Batman
From bright nights to dark knights: the evolution of a superhero's shadow.
After many years of campiness due to the The Comics Code, in the 70s and 80s Batman started getting dark and gritty again and his villains became much more brutal and sadistic (or returned to form in the case of The Joker). Batman is currently one of the grittiest heroes you'll find with an emphasis on fear and a brutal fighting style, most of what he does stemming from what he views as his failures and an insanely violent Rogues Gallery. Despite this, his strong moral integrity remains one of the most consistent in comics, movies and other media. Comic Books
- After the end of the Batman (1966) TV series, it became apparent the campy tone had burnt out, and DC realized a change was needed quickly. With Denny O'Neil's writing and predominantly Neal Adams's gothic and realistic art, Batman was made a darkly fearsome night stalker much like he was in the original stories before he was softened for kids. Later, in the mid-80s, Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns overclocked this to dangerous levels.
- The shift also carried over to Batman's Rogues Gallery, most notably The Joker, who had been written as a comical "Clown Prince of Crime", but now returned to his psychotic murderous roots and building up one of the largest body counts in the DC Universe (only being outdone by alien societies and villains with near-god level power).
- In the '90s the Batgirl mantle was brought back after a decade's absence for Cassandra Cain, a character who came complete with a much darker origin (she's a mute trained from birth to be an assassin) and a costume that wouldn't look out of place at a BDSM club. Fortunately, she was written well enough in her own series to not come off as ridiculous, in particular being one of the most moral and kindly members of the Bat-family despite her grim background and sinister look.
- Bat-Azrael was a darker, edgier, more brutish version of Batman, created to show what makes the true Batman not a vigilante. However, DC was ready to keep Azrael as Batman, if he was popular enough. He wasn't, and Bruce Wayne came back as Batman, although Azrael did get his own series afterwards.
- Thomas Wayne from Flashpoint (DC Comics) was a thuggish, heavily armored Batman who guns criminals down with his pair of pistols.
- From Death of the Family, a number of people might laugh and say that Joker can't possibly achieve this trope at this point. They would be wrong, because his treatment of Harley Quinn is even worse than it was before! Though given who she is...
- Not even the mantle of Robin is safe from this "dark and edgy" obsession. Tim Drake whose era as Robin is probably most similar to Dick Grayson, gets replaced by the dark and edgy Damian Wayne. Ironically, Tim Drake was an aversion of this trope by replacing the dark and edgy Jason Todd as Robin and right at the cusp of the Dark Age of Comics no less though his costume was physically darker and more practical than those of his predecessors.
- The New 52 remade Mr. Freeze in this fashion, because apparently his Canon Immigrant status as a Tragic Villain from Batman: The Animated Series didn't work with the rest of Batman's Rogues Gallery being psychopaths and lunatics. In this new iteration, Freeze and Nora were never married; Nora was frozen in cryogenic stasis in the 1920s for a heart condition, Freeze merely worked at the storage facility where her capsule was kept and became obsessed with her, leading to his physiology-warping accident. Also, Freeze's obsession with freezing things and ice manifested when, after his mother fell through some ice and almost died as a little boy, he subsequently took her back and pushed her back into the freezing-cold water.
- Indeed, The Dark Age was an instance of this for the entire American Comic Book medium.
- Alan Moore, who helped begin the trend with Watchmen, has shown some regrets over this. "The apocalyptic bleakness of comics over the past 15 years sometimes seems odd to me, because it's like that was a bad mood that I was in 15 years ago."
- A lot of publishers/writers noticed that Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were both dark and popular and apparently concluding that they were popular because they were dark. The resultant flood of titles which were dark without also being very good is one reason there's a lot of overlap between the terms "Dark Age" and "Dork Age" in the minds of many fans.
- The Batman Beyond tie-in comics of the 2010s managed to be even darker than the already gritty source material. For instance, the comics were even more upfront about characters dying than the cartoon already was, more details are given about the actions of Bruce Wayne that led to him alienating his closest allies (such as Dick Grayson having a falling out with Bruce after learning he got Barbara Gordon pregnant with his child while she was going steady with Dick, the child ending up miscarried when Barbara got punched in the stomach while trying to fight off a criminal who was threatening a father and his child) and revealing tragic details about the rest of the Justice League (e.g. Superman outliving his love interest Lois Lane, Wonder Woman going missing for decades because she was stranded in the Justice Lords' universe and losing her magic lasso because she used it to take a life, specifically that of her own Justice Lords counterpart).
Films — Animation
- The DC Universe Animated Original Movies was aiming for older comic fans with it's is a line of "R" animated movies, with most being lighter versions of their darker comicbook counterparts. Some expanded on the darker elements of the comics:
- Batman: Gotham by Gaslight reimagined James Gordon as the serial killer Jack The Ripper.
- Justice League Dark: Apokolips War began with the very end of the world, taking inspiration from the dark Flashpoint comics and movies to create yet another hellish world which The Flash has to reset.
- DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family shows all the different paths that Jason Todd could have chosen had he survived the bomb which killed him, being a direct continuation of the beginning of the Batman: Under the Red Hood movie which itself was not true to the events of comics.
- Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the first animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, as well as the first animated Nickelodeon movie, to be rated PG-13. There are a number of brutal moments in the movie including, but not limited to, Shredder nailing a Foot Soldier in the head with a shuriken, Mr. Freeze's Disney Death, Leo's Scarecrow induced nightmare of his brothers dying as rotting corpses, and Donatello's brutal arm shatter.
Films — Live-Action
- Batman Film Series:
- Batman (1989) is this compared to the campy Batman and Batman: The Movie.
