Back in the Dark Ages, we're talking early 2000s, the Batman film franchise was going nowhere after the cringe inducing box office failure of Batman and Robin, released 1997. Here is one project which almost saw the light of day.
Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi and Requiem For A Dream, and comic book artist/writer Frank Miller collaborated on a new script for a fresh look at Batman, which used Miller's acclaimed tale Batman: Year One as a jumping off point.
The pair wanted to do an ultra-gritty, realistic take on Bruce Wayne's origins and Batman's beginnings, more in line with a bleak 1970s crime drama like Taxi Driver or The French Connection than the colorful Adam West TV series. They really pulled out all the stops: after Bruce's parents are murdered he becomes a street orphan, taken in at one point by Big Al, a mechanic. The Batcave is an old abandoned Gotham City subway station.
What really got my interest, as if these wholesale changes weren't mind-blowing enough, is that the Aronofsky/Miller Batmobile was to be a black 1960s Lincoln Continental with two bus engines to power it. That image stuck with me so I had to do something about it. I am no mechanic like Big Al but here is my version.
The powers that be at Warner Brothers studio thought Aronofsky and Miller went too far off the mark and chose to work with Christopher Nolan and his team to bring Batman to modern audiences with the crowd-pleasing Batman Begins. We got Nolan's killer Tumbler update on the Batmobile, among other things, but I sure do wish we could have seen some production or concept art on this crazy "realistic" take of the Batmobile.
We can dream can't we? (We can also Photoshop.)
