Batman Begins: Dark Cut

The first time I saw BATMAN BEGINS was when the family rented the film when it came out on DVD in 2005. I had grown up on Bruce Timm’s animated Batman series, and that’s where my interest in the character stemmed from. My thoughts back then: Scarecrow freaked me out, Katie Holmes was hot, and Bale made a decent if unremarkable Batman. A few years later, after THE DARK KNIGHT was released, I re-visited BEGINS and found it lacking. I no longer had a crush on Katie Holmes, and while I loved the more fantastical elements like Bruce’s ninja-training and the fear gas, the film dropped the ball too many times and was a disappointing start to Christopher Nolan’s set of Bat-films.

My problems? The overplayed ‘mwa-ha-ha’ villainy during Bruce’s training, low-brow humour (guy looking in coffee cup, “nice coat”, etc), unsubtle dialogue between Crane and Rachel, Holmes seemed too young to play such a mature character… and my biggest gripe: the film entered dumbass-American-action-movie mode too often. Too much wanton destruction and a goofy climax which saw Jim Gordon take control of the Tumbler to help out our hero.

To my delight, JMB’s DARK CUT addressed practically every issue I had with the film. I had to check it out.

A lot of work obviously went into this fan-edit, and mad props to the editor for being so sensible and creative! Removing the young Bruce’s goofiest moment (waving back at Rachel) made that scene much more human. The inserted footage of a sniper shooting Joe Chill blended right in with perfect colour correction, and the vfx added to the shots from the drugged Rachel’s POV worked a treat, adding another dimension to the chase scene (which Nolan really should’ve done in the first place). Lots of little annoyances (such as Falcone’s corny dialogue when he meets Bruce, or Rachel being bitchy to Bruce on his birthday) were removed. I was shocked initially to hear Katie Holmes’ new voice, but I quickly got used to it. She suddenly sounded mature… and sexy! Awesome idea and execution. I didn’t miss a single cut gag, and to boot the best ones (“a black… tank” and a number of Alfred’s lines) were left in.

The one cut that drove me to download the DARK CUT was the removal of Gordon from the climax, and I must say, it put much better emphasis on the struggle between Ra’s and Batman, how the pupil had surpassed the teacher. Good stuff. The one problem with this change was that after Batman gives Gordon a fear toxin antidote, Gordon disappears for the film’s ending. A bit irksome, but the trade-off for a straight-faced and believable climax was worth it. The reworked ending, with the call-back to Rachel and Bruce’s childhood, was touching and framed their relationship well.

A few problems showed up along the way. The aforementioned conversation should’ve had more dialogue cut, I felt. As it stands, Bruce tells Rachel that he was a coward when he was younger, then says that justice is about more than revenge (an idea that’s communicated well enough through the narrative, anyway). She then tells him that deep down, he may still be that same great kid she knew. I feel this conversation would flow better if it went straight from Bruce claiming he was a coward as a young man, to Rachel contradicting his sentiment by praising the younger Bruce. Finally, the credits made for a damp squib of an ending. The pieces of text were huge and seemed slightly off-sync with the music at moments. I also didn’t appreciate not getting a full credits sequence.

What could’ve been cut that wasn’t? The original film suffered from too many call-backs, I think, and these eventually got tiring and were a cheap way of stirring emotion and communicating themes to the audience. For example, Thomas’ stethoscope or Alfred’s cliche “why do we fall?”. Deciding which call-backs could be cut would require some amount of analysis. But the one moment that is referenced twice: Bruce sacrificing his footing for a killing stroke. Ra’s Al Ghul announces that Bruce never learned to mind his surroundings later in the film, and this is referenced again at what should be the film’s most powerful moment – the death of Ra’s. The second reference just isn’t necessary, considering the tension it drains. The one edit that should’ve been reconsidered, IMO, was the removal of Ra’s telling Bruce that the League of Shadows tried to destroy Gotham using economics. (I like the implication that the League’s efforts to ruin the city began long ago, and that perhaps they inadvertently contributed to Gotham’s current economic woes.)

