Batman and Robin: Deep Freeze

Musiced has made us believe in the same way Donner enabled us to have faith in a man who could fly. Here, a Bat has earned it's wings!

Deep Freeze is a tidy, focused 90 minute forraye into the themes of lust, loss, age, vulnerability, teamwork, and family. It feels very much, through the use of the atmospheric and gothic filtering and editorial course corrections, like a natural end point for the Batman of '89 in his middle age if he had allowed himself to be more open. The performances are more dialled in, their stories make sense, there is strategy to the cuts that sees Freeze at his absolute, with Ivy helping his arc along. Ivy isn't forgotten in the crosshairs either.

The choice of music also brings the film more in touch with the earlier Burton movies without being beholden to them, and the scores bring out the more humane and sombre touches, bringing to life every character action, reaction and motivation.

It's often said you can't polish a turd, but somehow Musiced has manged to thaw our hearts and made us reevaluate this little popsicle Batman and Robin can be made ideal in an unideal world, which means there's hope for the rest of us.

Now this is a movie I never thought I'd enjoy one day. The render of B&W is beautiful, the focusing on the tragic side of the characters (Freeze's wife and Alfred's sickness) was a wise choice, it adds the seriousness that lacked from the original cut. And the music choices are just perfect. Definitely worth checking.

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 :)

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.

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!