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Film: Darkman
aka: Dark Man

The answer lies within this page.

"I'm everyone - and no one. Everywhere - nowhere. Call me... Darkman."

Years before Sam Raimi brought a certain web-head to the screen, he created his own superhero in this 1990 film. It stars Liam Neeson as Peyton Westlake, a scientist who has invented synthetic skin that, at this point, will disintegrate after 99 minutes of exposure to sunlight. His girlfriend, Julie (Frances McDormand), runs afoul of gangster Robert G. Durant and his thugs, who have him nearly killed. Peyton, now horrifically burnt, uses his own invention against the crooks as his new alter-ego, Darkman.

This film provides examples of:

Anti-Hero: Type IV, trying to be a Type III
As You Know
Battleaxe Nurse: A nurse stabs Darkman in the thigh while he's in therapy just to prove a point to the guided tour she's directing.
Becoming the Mask: Inverted.
Big Bad: Strack, in the first film. Durant and Rooker make up for the sequel films respectably.
Blessed with Suck: The treatment which made him super-humanly strong, agile, and impervious to pain also amplified his emotions to the point that he's in a near-constant state of uncontrollable rage and despair. Also, he apparently has no sense of touch.
- It is explained that he received surgery to cut off his sense of touch to block constant pain from the burns covering his body. This in turn caused the brain to amplify his emotional responses to fill in the void left by lack of external stimulus.
Bluff The Impostor: Darkman's cover during one disguise is blown this way.
Bond One-Liner: Durant is prone to these. As is Westlake.
Break the Cutie: Westlake had just proposed to marry his girlfriend. It seems like she was going to say 'yes' too.
Bury Your Gays: All of them, twice.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Averted since Durant knows Westlake well enough that he assumed he finished him off.
The Cameo: Bruce Campbell as the final mask Westlake puts on at the end of the first movie
Captain Ersatz: Darkman is one of The Spider, The Shadow and Batman.
Car Cushion: Where Pauly ends up.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: Louis Strack Jr.
Circus of Fear: At least in the first movie.
Cross Over: Dynamite Entertainment produced a four-part mini-series seeing Darkman team-up with Ash.
Disney Villain Death: Strack, and also Rooker, the Big Bad of Part 3, to some degree, as he fell to his death from a catwalk during his fight with Darkman... into a giant shredder.
The Dragon: Robert G. Durant, at least for Strack. Durant is basically a hired crime lord to do all of Strack's dirty work.
- Nico to Rooker in Darkman III.
Driven to Madness: Peyton's rebirth as a Super Hero is born from a massive trauma induced mental breakdown.
- The fate of Rick in the Novelization and Comic Book Adaptation, after seeing Darkman's face and being interrogated by him. Possibly also his fate in the original story concept, as novelizations tend to be based on such things.
Evil Laugh: Westlake tends to emit a villainous cackle whenever he kills gangsters, threatens to kill gangsters or contemplates killing gangsters. It could be because Raimi originally intended to make an adaption of The Shadow, or it could simply be because Westlake hasn't really managed to hold on to all of his marbles, since his trauma.
Exact Time to Failure: 99 minutes 'till the skins wear off.
- This is extended in the second movie by further research and development. Oddly, the time limit is back to 99 minutes in the third movie with no explanation.
- Also extended in the first movie simply by keeping the artificial skin covered and out of the light until he absolutely needs to.
  - Apparently, the third movie was meant to come out before the second or something along those lines, and they just released them in the wrong order.
  - Better explained that Durant's attack in the first sequel destroyed the work of Darkman's ally, resulting in his being force to use the previous formula of his later masks.
Expanded Universe: There are two decent sequels, a very nice Novelization, which started a short-lived series by the same author, a somewhat lame Comic Book Adaptation, a really great Comic Book miniseries by Kurt Busiek, a television pilot, a crappy video game, and a comic book crossover with Evil Dead.
External Combustion: How the reporter in the sequel dies
Eyes Are Unbreakable
Face Framed In Shadow
Facial Horror: Some of the most memorable.
Fingore: Durant sliced off a lot of fingers. And keeps them from rotting and decaying.
- Also, Peyton vs. jerkass carnie. Ouch.
Gayngster: Possibly. There's a hint in the deli scene that Durant may have a thing for Rick.
- Also Rooker's right hand man Nico in the third film.
Get It Over With
Hair-Trigger Temper: The side effect of the surgeries Darkman undergoes to allow him to do anything without feeling crippling amounts of pain.
- Durant has one too, once he loses his shit though.
Have You Told Anyone Else?: Amusingly subverted: Stack confront Julie in his office about her stumbling on his evil scheme...and explains that she doesn't actually have enough information to justify him killing her, prompting this response:
- "Well, if you're not going to kill me, I have things to do..."
Hellish Copter
Hour of Power
Kick the Dog: Peyton and Julie both get several swift ones. Peyton is obvious, but consider that Julie thought she'd lost the love of her life, and was finally piecing her emotional self back together... and then her rebound guy turns out to be a emotionless psychopath, her former lover turns out to be insane and heavily injured, and at the end, dumps her because he's become a monster. Oh, and all of this got started because of an accounting discrepancy she was looking into as part of her day job. Ouch.
