Adapting the Frank Miller — with Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley — comic book is a feat. Other than perhaps Watchmen, no comic took hold of my imagination in 1986 the same way, reinventing — for better or worse — the way that many saw Batman and Superman.

Directed by Jay Oliva and written by Bob Goodman, this two-part animated movie has Peter Weller as Bruce Wayne, retired for years after the death of Jason Todd, who was Robin. As Commissioner Gordon (Dark Shadows actor David Selby) nears retirement, they both seem themselves as old men about to be put to pasture. The world is filled with mutants and killing machines; Harvey Dent (Wade Williams) has had surgery to heal his face and been forgiven for his crimes as Two-Face; The Joker (Michael Emerson) is locked up for good.

As crime increases, Wayne decides that it’s time to be Batman again, bringing Carrie Kelly (Ariel Winter) on as his new Robin. He’ll need her help to stop the mutants, who may not be his greatest enemy, as the public remains divided in the media-dominated world of the future. Or today, as this is taking a two decade old story and telling it when it would be happening.

It’s strange to hear Miller’s dialogue — the mutants dialogue reads good on the page, not out loud — and news breaks within a film. At the time, it was cutting edge and influenced other media. Today, it may feel trite, even if this is nearly where it all began. The internal monologue of Batman may seem silly to the audience of today; it’s strange to hear them in a voice that isn’t the one you had in your head when you read the comic.

So much of RoboCop took from the works of Miller, to the point that he wrote the original script to the sequel. If you told teenage me that I would get to see a movie of this someday, I would have been so surprised. As such, I can’t help but like this.

You can watch this on Tubi.