Batman Forever: Red Book Edition - The 15th Anniversary Enhanced Edition

This is, in fact, the first fanedit I've ever watched, and I'm glad it was this one. INIGHTMARES has done a phenomenal job at touching up and recreating Scaperat's original edit.

The noir-like colour grading reminiscent of Sin City was something I was a great fan of, and it made me realise how strangely well this movie works in B&W. The inclusion and touching-up of the deleted scenes was incredible and strengthened the movie's story a LOT. The removal of certain parts helped tighten up the pacing.

However, a problem I have with this edit overall is that it attempts to transform the movie into something that's just impossible: a darker, less campy take on Batman. I admire Scaperat's attempts a lot, but the colourful goofiness is just something that was always permanently a part of Batman Forever's identity. I also just plainly prefer that the embracing of the camp in general, to be fairly honest.

In conclusion, I think that this is a phenomenal fanedit of one of my favourite Batman movies that, while I don't personally agree with in some parts, is still just an incredible piece of work that Scaperat and INIGHTMARES should receive praise for. I still wouldn't call it the ideal way to watch Batman Forever, but it IS an improvement.

For starters as a kid I loved the original. I grew up with it. Looking back I understand the reasoning behind the decision to go for a more video gamey action figure type movie. The Tim Burton movies were created for my dad, and these were created for me… this movie wasn’t even created to put my ass in seat in theaters(although it did) . It was created to sell toys to me on Christmas.

Anyway that aside this version of the movie cuts out everything that as a grown ass man I have grown to hate about the movie and adds the stuff that gives you more of a dark and adult tone.

If you are over the age of 40 and this isn’t your favorite version of Batman Forever then you seriously need to re-evaluate your life.

To put it frank, this edit is amazing and without it I would never watch this movie again. This is the go to version for adults and I will watch this version and only this version every year for Halloween until I die.

God Bless Val Kilmer!! Keep him in your prayers everyone!! Let his sacrifice be a reminder to get the HPV vaccine before practicing what my generation was told was a safe and effective alternative to sex!

I must confess from the start that Batman Forever is one of my biggest guilty pleasures. I'm aware that it's a big step down from the Burton-era Batman movies, but I can't lie when I say that it gave me plenty of good laughs, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.

Still, I think it's safe to say that this film needed a good FanFix. I haven't seen the original SD version this edit was based on, but I did get to see this HD upgrade of it. If anything has been changed from the previous edit, look for a different review. I'm just reviewing "this" version of the edit.

Overall, I can't call the Red Book Edition a major improvement, but I can call it an improvement. The reason I can't go into a crazed Joker level of happiness over this is because Music-ed's Batman & Robin: Deep Freeze has spoiled me too much, and between those two, I like Deep Freeze a lot more.

I'll start with the good for this edit. The first thing anyone watching will notice immediately is the color grading. It's quite a wonderful sight to behold. The mostly black-and-white-and-red color grading gives this edit some much welcomed Frank Miller vibes, and it's a nice change of pace from the overly colorful neon infused color palette the movie is known for. If I were forced to choose one thing to remember from this edit, it has to be the color grading. Even if it would never be seen in a theatre in 1995.

Of course, there's more to this edit than just pretty colors. The addition of the Bruce Wayne retirement subplot (a.k.a. the one where this edit got its name from) is a revelation, and one that will make you want to find a Warner Bros. employee to strangle for cutting it out. I also like a lot of the improvements made to Robin, as they do a lot to flesh him out as a person. In the original, Robin was pretty much a jerk who wanted revenge for his family without thinking it over. This version did a great job at making his motive for revenge more understandable and relatable.

However, in spite of its advantages, the Red Book Edition is still filled with a lot of that Adam West level silliness that bothered so many back in '95. And while I guess this version isn't as campy as the original, there's still so much of it remaining that I would be wary of recommending this edit to someone hoping for a darker, grittier Batman Forever. The biggest examples are the villains, played by Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey. They're still as silly and as ridiculous as they were before and if you had a problem with the Saturday morning cartoon treatment they were given, consider this review my warning, because none of that has changed here. Hated the villains in this movie? Don't watch this. You're gonna be disappointed.

So, as you can imagine, the Red Book edition is not a dark, gritty re-imagining of the Schumacher era some might be hoping for. Rather, it's more of a compromise between the Burton-esque Batman and the Adam West-ian Batman. Think Skyfall, but with Bruce Wayne instead of James Bond. If that sounds like your thing, then you'll probably enjoy it.

Batman Forever: The Red Book Edition is not one of my favorite edits, and if I were to compare this edit to the first two Tim Burton films, I would still call this the weakest of the three. But with that said, this is better than the theatrical, and if all you're looking for is a better version of Batman Forever, this is worth seeing. As for me, you know my thoughts about the original. So of course I liked this one too.

I will always keep good souvenirs from Batman Forever, the original movie was the first film I saw in theater, and the Red Book Edition was my first introduction to the world of fan editing.
Thank you so much for giving that legendary edit a neat polish, the 1080p makes the movie even more gorgeous, likes the credits added to the beginning in Arkham and finishing with Where is My Mind was an excellent choice, a good song in the credits always leaves a nice taste as far as I'm concerned.

A most impressive achievement of AI technology and fan commitment! While maintaining all the pros of the original Red Book Edition – that is the noir feeling through colour desaturation, the removal of a great deal of cheesiness and the integration of deleted scenes, in case you haven’t seen it – this Enhanced version manages to fix, for the most part, the faults of its predecessor. Although there’s still some small colour and contrast mismatch compared to the rest of the film, the deleted scenes do not stick out anymore thanks to the AI enhancement. The added heavy film grain is something that, as a kid of the VHS era myself, I can really appreciate, and the same goes for the desaturation and colour contrast in some scenes which reminded me of Sin City – and that is definitely a good thing! INIGHTMARES also fixes some of the choppy cuts that were present in the original fan-edit by Scaperat, like when Dick Grayson saves that woman from the hands of a street gang.

As for the cons, the Enhanced Edition carries that problem of the original studio cut with it, which no amount of editing could ever salvage. That is, its two antagonists who mostly act and talk like complete goofballs! The Riddler being essentially Jim Carrey I can live with, but Two-Face is still insufferable and out of character, no matter what.

Even so, INIGHTMARES’ Enhanced Edition is by far the best viewing experience of a highly problematic film, tainted by WB studios’ interference, and as far as I’m concerned the definitive cut of it. As I’ve written before in my review of Scaperat’s work, it successfully highlights not only some of its darkest aspects that were butchered in WB’s editing room, but also a stellar performance by Val Kilmer. And justifies, at long last, why Batman is Forever.