If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him: Subverted; Strack tries to save himself by invoking this trope. Guess how Darkman responds.
- The villains in the sequels are under the assumptions that Darkman doesn't kill. Darkman himself also seems to be under that delusion that he doesn't kill bad-guys, even though he lethally disposes of every villain he comes across.
I Lied: Used by both Durant and Darkman in the first movie.
- Played with in the first movie:
Ricky: "I told you everything!"
Darkman: "I know you did, Ricky. But let's pretend you didn't!"
Latex Perfection: The skins.
Lighter and Softer: The sequels, to a degree. Also the movie's Comic Book Adaptation.
- Although the comic actually showed Strack getting impaled on the rebars after Darkman drops him.
Lost In A Crowd: Peyton vanishes from Julie in this manner at the end. By turning into Bruce Campbell.
Made of Iron: Darkman can get hurt, but since he's lost all sense of touch, tends to ignore it.
- Driven home at one point when he accidentally lights his hand on fire while working... and doesn't notice for several seconds.
- The goons that were hooked on the Psycho Serum that Rooker had created in Die Darkman Die, since because they have "Darkman's superhuman DNA".
Nail 'Em: Strack wields a rivet gun in the construction-site battle that concludes the original film.
Nightmare Face
Not So Different: The first movie makes it pretty clear that the only thing separating Westlake and his nemeses is that he's bumping off "bad" people. The That Man Is Dead speech in the finale underlines the point.
One Episode Wonder: The abandoned TV pilot is one of finest and most accurate examples of superheroics on live-action television.
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Darkman wants to be the one to kill Durant. And he did, more than once.
Pet Rat: Durant is one.
Precision F-Strike: Take the fucking elephant!
Psycho Serum: Darkman III's Big Bad creates one out of Darkman's DNA and injects it into his mooks. It gives them all of Darkman's enhanced strength, but also gives them Darkman's bouts of total rage.
- In fact, everything "superhuman" about Darkman is a result of extensive surgery to his nervous system. That isn't something that would carry over to DNA samples, at all.
  - Possibly the Big Bad was really just doping up his mooks with PCP, but told them it was the DNA of a butt-kicking adversary so they wouldn't worry about the drug's nasty side effects?
  - The serum was stated to realign the nervous system, in effect chemically replicating the surgery performed on Westlake.
Quirky Miniboss Squad: Durant's crew in the first movie. To a lesser extent, his replacement crew in the sequel.
Required Secondary Powers: Since Darkman is missing roughly 40% of his skin, he pretty much needs a Healing Factor, or he'd keel over from various horrible diseases and the injuries he sustains in battle.
- The doctor in the third movie states that he does have rapid healing, somehow as a result of the operation that killed his sense of touch.
  - Alternatively, one could presume a scientist working on revolutionary treatments for burn victims might have a trick to prevent infection.
  - For that matter, he could be wearing synthetic skin under his clothes, where it'd be protected from light and will last longer. He leaves his face and hands uncovered between disguises because the former would have to be exposed to light if he's to be able to see, and the latter would wear through as he handles objects.
- Westlake also seems to be the worlds greatest vocal impersonator.
  - Also a talented ventriloquist as he somehow manages to speak coherently without lips.
Retcon: Durant was killed in the copter crash in the first film. But in the second film, it merely left him comatose. In the final film, a villain named Dr. Bridget Thorne was one of the doctors who treated Westlake's burned body in the first film.
- Though it may double as an Alternative Continuity.
Save the Day, Turn Away: Dr. Westlake won the Pink Elephant, defeated the villains, and saved the girl. But due to his transformation into a hideous berserker of faceless justice, Peyton must abandon his desire of a life with Julie. He must walk the path of the hero alone, in the darkness.
- He performs one in each sequel as well, always followed by an heroic monologue.
Say My Name: WESTLAAAAAAAAAKE!!!
- JUUUUUULLLLLLIIIIIEEEE!!!
Suicidal Overconfidence: Played with. Strack actually chooses his ground against Peyton quite well in the first movie, as he has experience in skyscraper construction.
Super Hero: a rare example that is native to the film medium.
Take That: In the Evil Dead comic crossover, the main villain refers to Strack as not being worth bringing back.
That Man Is Dead: "Peyton is gone."
Those Two Bad Guys:
- Skip and Rudy in the first movie.
- Eddie Scully and Roy in the second movie.
Trailers Always Spoil: Not only does it show exactly what is going to happen to the helicopter that chases after Darkman, it also clearly depicts Strack as the Man Behind the Man, which is treated as a twist in the actual film.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Skip disappears after Durant's death. There was a scene of Darkman killing him with his own prosthetic leg. With the scene cut, Skip avoids any retribution.
Whole Plot Reference: RoboCop, even down to the locations.
Wrong Genre Savvy: Strack is a bit too quick to assume Westlake is The Cape and therefore can't kill him. Not in this superhero movie, smartass...