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Batman: Descent Into Mystery

Dwight Fry

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Batman (1989), highly successful as it was, was the product of three forces that were all at odds with each other: the comic book source material, Tim Burton's filmmaking style, and Warner Bros.' hunger for a palatable, dumbed-down, something-for-everyone summer blockbuster. So, Warner HAD to include a conventional love interest for the hero, while Burton HAD to make his hero a socially inept creepy weirdo. And, movie-wise, Bruce Wayne in a romance with a conventional woman might have worked. Or Bruce Wayne as a socially inept creepy weirdo might have worked. However, Bruce Wayne as a socially inept creepy weirdo in a romance with a conventional woman definitely does NOT work. What sane woman, particularly a very sexy one, would date that guy if not after his money? He sleeps upside down, for crying out loud!

Not to mention both factors are ill-fitting with the original comic books.

All that without even mentioning Kim Basinger's less than stellar performance...

And that's why this fanedit exists. To completely remove the contrived romance angle from the story. Now Vicki's interest in Bruce Wayne is purely professional. However, she'll be feeling attracted to Batman. A dark, self-confident mysterious avenger is more of her type! Hence the new title "Descent Into Mystery", I took it from my favorite track of the score, but the meaning goes along those mentioned lines.

When I had already decided to do it, I met JMB on the chat room, and it turned out that he had had the exact same idea 20 years before. And even had fanedited it on VHS! My cut is not exactly like his, but both as a nod to the guy who beat me by two full decades, and as a "thank you" for helping me resolve an apparently no-win scenario, he gets credited as the "executive producer" of this fanedit.

Further cuts/changes have greatly reduced Wayne's clumsy behavior (he's only insecure in the party, and that might very well be an act) and the blatant obviousness of Vicki's comments, improved the pacing by losing needless exposition and scenes elongated to exhaustion (how many hours did it take them to get to that bell tower?), and finally, despite my intention being primarily making it work better as a movie and not rendering it closer to the comic book, I think I've achieved both.

Update: Cutlist updated.

INFO:
What kind of fanedit: TF

Original running time: 126 minutes
Fanedit running time: 91 minutes
Amount of time cut: 35 minutes

CUTLIST (Contains BIG spoilers so proceed at your own risk):
-Tweaked the main credits sequence, adding the new title and fanedit credits, and fixing a 70-year-old injustice.
-Cut the rooftop view of Batman on the tower (reason: awful cartoon special effect).
-Cut shot of Jack running up the Axis Chemicals stairs, and Batman appearing behind him (just why doesn't he stop Jack?)
-Cut Jack hanging above the vat of chemicals and the ambiguity about whether Batman intentionally dropped him or not. Now he just falls directly.
-Cut the whole Bruce/Vicki date, them spending the night together (bye bye, upside-down sleep), and the morning after.
-Moved scenes from later in the movie about Batman's origin to be intercut with the birth of Joker. Now it progresses like this: Jack gets surgery; Bruce looks at the Axis map and asks Alfred for his parents' folder; Joker kills Grissom; Bruce looks at the folder and remembers his parents' murder; "Wait till they get a load of me".
-Speaking of which: JOKER IS NOT THE MURDERER OF BRUCE'S PARENTS! YAAAY! Trimmed the shots which identified the gunman, and added a slow motion effect to a now too short bit (the original already had slo-mo so it's unnoticeable).
-Cut Alicia coming back to the apartment and encountering Joker (reason: mainly for pacing, and because I find women fainting a sexist stereotype).
-Cut the "Wayne file" scene between Vicki and Knox.
-Cut Vicki out of the Crime Alley sequence.
-Cut Vicki calling "Bruce!" in the courthouse stairs massacre.
-Cut Vicki running to Bruce after Joker's car leaves the courthouse crime scene, and them exchanging looks.
-Trim scene of Bruce and Alfred talking, so they mention Jack being alive but don't talk about Vicki.
-Cut Vicki phoning Knox to ask about Crime Alley.
-Moved the scene of Joker cutting photographs and getting his crush on Vicki to later in the movie, after the TV poisoning, the news bulletin, and Dent on the phone. Sunarep suggested this and was spot-on.
-In the above, cut the audio of Bob's line "She's dating some guy named Wayne" and moved "She's the photographer who's working with Knox" to its place, removing the video of this line along with Joker's "That girl has style". (Thanks JMB!)
-Cut Vicki's phone call to Bruce about getting ten minutes late to the museum.
-Muted the audio of Vicki asking for "Mr. Wayne's table" and added a track of a chatting crowd to hide it. Now it looks like we just can't hear what Vicky tells the maitre.
-Cut Partyman sequence. Some seconds of foley work created from scratch to replace necessary parts "contaminated" by the song Added new background music to fill the gap.
-Trimmed Joker and Vicki's museum conversation.
-Cut Alicia and Joker's exchange in the museum (reason: she refers to watching him "improve the paintings", which he now doesn't).
-Cut Bob's "Check his wallet" line.
-Cut the "non-fight" between Batman and Bob.
-Fixed a hand position goof when Batman orders the Batmobile to stop in front of him.
-Cut the whole three-way meeting in Vicki's apartment, along with all the sequences leading to it.
-Cut Vicki and Knox checking out the Wayne murder paper.
-CUT ALFRED TAKING VICKI TO THE BATCAVE! DOUBLE YAAAY!
-Cut the Axis Chemicals bombing. Batman is no longer a mass murderer.
-Trimmed the "Trust" parade number.
-Cut the audio of Vicki's line "Smylex gas" when she sees the Smylex gas coming out of the balloons.
-Cut Batman's first failed pass through the balloons. It made narrative sense, but emotional continuity required him arriving and immediately starting the ass-kicking.
-Cut the Moon Bat-symbol show-off nonsense.
-Cut Batman getting the Batwing rocket launchers ready.
-Cut Batman breaking all Batwing gunnery Hell loose on the Joker... and missing.
-Cut Joker's line "Better make it ten" and the goon's reply. It won't take forever to get there anymore.
-Cut almost all of the bell tower staircase sequence, all 16 hours of it. Batman doesn't follow Joker and Vicki upstairs, he'll be up there waiting for them to arrive (he's, like, Batman, you know!)
-Cut the whole bell tower fight sequence between Batman and the goons. Who attack one by one, of course.
-Cut Batman's "dance with the devil" line.
-Trimmed the Batman/Joker fistfight to eliminate referencing events that didn't happen in my cut.
-Cut Alfred lifting Vicki up in the limo.
-Added acknowledgements to the end credits.
-Replaced WB logo at the very end with FE.org logo.
 

