Shouldn’t There Have Been a Darkman Reboot By Now?

With all the reboots and remakes and sequels and everything that’s being made by taking things from the past, one might think that they would have seen mention of a hero such as Darkman by now, but of course, as it goes we haven’t since…well, that’s kind of hard to figure out really. While we’ve mentioned this before it feels that it might need to be said over and over again in an attempt to make people remember that this movie was a special kind of something back in the day and that the hero of the story was someone that, after taking his vengeance on those that burned him alive and left him horribly disfigured, was actually someone that could be relied upon to wreak vengeance on the wicked. As an antihero, Darkman is one of the many characters that you can’t help but think of as a tragic and very misunderstood figure since only a couple of people would have known just why he is the way he is, and at least one of them is dead by the second movie, even though a lot of people felt certain that he was dead by the first. Peyton was a brilliant scientist, but his disfigurement and the fact that his synthetic skin would only last for 99 minutes in the daylight before it started to deteriorate meant that he had to have a healthy supply of masks and other parts on hand in order to blend in and become the kind of individual that could do some serious damage to the criminals he targeted.

Bringing this character back would almost certainly mean that he would have to get darker and possibly more tragic since the updates that would be needed could only make this better so long as the main story was kept mostly intact and the idea that Peyton was still more or less bent on absolute revenge. The manner he went after Durant and his goons was pretty ingenious since he managed to use his synthetic skin to the best of his ability and to the greatest extent allowed by the science behind it. Imagine what an effects team could do in this day and age with the kind of material they would be given to work with, and then think of how much more of an impact the story could have. As a hero story, it would definitely be one of the darker and more disturbing of the bunch since Darkman wasn’t usually in the mood to keep his victims alive, especially if they were known killers and deserved what they got. With Durant and his men, it was seen as an absolute pleasure to get his revenge, but obviously he decided to keep up the good work and pilfer from criminals as he made his way into a second movie. This was unfortunately kind of a big mistake since not only did the idea lose Liam Neeson and take on Arnold Vosloo, kind of fell off the radar after the first movie since let’s be honest, the first movie was great for its time, but it was still a bit cheesy once a person saw it again.

Seeing as how so many ideas are being tossed back into the mix again however it does feel as though Darkman should be given another look and that he should likely be given the chance to prove himself once more. It feels safe to say that Liam Neeson wouldn’t be coming back since at this point he’s kind of aged out of the role and it was made clear a while back that he didn’t want to do any more action movies. But there are plenty of guys out there that could take on this role and make it into something special again. Darkman has been a cult classic for so long that it’s easy to think that someone might have the ambition to pick it up and really do something with it since there’s enough of a story there to work with, and there’s no doubt that it could be bolstered in a big way if someone had the idea to make it happen. As of right now it doesn’t sound as though anything might be in the works, but it does feel as though this could be the right time since plenty of hero movies are still on the horizon and it might be that people could embrace one of them that’s not like the others and could be seen as something that’s unique enough to stand out. Just wishing it to be so isn’t bound to be enough obviously, but maybe if the right people start looking around to find stories that could be used to a greater extent it might happen. You never know, it could happen.