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.

This edit did the impossible and made Batman & Robin a watchable movie by cutting down the cringe, noise, and neon. Though I missed Elliott Goldenthal's score, the new music chosen was fitting.

Removing Bane, Poison Ivy's origin, and that stupid gorilla suit improved Poison Ivy tremendously, and losing the puns (as much as I love them!) improved Mr. Freeze. However, even with the editing, Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl is barely tolerable and the plot is paper-thin (not the fault of the editor, some things can't be helped!)

Still, to echo the sentiment shared by reviewer mnkykungfu: if you're going to watch Batman & Robin, this is definitely the way to watch it.

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.

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!

Disclaimer: I haven't seen this since I was a child, when the film was always experienced at the hands of the VHS player. I picked up the blu-ray pretty much exclusively to see the edit, so take my comparisons and opinion with a pinch of salt. I am far removed from the source.


QUALITY

Visual quality is variable, but decent overall. Some artifacts can be heard on the audio.


VISUAL

There are moments where it's apparent that the framerate has been dropped in order to slow down/extend a shot, which took me out of the film. The conversion to black and white is a mixed bag as some shots look a bit washed out, like they could maybe have done with having deeper blacks. Scenes with Mr Freeze seem to be the exception; his character was born to be portrayed in B&W!


AUDIO

This is an ambitious project and requires a lot of sound rebuilding to make the rescoring choices work, but it feels like the replacement of sound effects has been on the lighter side. Some scenes feel as though they are missing sounds, such as the absence of breath or grunting during a fight. Dialogue in unscored scenes is also noticeably louder than scenes where audio has been reworked. It works, and not all of the film has been rescored, so this isn't a regular issue. But it took me out of the edit and made parts feel incomplete. As mentioned, there is some artifacting, which may be from the choice of bitrate, but this is also a common side effect when removing music from sound effects; so I'm wondering if that's part of it. These typically fare worse than dialogue when trying to remove music.

On a purely subjective level, I found the music during the motorbike chase to be obnoxious, and think that could have been rescored.


NARRATIVE

I found the opening credits to be a bit lengthy and not ideal pacing, but the rest generally flows well. I didn't piece together where Bain even was meant to come into the plot, so that was obviously slickly done. Maybe the biggest criticism I could give is that Robin and Batman's rivalry over Ivy felt underdeveloped.

Unfortunately, even with all of MusicEd's changes, it felt apparent to me that Batman and Robin is a film that wants to be campy, and the edit feels at war with this. Personally, I didn't think the music was that fitting; I realise that Ed was going for more of an expressionist look, but I got much more of a noir vibe. For me, this notion jarred with the choice of a modern cinematic soundtrack. I could see the expressionist angle working maybe if this was made into a silent movie (anyone?), which would also allow for more freedom with the narrative.


ENJOYMENT

To be completely honest, while I enjoyed seeing MusicEd's unique take, the film itself came across pretty mediocre. It's been so long since I've seen the original that it's hard to determine whether this is an improvement or not. I can remember offensive elements that are now removed, but is it necessarily a gain to remove these or does it rob an inherently campy film of ironic enjoyment? Whether you're a fan of Schumacker's approach or no, it feels like a homage to the days of Adam West... and it may be that it's better embraced that way. I don't put that forward as a strong opinion, merely as food for thought.

Thank you again, MusicEd, for sharing your work. Sorry I haven't been super positive on this one! I'm always pleased to see ambitious projects like this come out though :)