Batman and Robin: Deep Freeze

I liked the movie very much. It looked like the 1940s Batman comic & movie series. Its much better then the original movie. The end with Mr, Freeze in jail was good. The Audio, Visual, editing was super. I remember seeing it when I rent it on VHS tape from a video store. I was disappointed seeing it. But this one was fun to see it.

Holy Reconceptualization Batfans!!!!

I can not even believe this is the same movie!

Even though I am a long time fan and supporter of MusicEd, when he announced this project, I must be honest, that small part of me was skeptical that he could pull this off. But pull it off he has, and then some!

The Black & White conversion looks great! Never too dark that you can't make out important background details and never too bright that it looks washed out. But most importantly, it just immediately creates a new mood and tone that perfectly suits the world of our favourite dark knight detective.

This new tone is further solidified by the incredible new soundtrack from the Arkham games that Ed has added. Gone are the more over the top, bombastic music beats replaced by a darker, edgier, Gotham-esque sound.

But the real accomplishment is in the cut work! Over 30 minutes sliced away, Ed has significantly toned down the moronic badguy elements, making them feel now more like mustache twirling comic book villains. And by trimming back on Freeze and Ivy, it moves the Alfred subplot to the center stage, giving the overall movie significantly more dramatic and emotional weight. It is an incredible narrative accomplishment. Of course, with such dramatic trims, there is the occasional moment where the dialogue does not flow quite naturally enough or you can not hide every silly moment like our heroes on skates, but these a fleeting and minor issues, none of which deterred from my enjoyment.

As I watched, many times I remarked to myself how much this fan edit reminded me of the classic Animated Series... a fantastic blend of Noir, Spectacle and Character.

This is some delicious popcorn entertainment. Highly recommended.

Thumbs Up!!!!

Wow... just... wow! Music Ed has accomplished something truly great here by turning easily the worst Batman movie into a coherent and even enjoyable experience. It felt very much like watching a live action version of B:TAS.

While I'm typically not a fan of watching a black and white version of a current movie (Fury Road is an all-time favorite movie of mine but I can't watch the silver and chrome version because I feel it mutes so much of what makes that movie great), it fits the tone of this edit perfectly. Pair that with the rescores which especially helped to elevate the tone of this edit. I never knew how great the scores from the Arkham games were.

There really is a ton to love here. The complete expulsion of Bane is done masterfully and you would never know for a second that he was there if you've never seen the film. An editor after my own heart, I love that a lot of dialogue is cut out during fight scenes (biggest example being Batgirl vs Poison Ivy). I've always felt this gives a much greater intensity. The redone opening credits are great and cutting back and forth helps eliminate a lot of garbage.

There are some very minor gripes but I feel you can find that with most any edit. While I adore the rescores, there were two moments where it shifts back to the regular score that feel awkward (opening when Batman and Robin are chasing Freeze down the tunnel, Climax when the gang is leaving Poison Ivy's layer/shots of the Observatory with Freeze) and there are a handful of shots that look either visibly slowed down or noticeably cropped. Again, these are minor and only distracting for a moment but those are where the knocks on A/V editing come from.

This edit should without a doubt replace the original for anyone lucky enough to watch it. It's really not even a fair fight. Great job on taking a near impossible task and running with it!

Look... It's a well known fact that this movie has some bad writing and cringy line delivery. No amount of editing is going to change that. Some negative reviews seem to take the core film too seriously... So I want to focus on the positive, and I'll start by saying that I had a lot of fun with this fan edit! A big part of that is the use of the Arkham City score; something I feel is a quintessential Batman theme. It's not always perfectly placed in its use here, but for the most part its a nice addition to the film that gives it a stronger tone.

Batman & Robin suffers from trying to do too much, so cutting it down and removing certain elements really benefits the central story; Bruce fighting to save his family. Cringy lines aside, I've always felt that George Clooney gives an earnest performance as Bruce Wayne and that the right edit could really highlight that. Music Ed pulls that off and then some!

