Which DC animated movie is truest to the source material?

[tib2d2]

Which one of the DC animated features was most true to the source material? Now this could be both good or bad, since not everything translates well to a movie. Putting aside how good or bad the movie was, which one was closest to the story in the comics?

[Alpha]

Probably a tie between Year One, The Dark Knight Returns and New Frontier. I think The Dark Knight Returns keeps just about everything I can recall from the comic, so it's probably that one. I think Year One reduced some small parts. Those three also have the most faithful adaptations of the art style.

But there are quite a few movies that adapted a subpar or flawed storyline and improved it a lot. I think Batman Under The Red Hood is the best example of it, but I also appreciate:

Death and Reign of Superman (I just never enjoyed the original story itself and thought the adaptation had a more streamlined and thematically consistent development of the villain plot)

and Batman vs Robin (I didn't love it but the third act had a lot more to say than whatever Scott Snyder was trying to do with City of Owls. Also liked how they used the future Damian from Morrison)

[tib2d2]

ok cool, I haven't seen any of the three you mentioned first, so I'll check those out. However I'm one of the rare folks that never really liked Dark Knight Returns.

[Thezmage]

I'd say New Frontier, largely because it's one of the first.

[bat39]

Year One and The Dark Knight Returns for sure.

New Frontier too probably (its been a while since I read the comic).

The Killing Joke is pretty faithful...after the first 15-20 minutes or so.

[Adekis]

I think Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One are about evenly matched.

I think of Justice League: The New Frontier movie as almost more of a companion piece to the DC: The New Frontier comic than a direct adaptation, if that makes sense.

Darwyn Cooke worked on the movie, and it vastly streamlines the plot, keeps the same aesthetic and mood, and makes it easier to digest the story if the book is a little too much for you. When I first tried to read the comic, I had a hard time following it (I was a kid, after all) and I got a little bored trying to figure out where the story was going and why there were so few scenes with super-heroes in them. The movie gave me a much more direct "in" to the story, and after I experienced it that way, I had a much easier time going back to the book. Since that young age I've reread The New Frontier several times, and I think it's a brilliant story that conveys a very encompassing sense of mid 20th century America, all its triumph, all its horror.

But I would have taken a much longer time to understand and appreciate the comic without the movie to open the way, and I sincerely believe that the movie, being so much less detailed, is fundamentally incomplete unless you also read the comic!

By contrast, Year One and DKR can, on some level, stand in for the comic. I mean, I don't think they should, not entirely, but I think they kind of can.