Ripplin

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Some hoser closed the original thread, so I'm continuing to discuss this edit over here. Haha. ;)
 

Neglify

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Ripp, that cover is frickin' awesome dude. :)
 

booshman

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Congrats Dwight! Looking forward to checking this out.
 

Ripplin

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Neglify said:
Ripp, that cover is frickin' awesome dude. :)
Thanks, but where are you seeing it? (oh, from the submission copy?) It started as a foreign language comic book scan Dwight sent me. It might not look drastically different, but there's actually a lot of work in it. 99% of it was done in good ol' MS Paint. :) I just find it easier and quicker for some things. I only used Photoshop for contrast change after the editing part was done. Dwight did a nice job of adding his white text and logos afterward without covering the original art.
 

Omaru1982

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Dwight Fry said:
SO PLEASE NO PMS ABOUT THE DOWNLOAD FOR THE MOMENT. WHEN IT'S ALL READY, WHICH SHOULD BE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS, I'LL LET YOU KNOW.

veruca%20salt.jpg


But seriously congrats on getting this done
 

bionicbob

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BATMAN DESCENT INTO MYSTERY

I had the extreme honor of watching this fan edit yesterday, and after ages of anticipation,
I can honestly say, I was not disappointed.

This is a solid, entertaining edit.

Dwightfry set out with a list of specific goals for this edit, I believe has achieved each one very successfully.

The color correction work is very nice, the colors are deeper, cleaner and richer. The video quality is excellent.

The audio work is strong and professional. Considering Dwight had a couple of really tricky scene transitions with little or inappropriate audio cues to work with, the end result is surprising, clever and masterful.

The menu design is simple and functional. There are some nice bonus items, including a Joker (Heath Ledger) short by BluYoda.

As for the edit itself, it works wonderfully.

The two main objectives narrative wise were to remove the Vicky Vale/Bruce Wayne romance and to trim Batman's actions so they are more in line with the accepted traditional comic book version.

Dwight is highly successful in both objectives. The new narrative flows smoothly, I did not even realized certain scenes were missing until after the edit was over and I started thinking about what I saw or did not see. So that is a fantastic testament to Dwight's storytelling ability! Great work!

The story stays focused on the Joker and Batman, keeping the tension level high. Though the one downside of no romance story, is there is even less Bruce Wayne, making the movie feel even more about Jack and less about the Bat. But at the same time, it creates more of an air of mystery around Bruce and Batman. He feels almost more like a Force of Nature, than just a man.

Which leads nicely into Dwight's second objective, making Batman closer to his comic book origins and removing the gun wielding Batman element. As every Bat Fan knows, Batman abhors guns! He would never use one. He certainly would not mount them on his Batmobile or Batwing and fire them into a crowd of people. This is the one element of the Tim Burton films I hated the most, and Dwight has masterfully removed them. Thank You! There are many other little tweaks and trims throughout that bring this movie Batman closer to his graphic novel counterpart that I think Batfans will catch and enjoy.