- Batman Returns compared to the 1989 film. Batman Returns became so dark that it makes even the original Batman books feel light-hearted and kid-friendly especially the fact that his characterization of Batman hearkens back to them and almost completely removes his most notable recent trait that sets him apart from them: Thou Shall Not Kill.
- Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises compared to the Joel Schumacher movies (Batman & Robin especially) and (to a far lesser extent) the Tim Burton ones.
- The Dark Knight is the darkest movie in the Dark Knight trilogy, and the darkest Batman film at that point. In the movie, the Joker represents anarchy and tries to prove that anyone can become like him, and Harvey Dent becomes the villain known as Two Face and goes on a killing spree. Two Face murders any cop who helped the Joker or the Mob. He then tries to kill Jim Gordon's family as revenge for not saving his wife in time. The Movie is the most violent of the Dark Knight trilogy (in fact, so violent that viewers in the UK start questioning the BBFC's decision to classify it as a 12/12A), as the movie ends with Batman becoming a criminal and on the run. Bruce then reflects on how he failed and is broken and doesn't know what he stands for.
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the darkest movie of the DC Extended Universe so far; the movie got an R rated directors cut due to scenes of violence. Batman kills in the movie, and doesn't show mercy to criminals. The movie also ends with Superman dying.
- To date, Joker is the darkest live-action Batman film ever filmed next to The Batman (2022), being even darker than The Dark Knight. Its version of Gotham is truly in the depths of despair, haunted by economic depression and squalor. The primary conflict consists of a man going From Nobody to Nightmare due to constant mistreatment. There are almost no positive characters around (save for Sophie and Gary), and no positive resolution. The only glimmers of hope for humanity are Gary and Bruce Wayne, but he's only a little boy in this movie. It is also the most grounded comic book film ever made since The Punisher (2004) flicks — there are no fantasy elements of any type at all to be found, apart from the throwaway "super rats" joke.
- The Batman is hands down the darkest live-action film so far, even topping Joker and Batman Returns. Here, Batman is a brutal vigilante with a reputation as The Dreaded, both by the police and the criminal underworld of Gotham, and his Terror Hero shtick is basically turned up to eleven, speaking in a hateful whisper not unlike Michael Keaton, and his brutality is put on full display when he gives an unfortunate mook an incredibly brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that scares the crap out of the criminals witnessing this. Also, there's the fact the film portrays The Riddler, who's normally a Laughably Evil yet Not-So-Harmless Villain, as an incredibly gruesome Psychopathic Manchild Serial Killer in the vein of the Zodiac Killer and John Doe. And that's just the trailers.
Live-Action TV
- Gotham: For the Batman mythos as a whole, this show is, compared to others, one of its darkest adaptations. Even in-universe to a slight extent, while the show was never lighthearted at all, as the series progressed it became even darker and more violent. Many characters were made into psychopaths and shown as corrupt. In most Batman shows/movies/ comics Jim Gordon is shown as a purely morally flawless character, in Gotham Jim Gordon has been forced to break the law on multiple occasions to get anything done, because of his fighting a losing war against an absolutely rotten system and the darkness of human nature, and has killed criminals when he realised that they deserved it and that there was no other way to deal with them and gradually became more of an antihero. The show has a bleak depressing tone where even main characters can die and no one is a pure hero.
Video Games
- Batman: Arkham Series:
- According to Kevin Conroy, Batman: Arkham City would be this compared to the first game. That's saying something considering how dark Arkham Asylum was.
- Batman: Arkham Asylum itself was essentially a MUCH darker version of Batman: The Animated Series. In fact, it was so dark and filled with so much scary stuff, that many people who play are shocked that it didn't get rated M. One wonders how they got away with a Teen Rating for Batman: Arkham City.
- Batman: Arkham Knight on the other hand, did not get away with a Teen Rating, making it the first Batman adaptation to get an adult-level rating. The game pushes Batman to his physical and mental limits more than any of the previous games, with the single darkest and most disturbing story yet. There's also a character specific example with Scarecrow, who goes from a minor villain and moderate threat in previous media appearances (and most comics), to a truly nightmarish Big Bad and No-Nonsense Nemesis whose plan involves breaking Batman in every way possible.
- Batman: The Telltale Series: A sign of the game being this compared to other Batman stories in open with the guard getting shot in the head. It also has coarser language like "shit" and "goddamn", and is Bloodier and Gorier including a crime scene involving a corpse that was torn to pieces by an explosion and another with a corpse with the eyes stabbed out. It also has both Thomas Wayne and Vicki Vale undergo Adaptational Villainy, with Thomas (an honest man in a corrupt city in the comics) in league with Carmine Falcone and Hamilton Hill and Vicki (an honest reporter in the comics) a revolutionary who plans to take down Gotham's elite because of Thomas having her birth parents, the Arkhams, killed. Additionally, this Vicki was also an abused child as the mutilated corpse missing its eyes was her adopted mother.
Western Animation
- When Batman: The Animated Series started in 1992, it was this compared to every other kids show out there. In a good way though, with mature storylines and complex characters and themes. The movies were even darker.
- Darker still was its follow-up series, Batman Beyond, set in a gritty Cyberpunk future Gotham City. It was Batman: The Animated Series up to eleven: more mature stories, edgier violence, and an even bleaker tone. And to think the network originally wanted it to be a "kid-friendlier" Batman show.
- And now with the Lighter and Softer Batman: The Brave and the Bold finished up, Cartoon Network is launching Beware the Batman. Word of God is the network deliberately wanted to return to a darker and more serious tone evocative of Batman: The Animated Series and the more recent Christopher Nolan movies. Katana has taken the place of Robin and Batgirl, which should probably tell you something about the tone.
