Blast From The Past: Examining How Justice League Plays On Our Nostalgia

Redesigning Batman

As any comic book fan will know, the Batman of the DCEU was heavily inspired by Frank Miller’s take in The Dark Knight Returns. This “Elseworlds” story is set in a bleak, dystopian future in which Batman has long since retired, but now feels the call to don the cowl once again. He swiftly finds himself set on course for a head-on collision with the Man of Steel, and the battle between Batman and Superman in Dawn of Justice is heavily modelled on that clash.

Snyder had always loved The Dark Knight Returns, essentially a deconstruction of the Batman mythology, and he explained the following in an interview with Forbes:

“[Batman’s] actions are often contradictions, precisely because his existence — I finally came to realize as I read the book — was itself a huge contradiction. Here is a man who opposes violence, who wants to reinforce rule of law, who wants to create a city where people can walk without fear, but he tries to achieve that sort of “peace” by using extreme violence, operating outside the rule of law, and becoming a symbol of fear.”

Snyder gambled that, because we’ve all seen countless iterations of Batman on both big and small screen, we were ready for a deconstruction. Unfortunately, fan and critical reaction to Batman V Superman proved that he was wrong.

Justice League takes a step back and abandons the deconstructionist approach. Instead, following the same logic as Danny Elfman, the film focuses on the elements we’ve all loved in the past. This is still a Batman who kills, but he only kills alien bugs, and that’s never had the same emotional impact as seeing Batman blow up a car with people in it. Furthermore, the Gotham of Justice League is visually more similar to the one we saw in ’89 (take a look at the vintage cars on the streets), and we get scenes of the Dark Knight brooding in the shadows in a Burton-esque style.

Significantly, we’re told that Batman has been active in Gotham for 20 years. The pre-Nolan Batman films ended in 1997, exactly 20 years ago. Dialogue between the Caped Crusader and Alfred, meanwhile, drops in a reference to the days the Dark Knight only had to worry about wind-up exploding penguins, a clear nod to Batman Returns.

Finally, the film introduces a new Batman vehicle that wouldn’t be out of place in Batman Forever. The Knight Crawler is every bit as surreal and exaggerated a vehicle as those Batman drove and flew in that film. It’s a four-treaded tank with each tread on a separate leg, allowing the vehicle to walk and climb up walls. It’s a complete departure from the realistic approach taken to the Batmobile in the Nolan trilogy.