Frank Miller talks about the start of Sin City and the Dark Knight

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Two days stand between SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR and it’s audience. While it’s been a hell of a wait for the follow-up to SIN CITY (2005), Frank Miller recently had a chat with Playboy reminding us that getting a SIN CITY movie at all was not initially in the cards. Miller’s first scripts-turned-movies were the sub-par ROBOCOP sequels, which put a bad taste in his mouth from the get-go. Robert Rodriguez was persistent in that a SIN CITY film would work, and that persistence paid off. With BATMAN V SUPERMAN in the future, this will be the closest take on Miller’s Dark Knight character, of which Miller had a few words to say regarding what we’ve seen of Batman in film so far.

Frank Miller on how Robert Rodriguez talked him into doing a Sin City film:

The irony here is that I designed Sin City so it could not be adapted to film. I wanted to show people what comics could do that movies couldn’t. When Rodriguez showed up, I was so ornery. I ignored his first three phone calls. I wouldn’t even meet him in my home. I met him at a Hell’s Kitchen bar, and he was the only one there with a cowboy hat on who was straight. He showed me some rough work he’d done, and it was impressive. I thanked him and told him the answer was no. He went back to Texas. Then he said maybe we could shoot a scene just to see what it was like. It’s not the sort of offer you turn down. So I went to Texas, where he had built a fully functional set, and at one point Marley Shelton looked at me with her beautiful big eyes and said, “Why did my character hire somebody to kill her?” Marley grasped it all and went out and gave three times the performance she had before. I walked over to Robert, kicked him in the shins and said, “I’m in.”

Regarding the latest iterations of Batman:

When people come out with movies about characters I’ve worked on, I always hate them. I have my own ideas about what the characters are like. I mean, I can’t watch a Batman movie. I’ve seen pieces of them, but I generally think, No, that’s not him. And I walk out of the theater before it’s over. It includes all of them. I’m not condemning what he [Nolan] does. I don’t even understand it, except that he seems to think he owns the title Dark Knight. [laughs] He’s about 20 years too late for that. It’s been used.

On whether or not he prefers or Batman:

The Dark Knight series is all from Batman’s point of view. But if you look at Dark Knight 2, you’ll see a Superman who’s much calmer than the one in the first Dark Knight. Batman and Superman are dead opposites. I love Superman. Do I love Batman more? They’re not people. They’re only lines on paper.

I love Miller’s remark about the characters being only lines on a paper, but I wonder why that doesn’t translate to anyone else’s iteration of the character as far as film is concerned. Perhaps he feels to close to the character he created? In any event, I would like to see Frank Miller dabble in film more, as far as his writing is concerned. Here’s hoping SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR is as enjoyable as the first!

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR hits theaters this Friday.