Has anyone seen Batman Forever - Dark Knight Edition???

[BatmanFanatic93]

I was looking through an old forum i saved to read later a couple of months ago and was wondering if anyone on here has veiwed it before?
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Batman-Forever-Dark-Knight-Edition/topic/8039/
A friend of mine on deviantart told me it was decleared to be fake but i dunno seems pretty legit even though this cut and it's pictures hasn't been brought up for years but i just wanna be certain if anyone has seen it or seen pictures/videos about it.Any info would be helpful

[thecolorsblend]

I was looking through an old forum i saved to read later a couple of months ago and was wondering if anyone on here has veiwed it before?
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Batman-Forever-Dark-Knight-Edition/topic/8039/
A friend of mine on deviantart told me it was decleared to be fake but i dunno seems pretty legit even though this cut and it's pictures hasn't been brought up for years but i just wanna be certain if anyone has seen it or seen pictures/videos about it.Any info would be helpful

Not sure what you mean by "fake" vs. "legit". The description says it is a fan edit.

[BatmAngelus]

Wow, that thread brought back memories.  I've seen ScissorPuppy's posting years before.  Batman Beyond's post really brought back memories, too, since some of those suggestions were made by me years ago.  We're talking pre-Batman Begins-on-the-other-forum era.

Not sure which parts of those suggestions were mine and which parts were Batman Beyond's, though I know the "Impostor Two-Face" suggestion was definitely his.

I have to say that my feelings have probably changed over the years and some of the things that may have bothered me years ago probably don't now and aren't really huge flaws of the movie to me.  For example, I think Goldenthal's music perfectly fits the movie and the only way an Elfman score is going to feel natural to Batman Forever is if he did a full-on alternate score himself.

I will also say that I myself don't despise the 1960s series at the moment.  If that was me who said that, maybe I was just in my "Batman must be dark, screw everything else" period.  I really don't remember.

You can re-edit the movie to put the first act's events in their original order, put the deleted scenes back in, and cut out stuff like the "I'll get drive-thru" line, but in the end, I don't think it'll make the movie that much better.

To me, the best version of Batman Forever is the Peter David novelization (see other thread) and there's no fan edit that can bring that version to life.

[BatmanFanatic93]

I was looking through an old forum i saved to read later a couple of months ago and was wondering if anyone on here has veiwed it before?
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Batman-Forever-Dark-Knight-Edition/topic/8039/
A friend of mine on deviantart told me it was decleared to be fake but i dunno seems pretty legit even though this cut and it's pictures hasn't been brought up for years but i just wanna be certain if anyone has seen it or seen pictures/videos about it.Any info would be helpful

Not sure what you mean by "fake" vs. "legit". The description says it is a fan edit.

I mean't if the fan edit was real or not sorry

[BatmanFanatic93]

You can re-edit the movie to put the first act's events in their original order, put the deleted scenes back in, and cut out stuff like the "I'll get drive-thru" line, but in the end, I don't think it'll make the movie that much better.

To me, the best version of Batman Forever is the Peter David novelization (see other thread) and there's no fan edit that can bring that version to life.

Well i wouldn't say that really cause there's alot of great moments in batman forever that is just covered in with the silliness and campiness and if edited properly it can be a better entry to the 90's batman series heck i even posted something here for a cut i'm doing which i kinda went back and forth on but came back to it recently cause i was trying to figure how to make batman forever better by taking notes from the comic book adaption and the novelization (yes i finally got novel)while trying to make the film connect better with the first two
here's a rough cut clip i months ago of what i'm trying to achieve in the cut.

And here's a new update of what to expect in the cut.
1: New main titles/credits matching the style of the previous films
2: Entire film will be re-scored with music by danny elfman (don't worry i'm not gonna over lap the original score with elfman's instead i removed the original music from the film)
3: Remixed flashback sequences
4: Two-face and riddler have been tone down to match their comic book counterparts more
5: Colors have been mute alot to a point where it's black and white with a little bit of color
6: Deleted scenes have been added in of course but have some been altered
7: The 89 batmobile has return
8: New alternative ending
9: Restored timeline
10: Blusish tint is mixed in
11: Gotham is darker
12: Deleted any useless material that make no sense to the story
13: Bat guns and missiles have return to make the claw island battle more meaningful

[BatmAngelus]

Well i wouldn't say that really cause there's alot of great moments in batman forever that is just covered in with the silliness and campiness and if edited properly it can be a better entry to the 90's batman series heck i even posted something here for a cut i'm doing which i kinda went back and forth on but came back to it recently cause i was trying to figure how to make batman forever better by taking notes from the comic book adaption and the novelization (yes i finally got novel)while trying to make the film connect better with the first two
here's a rough cut clip i months ago of what i'm trying to achieve in the cut.

To expand on my previous statement, I feel that fan editors are always going to be limited to the finished film and deleted footage.  It's not their fault, but no matter what, Two-Face is still going to be one-dimensional in this movie*.  Even with cutting little moments like his tantrum in the chopper, Tommy Lee Jones is still going to be over-the-top in his performance and so is the actor playing the trapped bank guard.  And while adding some of the deleted dialogue/footage back in was nice, it doesn't change or improve the sequence/the story that much.  I liked that you brought in "If the bat wants to play, we'll play" that I remember from way back in the trailer and the "Have you looked in the mirror lately?" deleted scene.  But putting those lines back in didn't add much more to the sequence to me.  It's certainly a cool, new experience to watching it, but I feel the same way as I said before.

