Bateman Begins: An American Psycho

This is an interesting fan edit. I saw it on a list of Must See fan edits over five years ago... and I think the fan editing has come a long way since then. This is an outlandish idea to merge three wholly unrelated Christian Bale movies and somehow try to craft a cohesive and coherent story. In that regard, it works... But its just not as fun as I was hoping it would be.

I find myself agreeing with Neglify, the Batman story beats feel disconnected, and I think it would've played much better as a 30 minute short. The joke of the premise gets a little stale after a while, especially because there is such a stark difference between the American Psycho and Batman footage.

I have to give props to the creative use of the infamous Terminator Salvation rant audio for a single line. That was the kind of fun energy that I was hoping for throughout!

Lastly, the closing monologue of American Psycho playing over the ending of The Machinist actually worked remarkably well! I want to see an entire edit that merges just those two movies and ignores Batman entirely. There's something really promising there!

I’m torn on this edit. I’ll get the obvious out of the way; old fanedit, bad tech ratings. Now the tricky part.

I knew this was going to be a goofy “what if” type story so I didn’t expect a coherent narrative that felt like a “real” movie. I enjoyed it a lot, the overall concept worked (to a degree) but the Batman angle felt totally out of place. The third act was nicely done. It would have been much more effective as a 30-40 minute short.

A/V Quality - 7
Editing - 7
Narrative - 6
Enjoyment - 8 (originals: American Psycho 10, Batman Begins 8, Machinist 9)

Recommended drink: Tequila and Mountain Dew

The technical editing on this was incredible. The audio and video flowed together very well, with no sound feedback or jarring cuts in the clips to draw attention to the fact that they didn't originally go together (with one exception, which I will address below). Technologically, this was a masterpiece.

The narrative, however, I found very weak. There were such long stretches of just "American Psycho" that I didn't feel it tied in very well with the "Batman" story. The characterization also needed to be more tightly cut; Bateman's inner monologues, such as the one about his hygiene regimen, don't really fit the Bruce Wayne-going-crazy idea, and should've been trimmed down, excised, or dubbed over with music. Alfred's appearances are so sparse and scattered that it's difficult to figure out why he's there at all. I just didn't feel like I was watching one cohesive movie. I was very conscious of the fact that I was watching a blend of three.

One audio thing I feel the need to mention was the inclusion of Christian Bale's on-set freakout from "Terminator." It was not cut in very well, and was very startling. Plus, since Christian Bale speaks with his real English accent in the freakout (which neither the Bruce or Bateman characters speak with), it took a minute to even connect that voiceover screaming to the characters on the screen.

Overall, I think that the edit shows great technological prowess, but a loose grasp of story.

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

This is an interesting fanedit, showing what a man would be like with an alternate persona that would be a sadistic bad guy instead of the good one that we need, but not right now. The fanedit shares the plot twist from American Psycho (2000), which most of the footage from this fanedit comes with, along with Batman Begins (2005), but adds on extra plot from The Machinist (2004) to expand it. Overall, this is well put together as it shows a man completely lose who he is (for the better of humanity?)

I only watched the AVI as that was the only format available (a DVD would have been nice, but I'm not here to make demands.) and it was appropriate for a 700 MB AVI. It did have a little bit of pixelation throughout the movie, but it wasn't horrible. The only real problems i had were the opening and ending credits. It was pretty easy to see that the credits at the beginning had been covered up to match the background and it did overlap with some of the blood. The end credits look a little weird and stretched. I didn't mind them, but they did stand out.

This is still a recommend to anyone who wouldn't mind seeing a mash-up of two plots from two completely different movies. Thumbs up from me.