In June, DC announced an animated movie based on the 1990s comic run, Knightfall. Now, a second trailer has been released for the movie, and it looks extremely comic-accurate. If it wasn’t clear by the first movie having “Part 1” in the title, this comic run is split up into parts. Knightfall, Knightquest, and Knightsend are each their own volumes. And, based on the new Batman: Knightfall Part 1 trailer, it looks like the movies will follow the same structure.
From era-accurate costuming (I’m looking at you, unitard Bane) to a story with plenty of twists and turns, the trailer has everything the comic does, it seems.
However, with the first movie coming out in August, you may not have the time to read the 600+ page comic line it is based on. If you can, I highly recommend it. If not, though, this will be everything we can expect in the first movie.
1. Bane Is the Main Antagonist
The comic starts out looking like any ordinary Batman comic. Actually, the first volume starts with Bane’s first-ever comic appearance. The special (Batman: Vengeance of Bane) details the villain’s tragic backstory. Bane grew up in Peña Duro, a prison on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca. As a young boy, he fell from a high place in the prison and ended up in a coma for 31 days. After he woke up, he was hardened, a killer.
The 60-page special went on to detail Bane’s time in prison. He strengthened his body and mind, becoming a voracious reader and disciplined fighter. He learned of Gotham, “the greatest city on the planet,” from a fellow Gothamite inmate named Bird, and along with it, the Batman. His one goal became to get to Gotham and take down the Batman, who, from what he understood, “ruled” Gotham.
“Nobody knows who he is or what his game is. But Gotham after dark is his.”
Bane’s response? “I will meet this Batman someday. I will destroy him.”
Then, the prison doctors decided to direct their attention to Bane. He was a subject in their venom experiment and was the first inmate to survive. It was the prison doctors who put the implants in his brain for direct injections of the venom. He then faked his death and managed to escape the island, but not before saving several companions and throwing the warden to the sharks. He makes his great escape to Gotham, and we see his first confrontation with Batman from his perspective.
Bane’s plan in all of this is to break down Batman mentally and physically. When we enter the comic run, Batman is already feeling under the weather, but in his Batman way, he pushes on. When Bane’s plan begins with freeing all of the detainees of Arkham Asylum, Batman gets progressively more exhausted, scrambling to capture criminals around the city.
Clips from the trailer indicate that Bane’s backstory will definitely get at least some screen time.
2. Plenty of Smaller Villains Make Appearances
The Batman Knightfall comic run is VERY cameo-heavy. Every main villain from Joker to Scarecrow shows face, but it doesn’t stop there. Zsasz, The Mad Hatter, and even the Ventriloquist (and his pal Scarface) all make their own appearances, some caught and re-imprisoned more easily than others.
The trailer shows Batman’s confrontations with the Ventriloquist, the Mad Hatter, and even a scene I recognize as from his fight with Zsasz. Firefly appears in the first trailer. It seems they will be trying to fit all of the cameos made in the comics into the movies.
3. The Riddler’s Importance
In the first volume of Knightfall, the Riddler only makes one major appearance (though spread in small pieces across multiple issues). During the trailer, the Riddler has a voice line questioning why all of the criminals were freed from Gotham. In his comic appearance, his thoughts were much more surface-level.
I personally enjoy the concept of the Riddler, but I have to say that in his earlier comic appearances, he was portrayed as much more stupid than he should have been, considering he is supposed to be a mastermind. I definitely enjoy his characterization in The Batman (2022) and the Arkham game trilogy much more than the Knightfall run. It appears the movie may tweak his original character and give him the love he deserves.
4. Batman Is Still Grieving Jason
Jason Todd, the second Robin after Dick Grayson, was killed off in 1988 during the Death in the Family arc due to an audience vote. (For the record, if you were a pro-kill-Jason voter, I will forever hold that against you.) After Jason came Tim Drake, who was the current Robin during the Knightfall run. In the real world, four years passed between Jason’s death and the Knightfall series, but it is unclear how much time that equated to in-universe.
But grief has no set clock, and Jason’s death still absolutely tortures Bruce Wayne. In a faceoff with Scarecrow, Batman gets exposed to fear gas. We watch as he relives watching the Joker kill Jason, and how quickly that fear and sadness turn into anger. When he catches up to the Joker, he doles out a rough beating, yelling “Jason Todd” as he does.
This is easily one of the most impactful and heartbreaking scenes of the first volume. I do hope they manage to give it its deserved screen time in the movie.
5. The Origin of the Iconic Back-Breaking
Bane’s “Breaking of the Bat” concept, which Christopher Nolan used in his Dark Knight trilogy, originated in this comic line.
The scene preceding the injury, watching as Bruce’s psyche slowly shatters and his knees finally (physically and metaphorically) buckle, is long and harrowing. Here is this hardened, unbreakable vigilante, finally worn down to the bone. He’s finally beaten, physically and mentally. Bane finishes him off by throwing him from atop a building to the ground below, where the public saw him in his broken state.
The scene is incredibly powerful and again, I hope it gets its deserved time onscreen because it was Bane’s plans finally coming to fruition.
6. Azrael and the Knights Templar
After Bruce Wayne suffers the life-altering injury of a broken back and finds himself bed and wheelchair-ridden, he sends out an apprentice to temporarily don the cowl.
Jean-Paul Valley’s introduction is kind of awkward in the Knightfall comics. You’re expected to have the context of the 1992 Sword of Azrael miniseries. Valley is a vigilante/antihero called Azrael. After the death of his father, the original Azrael, Valley was trained (and brainwashed) by the Order of St. Dumas, a fictional subdivision of the very real Knights Templar. Long story short, the miniseries ends with Azrael teaming up with Batman and rejecting the teachings of Dumas. However, Knightfall makes it clear that those teachings don’t just go away.
As soon as he steps into the Batman role, Azrael begins making changes, doing things Bruce would never do. We watch this happen from the perspective of a horrified Robin, who speaks up but can only do so much. He battles with himself, deciding whether or not he should tell Bruce. Azrael is sloppy in a way Batman would never be, and “the detective work bores him” (as he says in issue #18). He begins to fall into trances, designing brutal weapons and costume pieces intended not to capture but to harm the villains he encounters.
As Azrael’s methods become more violent and reckless, we also see his fear that he will never be able to get away from the grasp of St. Dumas, that his subliminal programming by “The System” will always live within his mind. His trances prove this fear right, and he begins to change for the worse.
Azrael’s changes to the suit make him look less and less like Batman, and his actions do the same. His cape is menacing and structured, he wears pieces of gold armor, and he designed his gauntlets for tearing into enemies. Still, by the end of the volume, Tim has hope for Valley.
What We Can Look Forward To
Knightfall is a long overdue story for DC to tell onscreen. From Bane’s introduction and the original Breaking of the Bat to the sheer number of villain cameos, this story has so much to offer.
As the first movie in a series of three, we’ll be able to get a good sense of what the writers are choosing to include and leave out from the comic line. Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall arrives on digital on August 25.