Once upon a time, before Christopher Reeve secured the role of Superman, Sylvester Stallone met with Richard Donner for the part. Obviously, it didn’t work out, and the right person played the Man of Steel in the end. This wouldn’t be the last time that Stallone would be linked with a major DC superhero character, though. Frank Miller believed he would have made a terrific older Batman in an adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns.
“Just that mouth of his, the scowl and the way it would look in a mask,” Miller told the Los Angeles Times. “I loved Rocky Balboa. This wounded warrior, that’s what Batman is in Dark Knight Returns.”
In the legendary comic book series from Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley, Bruce Wayne is 55 years old. When Miller mentioned Stallone as a possibility for the character, the actor had turned 60, so he would have certainly been in the right age bracket to play an older, world-weary Caped Crusader who comes out of retirement to beat the brakes off Gotham City’s cesspool of criminals and miscreants. The question is: would Stallone have been down with it if someone had made the movie back then? Yes, he would.
“It sounds very intriguing,” Stallone said in a Q&A for Ain’t It Cool News. “I can certainly relate to his plight and the main concern would be: Do you still have fire in the gut at that age to be interesting to watch? If the flame is still burning, which I suspect it will be, since I have reflux and ulcers anyway, something will still be simmering inside. So yes, that would be quite a revelation. But we might have to re-title the movie Bat Bones if I lose any more weight.”
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It wasn’t the only time that the Rocky and Rambo actor spoke about the Dark Knight. Stallone pinpointed Tim Burton’s Batman as the moment in which action movies shifted from what he and the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme did in the ’80s to something else.
“I believe the culprit in the transformation of action films can be traced to Batman starring Michael Keaton,” Stallone explained in another Q&A for Ain’t It Cool News. “By that I mean, when an individual can step into a latex suit bulging with muscles and Velcro himself into an action star body we knew the times they were a-changing. It’s tough enough to go to the gym and stay in good shape, but when you have the option to step into a Herculean Halloween costume; working out doesn’t look like much fun. Damn you, Batman.”
Reportedly, Stallone was cast in the 2003 fan film Batman: Dead End and dropped out of the production. Having said that, the window for Stallone playing the Caped Crusader in an adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns has long passed. The actor managed to leave his mark on the DC Universe, though, by voicing King Shark in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Even so, you can’t help but wonder what a Stallone-led Batman movie could have looked like had it happened. Oh, well.
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