10 Things You Need To Know About Darren Aronofsky's Batman

10. It Was Based On Year One

Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One is one of the most revered texts in the Caped Crusader's canon, its name invoked in any number of adaptations of the character to other media (including the animated movie that's actually based on the story, which DC put out a couple of years ago). It's been claimed as an influence on everyone from Nolan to Burton, but Aronofsky was more literal with it. His Batman film might even have been called Year One, as that's the title the early script drafts carried, and it definitely drew on the arc considerably. Originally published in the pages of the main Batman title in 1987, the origin story looked at the early days of both Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon's crime fighting careers in Gotham City. Miller's version of Gotham was, typically for the writer, rather grim, dark, and seedy. Organised crime ruled the streets, about half the city was a red light district, and most of the police force were corrupt. All of those tropes would've shown up in Aronofsky's film, and it followed the rough plot of Bats taking down the warring crime families, with no supervillains involved.