Skip ‘Batman v Superman’ and read ‘Dark Knight Returns’ instead

“Batman v Superman” arrived at the box office Friday dogged with scathing reviews and a 30 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with The Post’s Lou Lumenick calling it a bloated mess in which Ben Affleck, as Batman, “tries hard to project weary gravitas like his immediate predecessor Christian Bale as an older Batman, but too often comes off like a self-loathing, Oscar-winning writer-director cashing a big paycheck”  — words Affleck may be pondering in this video:
So why not spare yourself the agony, skip Zack Snyder’s film and go straight to the source material, which Affleck cited in a recent interview: “The fact that the bat was shaped like the Frank Miller bat, and that we were taking inspiration from that book specifically gave me a lot of confidence.” Sure, that confidence may have been misplaced, but “The Dark Knight Returns,” Miller’s 1986 graphic novel, stands as one of the great classics in the genre — and, at $6.99 for the Kindle version, is easily cheaper than a night at the movies. Miller’s novel finds an aging Batman, after a decade-long hiatus, donning the suit again following a spike of crime in Gotham; the eternally young Superman, meanwhile, has become a “simple-hearted patriot,” as an NPR reviewer put it, adding that just about everyone comes off questionably here: “After vanishing from the public eye, both superheroes and supervillains have aged badly. Selina Kyle, alter ego of Catwoman, runs an escort service . . . The Green Arrow is an anti-government terrorist.” Perhaps best of all, the novel brings back the best of the Batman baddies, the Joker, who awakens from a coma in Arkham Asylum and commits a chilling — and televised — mass murder. (Snyder’s film chooses the far less colorful Lex Luthor [Jesse Eisenberg] as its main villain.) What makes Miller’s novel so enduringly great? With wit and intelligence, it explores the myths and metaphors of superheroes, juxtaposing, as one critic says, “their very different ideologies of justice and goodness . . . to spur their fistfight. Though Miller’s ‘DKR’ isn’t the only comic-book story that pits the two heroes against each other (it’s not even official canon), it boasts their most iconic fight. And it sets up the very real idea that two good men, perhaps the very best men, can have vastly different views of what a good world looks like.” In contrast, Snyder’s film mostly explores how cool it looks when stuff blows up. Miller’s novel also up-ends comics sexism by introducing a female Robin: the 13-year-old Carrie Kelley, who dons the suit after Batman saves her from a gang attack. (She’s repeatedly mistaken for the “Boy Wonder.”) Sure, Snyder’s film does include Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, but gives her all of 7 minutes of screen time, half of which is in the big final fight. Ultimately, if it’s grit and substance you want from your comics, the bookshelf, not the cinema, may be your best bet this weekend.