Two edits I would’ve liked to see included in this DARK CUT (perhaps in a future release?) were the removal of the romantic tension between Rachel and Finch (if only because she hooks up with another co-worker in THE DARK KNIGHT) and some alteration of the scene where Loeb is interrogated by Batman. I admit that Bale’s Batman brought the lulz a lot in his second outing, but not so much in BEGINS… except for this scene. He’s intense, laughably intense. If the image were distorted, some of Batman’s shaking would be lost – maybe the shots of Batman from Loeb’s POV, when he’s hanging upside down, could’ve been flipped vertically.

Editing 9/10
There were a few head-scratcher moments (eg. a shot was used twice over a short period, with the footage reversed the second time), but overall it was a professional and clean job, with no awkward transitions or flashing frames.

Video 9/10
The quality was acceptable for an avi.

Audio 10/10
I had no problems, really. The added video game dialogue worked fine and patched up the narrative admirably.

Overall 9/10
DARK CUT is just the edit BATMAN BEGINS needed to sit alongside THE DARK KNIGHT. And I’d say that with JMB’s help, BEGINS manages to eclipse even the latter. A stellar job.

This was a pretty awesome edit. The video editing was smooth, with no hard cuts. The cuts themselves are well thought out and improve the movie experience. Not a lot else to say here.

The audio, on the other hand, had some issues. I downloaded the DVD version and burned it on a dvd. When I played it on my plasma tv via blu-ray player (tv speakers only) there was a noticeable dissonance in some of the audio elements; a kind of dual-voice or overdub effect, perhaps resulting from slightly out of sync audio channels. The dissonance seemed to occur mainly in the bass range. Also, some of the voices added from the game seem muffled.

However, when I used handbrake to encode an x264 .mkv of the film, I set it for an AAC stereo mixdown. The stereo mixdown eliminated, or at least severely reduced, the effect. This would also seem to indicate a problem with the 5.1 dvd native soundtrack.

Edit: 4/5
Video: 5/5
Audio: 2/5
Disc Features: 4/5

Overall: 7.5/10

(added July 9, 2010)
...turns out that my TV speakers decided to start to go out. Odd that it happened all at once like this. TV is just out of warranty too :(

In any case, disregard my review above. Played in a pair of high end headphones, the audio track is perfect.

Again, apologies for the invalid review!

Finally got around to watching this,

When the thread was still going on about the edits I couldn’t wait for it, but for some reason I just downloaded and impatiently skipped to the newly edited things.

But after taking some time to watch it I must agree with everyone else here: this is a tremendous fanedit.
From a technical standpoint there are almost no problem (except at the end the new batmobile lines were a little low and the scene with Rachel at the end had noticeable louder music, but that’s just nitpicking) and the only things that detract from this edit are my personal opinions.

I love Batman Begins, I love extensive driving on the top of roofs, I love the fact that Gordon and Batman work together at the end since Gordon until then never had a shining role in Batman movies

But personal preferences aside: does this edit work?

Yes it does. Not having Gordon is my problem, the new take works as well as the original, it changes the mood of course, but it works nevertheless, same goes for the shortened chase sequence, I’m pretty sure that if you’ve never seen Begins you won’t notice the edits.

Katie Holmes’s voice works in 98% of the cases, only when the original voice tries to talk in a deep voice the new pitch sounds a bit awkward. A lot of cringy Rachel lines are thankfully gone as well and most of the things you don’t even miss.

Will this replace my DVD? No

But it is a very good alternate take on the source material: 8/10

I was wanting to give this series a rewatch as this is my favorite version of Batman on the big screen. I have always felt that Begins was the strongest entry in the series (many people say TDK, but I've always prefered this). So I wasn't sure if it really needed an edit as aside from a line here or there, most things didn't bother me.

So as I was looking, I was checking the change list for different edits and this one really seemed different. I know it's not HD but it deserves and HD upgrade because this edit was AWESOME!

If I had to nit pick anything here I would say that the altered voice or Katie Holms was a little too artificial here and there and should have been pulled back some.

This edit is very much worth a watch!

Years after discovering this edit, I STILL recommend it to anyone. This is a text-book example of fanediting at its finest. JMB had lofty goals and I will say he pulled it off completely. Character motivations are clearer, annoying dialogue is gone, Rachel's voice is now tolerable, and this has one of the best 3rd act endings I have ever seen from this site. I do wish an HD version would be made available though. This film is just THAT good!