Batman Forever: The Eyepainter Fanedit

[Eyepainter]

https://imgur.com/KUyEEQ1

Cover art by Malthus​

After some discussion with my pals on fanedit.org, I’ve decided to take on Joel Schumacher’s 1995 guilty pleasure, Batman Forever.

As the sentence above suggests, I enjoy Batman Forever, but not because it’s good. So-bad-it’s-good is the best description I have for it. But for obvious reasons, I’ve wanted to see a version of the film that is decent at least. I’ve watched a few edits of Batman Forever over my time in fanediting, including the acclaimed Red Book Edition. However, my favorite edit of the film was by a faneditor named @ThatGuyWhoEdits. I was given the honor to review it for any issues, and it was my favorite take on this troubled film to date. While it did have some flaws, the many strengths far outweighed them, and actually made the film… Watchable.

But alas, it was never released. I’m still not 100 percent on what happened, but my good friend @ArtisDead said that @ThatGuyWhoEdits got a harsh response from someone, and he ghosted and bailed on the project. The edit was never released, and I was left with a highly compressed must-see.

This is what brings me to the present. I had a lot of faith in The Editor’s Cut and wanted to give it the justice it deserves. After talking with @ArtisDead and @Bobson Dugnutt, I’ve decided to make my own fanedit of Batman Forever, using the abandoned Editor’s Cut as a main inspiration. I have changed a few things (and you can find what’s different in the changes list), but for the most part, this edit is a close approximation to The Editor’s Cut, and one that I hope does both @ThatGuyWhoEdits and this movie proud.

In addition to the edits I’ve made, I also decided to compete with the color grading of the Red Book Edition by throwing in my own style. I’ve desaturated the reds, greens, and blues to black and white. Thus, only the yellow, cyan, and magenta colors remain in full color. This gives the film more of a Frank Miller vibe, and in a lot of ways, the color palette reminds me of The Dark Knight Returns. It also gives the film a darker tone that is desperately needed. I have thrown together four color grading examples below to give you an idea of what I’ve got so far:

However, some scenes needed reds at times, mostly for the red book scenes and the Robin scenes. So I slightly resaturated the reds in those moments. This example is one Robin moment (My favorite, by the way). I didn’t like Robin’s helmet being black-and-white during this scene, which is why the resaturation was needed for this to work.

Deleted Scenes

One thing I should note is that the deleted scenes I have are in the dreaded SD 480p, and they’re in need of an upscale. They also lack music and sound effects. This edit will be a first for me in the sound effects department, since I’ve never added in SFX to an edit before. I will be uploading the deleted scenes of my edit onto this thread in the future for sound editing purposes and to get some feedback on what I've done to them. Also, if any of you have Topaz, I will be happy to send you my Deleted Scenes file for upscaling.

Otherwise, I think that’s everything for now. The changes list is down below.