As I said before, this is an excellent edit. It engages and entertains. The new story works and it is technically solid.

I recommend it to all Batman Fans.

THUMBS UP!

Thanks for the great show Dwight!
 

hbenthow

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bionicbob said:
As every Bat Fan knows, Batman abhors guns! He would never use one. He certainly would not mount them on his Batmobile or Batwing and fire them into a crowd of people.
That depends on the version of the comics. Tim Burton's Batman was based almost entirely on the very first year of pre-Robin Batman comics, with elements of the 1970s/1980s comics thrown in. In those pre-Robin Batman comics, Batman did a lot of shooting. Batman's no-kill rule was eventually created after many mothers wrote complaints, because they were afraid that the Batman comics might turn their children violent. Robin was created around the same time, to make the comics even more kid-friendly.

It's like Bruce Timm said. There are so many different versions of Batman that you don't have to stick to any one version. Tim Burton based his version on the original pre-Robin comics with some 1970s/1980s mixed in. That's just as valid as any other source.
 

Dwight Fry

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Thanks for such a kind review, Bob! (And for the approval!) It's great when someone praises your work, but when that someone is one of your absolute favorite faneditors, it's just wonderful! :)

And thanks to all of you guys who expressed interest in this edit!

Omaru1982 said:

LOL! Maybe, but as I expected I've already had PMs asking for the links anyway, so... ;-)
 

Dwight Fry

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hbenthow said:
That depends on the version of the comics. Tim Burton's Batman was based almost entirely on the very first year of pre-Robin Batman comics, with elements of the 1970s/1980s comics thrown in. In those pre-Robin Batman comics, Batman did a lot of shooting. Batman's no-kill rule was eventually created after many mothers wrote complaints, because they were afraid that the Batman comics might turn their children violent. Robin was created around the same time, to make the comics even more kid-friendly.

It's like Bruce Timm said. There are so many different versions of Batman that you don't have to stick to any one version. Tim Burton based his version on the original pre-Robin comics with some 1970s/1980s mixed in. That's just as valid as any other source.

This is all very true. Still, the guns added nothing to the character in the movie anyway, and to make things worse he couldn't shoot straight, so gone they are.
 

bionicbob

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hbenthow said:
That depends on the version of the comics. Tim Burton's Batman was based almost entirely on the very first year of pre-Robin Batman comics, with elements of the 1970s/1980s comics thrown in. In those pre-Robin Batman comics, Batman did a lot of shooting. Batman's no-kill rule was eventually created after many mothers wrote complaints, because they were afraid that the Batman comics might turn their children violent. Robin was created around the same time, to make the comics even more kid-friendly.

It's like Bruce Timm said. There are so many different versions of Batman that you don't have to stick to any one version. Tim Burton based his version on the original pre-Robin comics with some 1970s/1980s mixed in. That's just as valid as any other source.

That is all very true. Though of Batman's 70plus year career, I think his gun toting phase lasted only about a year or two. The vast majority of his comic career he was anti-gun, until it became a key component of his origin and pop culture character. At least that is how I remember my Batman. :p

Found this interesting article on Batman and his history with guns....
http://sacomics.blogspot.ca/2005/08/batman-and-guns.html

Thanks for such a kind review, Bob! (And for the approval!) It's great when someone praises your work, but when that someone is one of your absolute favorite faneditors, it's just wonderful! :)

The pleasure was all mine Dwight. I am actually really looking forward to watching this again, but this time as just a popcorn munching movie fan and not as an editor or academy member.:D
 

Dwight Fry

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Want irony? This is actually the first Batman comic book I ever bought:

Detective575.jpg
 

bionicbob

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Yep, I had that one too! Fun story, though as a YEAR TWO concept I thought it was fairly weak.
But Barr and Davis, great writer and artist team!
 

Dwight Fry

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It was not that great, and I blame it on DC's pressure to try to make it fit more with Year One, which made Davis uncomfortable and sadly ended up leaving after this issue, leaving Todd McFarlane to complete Year Two. But I agree, the overall Barr-Davis run was awesome. I'm particularly fond of this throwback to the origin:

1b_34869_0_DetectiveComics574MyBeginningA.jpg


And I miss Leslie Tompkins in the current continuity. Her role in "that night" is more frequently given to Gordon nowadays, like in Batman Begins, but I find that too convenient. There's room for both of them.
 

leeroy

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yeah i'm looking forward to seeing this version again
 

ssj

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there should be a fanediting category for movies that nix (or nearly nix) basinger. :p

this edit sounds like great fun. looking forward to it!
 
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