious what they are chasing when the character was a climactic component of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, otherwise known as the greatest success the studio has seen outside the breaching Moby Dick Aquaman turned out to be. If they can’t top it, they will just re-rack and try again; in other words, rinse and repeat. Those vertebrae won’t break themselves.
Sure, there is a chance this animated cinematic Knightfall series might be good, maybe even excellent – the best DC thing WB Animation has put out in years. The problem is that in this post-pandemic, post-CW, post-Snyderverse DC Studios where streaming is paramount (no pun intended), and physical media is being obsolesced, there are also odds no one will see it or care.
Moreover, that problem originates internally; not just within Warner Bros. and DC, but with the boardrooms and culture of Hollywood itself. Look at the landscape of declining sales, dwindling revenue, inflated ticket prices, low ratings, and hackneyed ideas and realize they did this to themselves. Bane didn’t break The Bat; a creatively bankrupt system did.
NEXT: Prolific Batman Writer Chuck Dixon Reveals DC Comics Editorial Wanted To Change Bane’s Name
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