* And honestly, I don't find the portrayal to be that much of the "bastardization" of the character these days, after I read Chuck Dixon's take on him in Prodigal and found the character was pretty much like that around '94-95.

[DocLathropBrown]

Yeah, the problem people make with trying to fanedit Batman Forever is that they try to make it into something it's not. It's not a Tim Burton movie. It's not a movie with a lack of neon. The only effective way to do a complete overhaul of the film in that way would require access to the film's individual audio apart from the music. You could cleanly alter the music into Elfman's that way and make it seamless, but it the footage doesn't really fit that music anyway.

The only way to make BF better is to re-integrate the deleted scenes, reshuffle the opening act into its scripted form, and maybe trim a few absurd moments. But try to trim too much, and it'll look like stuff is missing. The film as made is too integrated with its over-the-top stylings. So editors who try to cut everything over the top just make the film seem like swiss cheese. You can only cleanly remove stuff that A) excises whole moments entirely or B) stuff that has no music behind it, so it isn't obvious something was removed. "I'll get Drive-thru" could be removed, because it's a quiet sound field, for example.

I've always wanted an extended cut of BF that does as I've said above, but nobody tries for that. Everyone tries to make it into a Burtonized film, and it can never work that way. It's like taking Raiders of the Lost Ark and trying to make it into a Superman movie with a music change. The footage is what it is, it can never be anything different.

I've never subscribed to the idea that BF needed that kind of overhaul anyway. As BatmAngelus said, Two-Face actually has been like that in the comics before (I've read a few tales from the 70s/80s where he's pretty nutty as well), and so has the Riddler. People may wish for other performances, but they aren't inaccurate. Towit, there really isn't anything inaccurate in BF... just not to what most want. Me? I just want an engaging story, melodrama, and action/adventure. BF has all that in spades. I even like the neon lighting. It's harmless, just like the Batnipples. The story doesn't make those things anything more than aesthetic, that stuff can be ignored. I never noticed there were nipples on the customes, for example, until the internet pointed it out to me!

An extended cut that didn't try to "Burtonize" the footage would simply make the story stronger and help balance against the humorous tint the film's theatrical cut has. Someone should seriously just try that.

[BatmanFanatic93]

An extended cut that didn't try to "Burtonize" the footage would simply make the story stronger and help balance against the humorous tint the film's theatrical cut has. Someone should seriously just try that.

The red book edition does do that and is a fan favorite on fanedit.org

[BatmAngelus]

Yeah, the problem people make with trying to fanedit Batman Forever is that they try to make it into something it's not. It's not a Tim Burton movie. It's not a movie with a lack of neon. The only effective way to do a complete overhaul of the film in that way would require access to the film's individual audio apart from the music. You could cleanly alter the music into Elfman's that way and make it seamless, but it the footage doesn't really fit that music anyway.

Agreed completely.

The only way to make BF better is to re-integrate the deleted scenes, reshuffle the opening act into its scripted form, and maybe trim a few absurd moments. But try to trim too much, and it'll look like stuff is missing. The film as made is too integrated with its over-the-top stylings. So editors who try to cut everything over the top just make the film seem like swiss cheese. You can only cleanly remove stuff that A) excises whole moments entirely or B) stuff that has no music behind it, so it isn't obvious something was removed. "I'll get Drive-thru" could be removed, because it's a quiet sound field, for example.

Right.  And even then, I don't see how adding back the deleted scenes will make Batman Forever into a drastically better movie.

1. The Bat Must Die opening would've certainly been a darker start and created a nice bookend since the film ends with Arkham and Dr. Burton, too.  But on a story level, it wouldn't tell us more than what we already find out later- Two-Face escapes Arkham and wants revenge on Batman.  Sure, it serves as an introduction to Dr. Burton, but Burton's hardly a significant character in the narrative.

2. The "You're a killer, too" dialogue in the helicopter sequence against Two-Face might've been a nice tie-into Bruce telling Dick later about how lost you can become in your own vengeance.  There's some nice callbacks to Two-Face's origin, too.  But again, this doesn't add much.  It's really just a few lines of new dialogue.  The current movie already covers the idea of killing Two-Face more extensively in the scenes between Bruce and Dick and this dialogue was probably cut for pacing, so it wouldn't seem like Two-Face and Batman were stopping their fight to chat.

3. Batman getting tricked into visiting the salon.  Now this definitely would've shown that Batman wasn't just sitting around Wayne Manor as Riddler and Two-Face were going on a crime spree.  However, is it really that clear from this scene alone that it was the Box that tricked Batman into going there?  It could've been cut in the first place for this reason.  Unless you've got an additional scene of us seeing Riddler's Box messing up the police frequencies or something that makes it clear that Riddler was behind the mixup, it just shows Batman showing up at the wrong place.  And do we really want to see a bunch of hairdressers mocking and laughing at our hero?  That ending bit can be cut, but still, adding this would only be a small fix to a small issue that would potentially open up a bigger problem if the scene's unclear how Bats got tricked and instead just makes him look incompetent.  Even if that wasn't a problem, it remains a very small fix in the grand scheme of things (to a problem that most people probably didn't notice upon first viewing).

