Batman Begins: Dark Cut

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

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!

Great job! I really enjoyed this.

The cuts were well chosen and produced a film that felt a bit more on par with the tone of The Dark Knight, and overall flowing much better. I was amazed at how dramatically different Katie Holmes’ character seemed here! Gone is the bitchiness, and with the change in her voice’s pitch (jarringly noticeable at first, but so natural that you get used to it quickly) Rachel Dawes became a character I could actually accept as an Assistant DA.

I did notice a couple problems, however. In the scene where Lucius and Bruce first drive the Tumbler, the bits cut from Lucius’ lines kinda stand out. My biggest problem was with the DVD, which had problems loading on my Blu-Ray player (although once it finally got started there were no further issues). Overall, a great experience!

I will start off with saying that I am not one of the people who was enamored with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. When I first saw it, I didn’t think it was all that captivating, thought the batmobile was atrocious, and missed the mystaire that Tim Burton’s Batman brought. But then, it’s a generational thing. A lot has come and gone in film since 1989, as well as in the audience’s preference.

I have come to appreciate it as a film, as I really enjoyed The Dark Knight. In retrospect, I think it undertook something that was very difficult, in bringing believability to a real life Batman. Especially after Batman Forever…

But I love this fanedit! It has definitely replaced the original as my preference for this story. The flow is tight, the action is strong, and the interest in the very convoluted story is fairly sustainable.
So, I give it 9/10 for effort.

The drawbacks I did not like are few, but kind of strong.

I really did not like the voice modulation for Katie Holmes. I could barely pay attention to what she was saying because it was so obvious. Not that I don’t think it was a good idea, but her voice is just so specific, it was hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief.

The biggest line for the description of this edit that stood out to me was “A more streamlined version of Batman Begins, with fewer cheesy jokes”. Then there was the ridiculous line Batman says about leaving a space for him to sign the check to pay for the damages to Gotham City. It was so corny! Right after he’s just left his mentor to die.

And has been brought up, there were a few scenes that seemed like the audio was not perfectly synced; though this was not as annoying as it sounds. (get it? sounds… never mind.)

Other than that, I was very impressed. I will definitely look forward to further work from JMB.
Great job, J!

People are fanatical about a lot of things. Star Trek, Star Wars, James Bond, etc. etc. These are people who have watched these movies,read these books, and lived and breathed this stuff for as long as they care to remember. They know about as much about a subject as there is to be known, it’s a legitimate passion for them. Without trying to sound like I have that much of an ego, I consider myself one of these fanatics when it comes to Batman. I practically taught myself to read with the comics. And so that’s the baggage I took in with me when I went to watch Batman Begins for the first time, and now again when turning on this edit of the film.

I walked out of the theater after my first viewing of Batman Begins very, very happy as a fan of the character. IT was the first time the version of the character that I loved most had really been successfully realized on screen, for the most part, in my opinion. However. That doesn’t mean it didn’t have it’s flaws. It does. So when starting this up I was eager to see what JMB would do with the film. And in my opinion he took the ball and ran with it.

First and foremost, the technical aspects of this edit are stellar. The video looked identical to the quality of my DVD, and the sound was perfect as well. The only issues I had were not because of fault with the audio work at all, but rather some problems inherent in the technique used. JMB used some audio clips from the video game by way of explaining some of his editing choices, to make sure that some of his larger changes are understood clearly, while they sound clear and smooth they are also clearly from a different source and do not match the rest of the audio. We’ll get to that later though. There are no hard cutting or other visual or audio editing whiplashes that I could find. As such I give the Video/Audio an 8 or 9 out of 10.

Now on to the movie itself. JMB showed real intelligence and dedication here as he goes. There’s no edit that calls attention to itself at all. Having not read the cutlist I can honestly say that often times I was completely oblivious intellectually to many of the cuts, and that’s coming from somebody that knows Batman Begins backwards and forwards. Rather than consciously acknowledging many of these edits they served more to alter the mood and tone of the film. Providing a more vicious and visceral experience, with a deeper understanding of the psyche of Bruce Wayne. And for a movie that was already pretty deeply psychological that’s saying a lot. Now we’ve a more subtle, tighter, more refined film.

Other edits are of course more noticeable, and many of them are for the better. The removal of the goofy, utterly misplaced and misguided humor is hugely refreshing. In particular the removal of the “nice coat” set up and then pay off was a Godsend. Often times the original Batman Begins feels as though it’s hedging it’s bets, not wanting to go too dark or too serious for fear of alienating an audience that has been primed to expect Batman and Robin when it comes to their Batman films. Now that hemming and hawing is gone, and in it’s place is a more confident movie tonally and stylistically.

Batman himself is changed a great deal by these edits. Now instead of entering wanton destruction mode at the drop of a hat we have a Batman that, yes, is learning to be a hero but is also smart and calculated. Batman does not run around blowing everything in his path to smithereens for seemingly no reason. As a result the character becomes more fascinating and I found myself more easily able to root for him and his cause.

Of course…one of the biggest flaws of the movie has always been Katie Holmes. Something JMB attempted to fix in a truly inspired manner. He re-works all of Holmes dialogue giving her a deeper, more grown, mature adult voice. I was shocked how much just this small tweak, small in terms of the movie though undoubtedly a huge undertaking in terms of the work done to accomplish it, improves her very weak performance. In the original film Holmes seems girlish and outmatched as an actor at every instance. She does not belong on screen with the likes of Gary Oldman, Christian Bale, and Liam Neeson and I don’t think anybody would argue otherwise. Now however…just making her feel more adult helps considerably. I would be lying if I didn’t say that sometimes the audio re-working does not work, however. The voice coming from that character just does not match the fresh faced kid clearly on screen. Nor does it always seem to match the lip movements for some reason. Admittedly the lip movement problem could be caused by Katie Holmes perplexing habit of speaking every line of dialogue through the corner of her mouth as if the other side of her face has suddenly become stricken with paralysis. Over all this is probably the biggest plus of this edit aside from the removal of the goofy humor. Rachel Dawes is finally a believable strong, female character.

Unfortunately I think the biggest failing of this edit in my opinion is the final act, with Batman chasing down the Microwave Emitter. While I understand and respect what JMB did here, my own personal bias and some of the smaller issues with the audio not matching the video quite effectively dragged the Subway chase down making it feel somewhat flat and less interesting. Jim Gordon is and always have been my favorite character in the Batman pantheon, even more so than Batman himself, so for me seeing him driving the Batmobile in a real team up with Batman and seeing him play a true active role in the climax unlike the ineffectual Gordon of the Burton/Schumacher films – though it may have been somewhat goofy here or there – was really exciting and cool for me. The edit works this way, and makes sense, but it just doesn’t play as triumphant and heroic to me as the original climax.

It’s not helped by the video game dialogue overlays that I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately they are a necessity here in order to fully explain what’s happening. But the performances do not carry the right urgency and emotion, and don’t make much logical sense to me. They feel out of place, and that’s because they are. While I don’t fault JMB for using them, and respect what he was doing and do think that he accomplished his goal fairly effectively, my preference is still for the official movie climax with Jim Gordon. There’s more excitement in there for me.

That all said, faults aside, with some minor tweaking I would happily place this on the shelf as a replacement of the original Batman Begins as it is truly a masterful work. This is a highly enjoyable version of the movie, and a wholly new experience for a Batman that was already in love with this movie flaws and all. Thanks to JMB for all his hard work and I look forward to watching this edit of the movie again and again.

9 out of 10 overall rating.