Changes List

+= Added
-= Deleted
/= Altered

/ Desaturated the red, green, and blue hue vs. sat curves for a less colorful comic book style (Partially inspired by the Red Book Edition and the works of Frank Miller)
+ Deleted Scene 1: Two-Face’s escape from Arkham (Inspired by the Red Book Edition)
+ Added thunder and lightning sound effects to Deleted Scene 1
+ Added Holy Rusted Metal to Deleted Scene 1
/ Moved Edward Nigma’s introduction to scene 2 (Inspired by thatguywhoedits)
- Dialogue only: “Oh No!”
- Dialogue only: “Oh no! It’s boiling acid!”
- Dialogue only: “No!”, “Hold on!”, “Yes!”
- Dialogue only: “Gimme your hand!”, “Don’t let go!”
- Dialogue only: “Hey! Hey! That’s my hearing aid!”
- Dialogue only: “My shoes are melting! Ohh!”
- Dialogue only: “Ohhh! Nooo!”
+ Deleted Scene 2: Extended helicopter footage of Two-Face’s opinion on Batman’s “I don’t kill” ethos (Inspired by thatguywhoedits)
+ Added punch sound effects to Deleted Scene 2
+ Added The Pull of Regret to Deleted Scene 2
/ Moved Edward’s “demonstration” on Mr. Stickley to scene 4 (Inspired by thatguywhoedits)
- Dialogue only: “Hang on!”
- “Ooooh, nice form, but a little rough on the landing. He may have to settle for the bronze.”
- “I couldn’t possibly continue on here! The Mem… Ories!”
- Deleted Edward Nigma’s first apartment scene
-”I’ve really gotta get you out of those clothes…”, “Excuse me?”, “...And into a black dress.”
/ Moved Dr. Chase Meridian’s naughty little usage of the bat-signal to the 45-minute mark for better comedic effect (Inspired by thatguywhoedits)
- Dialogue only: “Last night at the bank...”
+ Deleted Scene 3: Bruce Wayne seeing Robin’s vengeance-filled kickboxing practice on Two-Face (Inspired by thatguywhoedits and the Red Book Edition)
+ Added bigger (and louder) cracking sound effect on Deleted Scene 3
- Deleted second action sequence between Two-Face’s minions and Batman
- Deleted Edward Nigma’s third apartment scene
- Deleted Robin’s questionable laundry cleaning antics (Those poor clothes are gonna be stretched out badly if he keeps doing that to them)
- Trimmed out Robin’s attempt to convince the hookers that he’s Batman
- Dialogue Only: “Batman!”
+ Deleted Scene 4: Bruce Wayne fears that Batman is his enemy
+ Added The Pull of Regret to Deleted Scene 4
- Deleted the Riddler’s baseball throw
- “Joygasm!”
+ Deleted Scene 5: Bruce Wayne confronting his fear
+ Added some scary monster SFX on the bat in Deleted Scene 5
+ Added The Pull of Regret to Deleted Scene 5
+ Added Mouth to Mouth Nocturne to Deleted Scene 5
+ Added Batterdammerung to Deleted Scene 5
- The Bat-ass
+ Added scary monster SFX from Deleted Scene 5 to the bat shot demonstrating the Riddler’s descent into madness
+ Deleted Scene 6: Does it ever end?

Current Running Time: 127 minutes

 

[Nic]

The color-grading is interesting. Having seen the 15th Anniversary of the Red Book edit, the focus on green & red color-grading feels very second-nature to me, so it's strange to see a similar yet different approach to the CMYK grading (the only Frank Miller books I've read were DKR & Batman Year One, but I'll take your word for it).

Still, I'm very interested in reutilizing concepts from the Editor's cut, especially Two-Face calling bull on Batman's no kill policy.

 

[Eyepainter]

Here is the first of the deleted scenes. The reason for testing them is because of the music and sound effects that I have added in, as the deleted scenes I have contain no music and incomplete sound effects.

And for those who are wondering, yes, the deleted scenes I have are in SD 480p. I don't have the money or the storage space on my PC for Topaz. If you would like to upscale them, send me a PM, and I'll be happy to send you the scenes. I'd appreciate it.

 

[ArtisDead]

I've heard tell of this supercool editor named @INIGHTMARES who has been known to Upscale a scene or two for a song and dance.

 

[Bobson Dugnutt]

The deleted scenes I have are in SD 480p. I don't have the money or the storage space on my PC for Topaz. If you would like to upscale them, send me a PM, and I'll be happy to send you the scenes. I'd appreciate it.

Let's just say I've got something on my hard drive with your name on it...

 

[ArtisDead]

Well isn't that very interesting, indeed.

 

[Eyepainter]

Let's just say I've got something on my hard drive with your name on it...

Sending that PM now.

While I'm working on that, here's the SFX and music work I've done on deleted scene 2 so far.

 

[Ender]

I'm not really onboard with this...exotic color grade. I guess you're trying to make it stylized, but it doesn't really feel that way, it just feels weird, in a bad way. It's not black and white, nor black and white with one or two colors, it's semi black and white and that awkward middle ground creates, dare I say, and uncanny valley of color. I understand the desire not to have the original film's bold colors in full force but perhaps a bit of RGB could be allowed in reduced saturation? You say Robin needed red but Riddler's looking weird as a mix of grey and yellow. Speaking of which, that Robin scene looks the best because you let the red back in. Allowing in a bit of red gives natural skin tones, so my brain stops seeing it as black and white.

 

[Eyepainter]

I'm not really onboard with this...exotic color grade. I guess you're trying to make it stylized, but it doesn't really feel that way, it just feels weird, in a bad way. It's not black and white, nor black and white with one or two colors, it's semi black and white and that awkward middle ground creates, dare I say, and uncanny valley of color.

Not sure what you're talking about with the uncanny valley, but the mix between black-and-white and color was what I was going for. So I succeeded in what I set out to do.

I understand the desire not to have the original film's bold colors in full force but perhaps a bit of RGB could be allowed in reduced saturation? You say Robin needed red but Riddler's looking weird as a mix of grey and yellow. Speaking of which, that Robin scene looks the best because you let the red back in.