4. Bruce visiting Dick at the gym. It's not a bad scene, but again, it doesn't contribute anything new, except saying that Dick completed repairing the motorcycle.  There's a bunch of (better) scenes in the movie of Bruce talking to Dick about how vengeance won't help him heal.  This would've been a bit more of the same.  Sure, it's a better way of showing that Dick has fighting skills than the laundry scene.  But its addition wouldn't be that significant to the story, compared to the Bruce-Dick scenes that are currently in the movie and move more of their story forward.

5. Then, there's the scene with the news reporter and Bruce questioning how much longer he can do this.  Now this would be a nice addition that explores more of Bruce's character and brings in the red diary subplot.  The fast-talking news reporter fits right into the Forever's cartoonish tone, though, so if you have issues with that, this scene won't exactly be an improved addition either.

6. The next scene in the Batcave where Bruce finds the diary is probably the biggest one to add. 

And yet, we don't have the footage of Bruce in bed asking "Cave?  What cave?" when Alfred says the cave's been destroyed, so the fact that Bruce suddenly has no memory in the scene is going to feel like it's come out of the blue in any fan edit.

And even if we did have that footage, thecolorsblend brought up a great point in another thread that the scene itself slows the pacing down significantly as we head toward the climax and giving Bruce amnesia at this point feels like a big detour in the story.  It'd be nice to see edited it back into the movie and probably be the most significant addition, since it'd explain what was written in the red diary that made young Bruce run away in the rain, as well as explain the motivation behind "Not because I have to be.  Now because I choose to be" line. 

But again, this one sequence isn't going to significantly improve the other two hours of the movie that much in my mind and risks dragging down the pacing with five minutes of amnesia as we head toward the final confrontation.

7. The ending with Alfred driving Chase.  It's a nice little moment that's probably shooting to replicate the previous films' endings that also had Alfred behind the wheel, but, again, putting it back in won't add much to what we've got.

As a sidenote, I know a lot of people would've wanted to see the original Batman-and-Robin standing on the gargoyle, but the current ending is fine with me.  There's a natural flow from Chase's "Don't work too late" to Bruce watching her go with the marching drums fading into the score to Batman and Robin showing up against the Bat Signal.

Adding the Chase moment in between would interrupt the flow of that, which, again, was probably why it was cut in the first place.

Even if you were able to cut from the Chase scene to the original unseen rooftop shot, would aping B89 really make the ending that much better?  Not really, in my opinion.  It'd just come across as trying to copy one of the previous movies.

8. Now, putting the first act back in the original order would be interesting to see, too, but again, I don't see how it'd be a significant improvement to the story.  The movie's current first act isn't exactly hard to follow.  Putting Bruce's meeting with Edward before fighting Two-Face would reorder things, but that's all.  It'd just be a different order.

The biggest thing it'd change, narratively, is that it'd set Chase and the Bat-Signal scene much later in the movie, after Bruce sees the signal in Wayne Manor and before encountering Two-Face.  Sound editing-wise, Chase would have to say "last night at the circus" instead of "last night at the bank" like in the script, which I guess would make more sense since Chase never actually did see Two-Face at the bank (more on this later).  Plus we'd actually know the reason why the Bat Signal was lit, rather than it randomly bringing Batman out to encounter Two-Face and his gang.

BUT even then, this isn't huge or a significant upgrade to what we've already got.  The point of the GCPD rooftop scene is Chase trying to seduce Batman.  Her thoughts on Two-Face are just an excuse to get him there anyway.  (Plus it's not far fetched for her to talk about the coin without seeing Harvey yet since she works with Commissioner Gordon, so I don't consider "Last night at the bank" to be a glaring plot hole that needs fixing).  It also isn't really necessary for us to know why the Bat Signal's shining the night that Bruce lets Dick stay in Wayne Manor.  This is Gotham, crime is all over the place.

If anything, I prefer keeping Chase and the Bat-Signal scene where it is.  It flows much better to have her trying to get into Batman's pants shortly after meeting him at the bank, where he's fresh on her mind from the night before vs. trying to seduce him later, the night after she nearly got blown up by Two-Face and saw the Graysons fall to their deaths.

So in the end, if we were to add all the deleted scenes and put the movie in its original scripted order, we'd get four new scenes that would've been nice but don't add much more to the movie than extra screentime, plus three new scenes  that either would've filled in only small blanks or added a few minutes more to Bruce's story, but would've still created its own coherency and pacing problems with the rest of the movie.

An improvement?  Not by that much, in my opinion.

[thecolorsblend]

^ The above is the detailed version of my argument for leaving BF as it is. The aesthetics and the plot are what they are. Changing anything would pretty much require going all the way back to pre-production from scratch, which is beyond what a "fan editor" can accomplish.