10 Comic Book Movies Hollywood Didn't Have The Balls To Make

Generally regarded as one of the best Batman comic runs, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns clings to an inherently controversial premise - one that sees Bruce Wayne, close to sixty, returning to a near-apocalyptic Gotham and taking up his mantel as Batman once more. In this canon, Batman retired due to the death of Jason Todd, and Superman - now a government stooge - turns up to stop him.

Whilst Zack Snyder's film did have the balls to bring DC's two most iconic superheroes together for a showdown, the circumstances of their fight were way different. There's also the fact that Bruce Wayne - though shown to be a little older than audiences are used to - is still far younger than he is in source material, whilst appearances from The Joker, Two-Face and a huge band of criminals who have overtaken Gotham (known as "The Mutants") are shunned entirely.

Of course, a lot of what makes The Dark Knight Returns so special is also what has made it so easy for Hollywood to avoid. The fact that the story requires an aged, broken Batman and multiple villains is one thing, but the idea that the character of Superman needs to be portrayed as a government tool probably didn't sit well with the studio heads, who likely feared they'd do an injustice to the character.

Given how important Superman's position is to the story, it's not all that surprisingly that the only faithful adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns came in the form of a straight-to-video animation, released back in 2012.