Review Detail

Batman Forever has always been an underrated Batman movie in my opinion, on par with Batman Returns in regards to the Burton-Schumacher universe. It's not perfect by any means, but the mix of Burton's gothic world with the 60's Batman's wackiness made for an interesting blend, all held together by an incredibly somber and almost foreboding story for Bruce Wayne himself. Though it would have been great to see Michael Keaton wrap up his tenure as Batman with this third film, clearly meant to be a resolution to his multi-film character arc, Val Kilmer does an excellent job filling in his shoes.

To get to the edit itself, what I was most excited for is seeing a bit of a darker take on this film, for as much as I enjoy the silliness, it is clear that Schumacher's original intention was to create something more akin to Burton's work, until studio interference intervened. Right off the bat, I can safely say that this cut of the film does accomplish that; everything from the darker opening to the further exploration of Bruce's repressed memories to the general "Sin City-esque" color palette makes for a more emotionally dark and contemplative product than what we originally had.

At the same time, I did have some issues with the edit that detracted from my experience as a whole. Firstly, the obvious issue is all of the deleted scenes; this is just something that's unavoidable until we (hopefully) get an official Schumacher cut. The quality of the deleted scenes is just completely different from the rest of the film, and it does become distracting, especially when it's hard to actually make out certain character's faces.

Secondly, though I appreciated the change in color style, there were certain points in the film, namely the action scenes, where it was a little hard to tell what was actually happening on screen. The best example in my opinion was actually the opening on Arkham; I really had no idea what was going on (if the inmate was Harvey or the other security guard, or how he was even taken out of the cell). I do know this is a deleted scene, so maybe it was unfinished, but I think the black and white color made it especially hard to figure out.

Finally, my last issue was the decision to remove certain comedic moments over others. Certain scenes, like Chase's over the top flirting, Batman's "drive-thru" line, and Batman's thumbs up have been removed, yet most of the Riddler's gags, Dick's laundry scene, and the "Oh my god, it's boiling acid" line are still present. I guess I was just confused by some of the choices made, because I couldn't tell which tone the film was trying to go for by keeping certain aspects in the film. I think, either all of the comedic scenes should have been removed (except for the Riddler) or none of them (except for the butt-shots and opening).

Overall, despite these issues, I still very much enjoyed this edit. It was a different experience from my other times watching this movie, and though I can't say I liked it more than the original version, it's certainly an entertaining and thought-provoking experiment.

Thanks to Scaperat for coming up with this edit and to INIGHTMARES for providing the HD translation! The editing was pretty seamless.