Freeze is now a much stronger villain without the constant, terrible one-liners, and the decision to cut out Ivy's origin strengthens her as a villain, too, as she's introduced as a crazed environmentalist, and then a few scenes later shows up (not in a giant ape costume) as a confident and sexy threat, making her feel instantly more unhinged! Removing awkward scenes of henchmen singing, and flawlessly removing Bane, also makes Freeze and Ivy much more focused characters. (You'd seriously never know that Bane was even in this movie!)

Now, truly, these changes would not work as well if the film weren't presented in black in white; something I feel majorly benefits the overall tone. The lack of vibrant colors helps keep a more grounded, almost Burton feel - especially in any exterior Gotham shots (although the statues are still goofy. But the lack of neon makes them more palatable). The new aesthetic makes it feel like this edit would be a great companion piece to the Batman Forever: Vintage Workprint.

This will be my go-to version of Batman & Robin. Granted, my previous "go-to" version was to just never watch it... So it's an improvement in my book!

This is absolutely a fantastic fanedit, even without rating it on a curve for level-of-difficulty. Does it turn Batman & Robin into a good movie? Oh god no.

Does it make Batman & Robin watchable? Surprisingly: yes!

My thoughts on this film and exactly what the hell Joel Schumacher was doing with it are here: https://boxd.it/3qY4bl but suffice to say that it's one of the worst comic book movies of all time. When you wonder why people aren't raging in the streets at the sloppy efforts DC comes out with all the time now, it's probably in large part because we all know just how much worse it can get. This.

But we also know how much better it can be, like Batman: The Animated Series. Seeing that MusicEd's goal was to make this film more like that show was very intriguing to me...and he mostly pulls it off! I honestly NEVER would have drawn the comparison, but changing the movie to black and white showcases the intense lighting that Schumacher used, and actually gives this a rather appropriate, almost Gothic/expressionist look like often used in the animated series. The bizarre building architecture suddenly looks less like studio excess and more fitting to a weird, heightened 1940s aesthetic. Poison Ivy's entrance hearkens back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Mr. Freeze's tech looks like something from Lost In Space. The massive rescoring of the film places it more in tone with the series as well, as do the opening credits which I actually found really impressive... God help me, it almost all works!

That said, this is one of the worst scripts ever written, and a lot of the dialogue is still cringey. Despite all the cuts, Arnold speaks almost exclusively in bad puns, so many are still included, like “The iceman cometh!”, “Freeze in Hell, Batman!”, and “Adam and Eve-il…” <eyeroll> Clooney is still as horribly-miscast as him, Silverstone and O'Donnell's storylines are still underbaked and annoying more than fun, and there's honestly just a lot of really inconsistent acting here. The whole affair still has jarring tones at war with each other and plot pieces strung together on the thinnest of margins. It's written down to kids far more than the worst Batman cartoon.

My favorite exchange made me actually *guffaw* at the end, where Batman says-
"The satellites COULD be reconfigured but it would take a computer genius to --"
Robin: "I'm on it!"
Batgirl: "No, I'M on it!"

Ah, this movie is just full of geniuses. ;) However, as dumb as it is, it's a vast improvement over the theatrical version, something which was almost physically painful for me to watch even 5 minutes of at a time. Cutting Bane out of this film works amazingly well, as do most of the other plot alterations. The cuts do leave some slight logic gaps in the narrative, where it really feels like people (especially Batman) just suddenly know things or have decided things and we've missed that whole process off-screen. That said, I'm sure the original film wouldn't feel much different... more material would just raise more questions. It's a silly movie with very little logic to it, so what's here is actually a big improvement. Can't fault it for not being perfect.

If you're going to watch Batman & Robin, this is unequivocally the way to watch it. I still don't know that I'd recommend watching it at ALL, (a better choice would be to spend time with Kevin Conroy's work, the best Batman of all time...) but if you do, this is the way to do it.