Batman: The Man Who Laughs

WOW! This was basically a perfect edit. I only noticed one cut and that was because I knew what was in the OG version of the movie, if I have never seen any other version, I may not have noticed the cut.

This is a tighter version for sure and I feel this is my go to version.

I'm still not a fan of the Joker doing the 2 boat explosion experiment but I don't see how you can cut that out of the movie.

Someone managed to make one of DC's best films even better than it already was. How is that even possible?

Well for starters, the editor managed to see what aged well and what didn't, and trimmed the latter. The movie starts out with a great cut, Scarecrow not being arrested. A very simple plot alteration that doubles as both a retroactive continuity fix (though Crane escaping prison in TDKR isn't far fetched) and a way to remove one of the corniest lines in the entire film "I'm not wearing hockey pads!".

That is a very good example of how the editor manages to find what works best within a film.

Overall, this is pretty fucking good. I'd love to see what opinion Christopher Nolan would have of this edit.

Excellent fanedit that cuts out the extraneous/unneeded elements and pares the story down to its essentials, thus focusing the narrative and highlighting the key motivations, themes, and characters (esp harvey's arc) much more effectively. Highly recommended.

A couple of things however, that IMHO prevent this from being 'perfect' (in my eyes):

-Not entirely sure the batman copycat concept works here, esp since the beginning sequence is now purely focused on setting up the narrative elements re the mob, the joker, DA harvey, and batman's mission-- the copycat concept just detracts from 'setting the stage' especially as the dialogue from the copycat has been cut from the beginning sequence -- these copycats could certainly be cut from the scarecrow scene, which would then simply have batman + the tumbler intrude on scarecrow's meeting w the russians before scarecrow gets away. This obviously would necessitate cutting the copycat's dialogue about batman being a symbol in the joker's torture video, and narratively have the joker just dress up a poor random guy in a batman suit before torturing, killing him, and putting a noose over the corpse before tossing it over the side of the mayor's office (which would be a surprise for the audience while still fitting into the 'chaos' aspect of the Joker's MO and how he's causing all this chaos due to batman's presence and how batman should unmask himself to stop this senseless violence and death)

-Would've left the scene w Gordon + Ramirez + batsignal in to 1) provide context re how batman has changed gotham's criminal activity, 2) foreshadow Ramirez's betrayal (mother in the hospital etc), 3) use the batsignal instead to underscore the 'batman as a symbol' theme (which is essentially the purpose of the copycat story component anyway) which then 4) makes the 'gordon taking an axe to the batsignal' shot in the end more poignant and meaningful.

Aside from the above two elements, all the other judicious cuts were extremely well done, as Ryantology jettisoned scenes and elements that weren't really essential to the story and which took screentime away from the main players and the conflicts playing out in the narrative. Everything's much clearer and focused now, and the film's all the better for it. Great work!

Overall this is an excellent fanedit. The only things that hold it back in my opinion are the video being a bit soft (if there's a larger file available I would prefer it) and the soundtrack being only 2.0. That being said, almost all my edits are in 2.0 so I get it. Especially with music replacement. Here are some random thoughts:
- Vault rescore is great
- Subtle reorder at the beginning flows better and makes more sense. I never thought about it until I saw it different, good idea
- Scarecrow getting away is good
- The only cut that doesn't work for me is the one from the truck driving off with Harvey after his arrest. The audio cut is a bit rough and the visual cut is a bit awkward, with the vehicle facing left and then suddenly cutting to it moving to the right. I would flip the video of Harvey and Rachel saying goodbye. Or maybe a smoother audio cut would suffice, not sure
- Armored car chase was much better overall. I dig the musical change and the small cuts
- Ending editing is very nicely done
- I don't like the title. It's a small thing and I get the reference but it's a bit unwieldy. I'm sure you don't feel like changing it but I would go with 'Shadow of the Bat' or something else. There are better titles but that one works on a couple levels (Joker mirrors Batman but in opposite in many ways obviously)
- You should have added Bill Finger to the credits. Every Batman edit for the movies pre-2015 should do this
- Credits rescore is an improvement

Overall, great work!

Nicely done!

No eye-rolling lines throughout gets this movie closer to perfection. It's funny to see what some people think is good vs bad though. There were more things I would have liked moved/cut/mixed, and there were some things I would have left in (like Alfred's "but I did tell you so"). Also, it may just be me, but I've always hated Morgan Freeman's voiceover during the fight at the end. "See those bad guys above you? They're about to ambush the swat team." Sounds like he's doing a really bad videogame voiceover, and it's also twice as loud as anything else in the scene. I'd love a version without the voiceover at all if possible. Fox doesn't even need to know the sonar exists, then it's just Batman using it and kicking ass.

There are so many edits, it's hard to generalize the quality. Most were flawless, but there was some audio clipping, and a few cuts not matching. I think most of the noticeable ones were during the action scenes, which are obviously harder to cut around. But the cuts in those scenes were greatly appreciated. Joker's "Hit me!" always sounded bad to me, the cops' unrealistically doofed up lines, unnecessarily explanatory dialogue from extras. Lots of little things that eat away at this movie's greatness, and a lot of them were cut.

The narrative was solid, for the most part the plot went largely unchanged. Reordering of the end was nice cause that final voiceover is shit too.

I wouldn't replace the original with this version because for as much as it fixed, I missed too much. But I would definitely recommend for 2 hours of fun and entertainment! Good job

ps: Now if someone could only edit around Christian Bale's dogshit acting when he's talking to the Joker at the end, we'd be in business!