Review Detail

Watched black and white version, cropped to 'scope aspect ratio.

I enjoyed this edit more than the original film, which I am admittedly not a fan of, the removal of the subplots was done very cleanly from a story point of view with the only giveaways being a few audio transitions. For example, while I liked the restructured the way the music fades in and out makes the fact that the scene has been shifted here from later quite noticeable. The film still feels quite flat to me, but I think this js less to do with the reduced runtime than its source, and my great fondness for Batman Returns and all it's delightful weirdness.

AV quality was generally very good, the only time I noticed the cropping was the Warner Bros card at the start, but sometimes found the image dark enough that I couldn't quite understand what was being shown. A boost in lightness and/or contrast should solve this, and if the originally-yellow title text could be redone to appear more white than grey that would help too.

On the whole, I think that I slightly prefer Dwight Fry's less aggressive take, but this edit is a worthy addition. I'm not sure if 1989's Batman could ever be made into a great film in my opinion, but in this form it's definitely a watchable one.