The red book edition did that already, and I'd rather not copy that edit's grade. Besides, I was never a fan of the accurate skin tones mixed with black-and-white in that grade which looked more off-putting in my opinion.

Allowing in a bit of red gives natural skin tones, so my brain stops seeing it as black and white.

My brain sees it as both. Not everything is supposed to be either/or, nor should it be.

Also, Sin City didn't have natural skin tones either, and since I wanted to go for a Frank Miller-esque vibe, it makes sense.

 

[Ender]

Sin City was mostly blank and white with occasional colors that clearly stood out. But whatever, I'm clearly not gonna convince you. Just go with whatever you think is best.

Regardless, I would advise you do something to fix the weirdly colored Riddler. Give him his actual green or render him colorless, because allowing the yellow makes him this awkward middle ground.

 

[Eyepainter]

Still waiting on those upscales. For now, here's some more music and SFX tests on my deleted scenes so far.

This first one is the only deleted scene that came from the abandoned editor's cut. I suspect that the news announcer is @ThatGuyWhoEdits himself, and this scene was created by him. I liked it enough, and I think setting up the gang for later makes for a nice bit of foreshadowing. This is the only deleted scene in 1080p. However, It's also compressed due to the source. I've left this one untouched for now, but I suspect it needs work.

This next scene has been left untouched, save for Bruce Wayne's kick at the end. There might be some issues, but I think it works.

 

[Zarius]

Still waiting on those upscales. For now, here's some more music and SFX tests on my deleted scenes so far.

This first one is the only deleted scene that came from the abandoned editor's cut. I suspect that the news announcer is @ThatGuyWhoEdits himself, and this scene was created by him. I liked it enough, and I think setting up the gang for later makes for a nice bit of foreshadowing. This is the only deleted scene in 1080p. However, It's also compressed due to the source. I've left this one untouched for now, but I suspect it needs work.

Yeah, this one cuts off the female reporter mid-sentence (leaving "dark knight" unfinished), I also fail to see the point of this part, it would work so much better as a report before he other deleted scene with the male analyst urging Bruce to retire.

 

[Eyepainter]

Yeah, this one cuts off the female reporter mid-sentence (leaving "dark knight" unfinished), I also fail to see the point of this part, it would work so much better as a report before he other deleted scene with the male analyst urging Bruce to retire.

Just returned from visiting my brother.

As much as I hate hearing this (Since it's the only scene that comes directly from the editor's cut), I think your argument against it holds up. Unfortunately, moving that scene to the one with the reporter guy doesn't work, because the two scenes are on two different TVs (One is in the mansion in broad daylight, the other is in the dark recesses of the batcave). I'm faced with no other choice but to cut it.

Thanks for your feedback. I'm upset, but if it isn't bringing anything to the movie, there's no point in keeping it.

 

[Zarius]

Just returned from visiting my brother.

As much as I hate hearing this (Since it's the only scene that comes directly from the editor's cut), I think your argument against it holds up. Unfortunately, moving that scene to the one with the reporter guy doesn't work, because the two scenes are on two different TVs (One is in the mansion in broad daylight, the other is in the dark recesses of the batcave). I'm faced with no other choice but to cut it.

Thanks for your feedback. I'm upset, but if it isn't bringing anything to the movie, there's no point in keeping it.

No worries. Glad to help.

 

[Eyepainter]

Just got Bobson's upscales! I'll be re-uploading my (surviving) deleted scenes and showing some updated versions of them when I have the time.

 

[Rosalind14]

Sounds like a really interesting project! Will definitely be wanting to watch this when it's completed!

 

[Eyepainter]

Back for more! Here we are with deleted scene 5 and the first clip to get the upscale treatment!

 

[Eyepainter]

Now for deleted scene 6! This is the most important addition to the film, and also the hardest deleted scene I've worked on. I added three music tracks (Yes, you heard that right), and a bunch of sound effects too.

 

[Eyepainter]

And lastly there's deleted scene 7. I debated this one since I didn't understand what was going on, but after reading @Bobson Dugnutt's thoughts on the scene, I'm leaning towards including this one into my edit.

Oh yeah, and spoiler alert!

 

[Eyepainter]

Here's the upscaled version of deleted scene 1. CamSMurph over on originaltrilogy.com suggested some additions to the sound editing, so the sound effects have been changed from the previous SD version. Let me know what you think.