Synopsis:

Batman (1989) minus the Bruce Wayne-Vicki Vale romance subplot, and closer in tone and facts to the original comic books.

Intentions:

I've always considered that the romance between Bruce Wayne as depicted in this movie (a reclusive, asocial, insecure-acting creep) and Vicki Vale, babe reporter, to be completely unbelievable and a result of Hollywood forcing a love story into every single movie. Also, the whole character of Vicki is nothing more than a rather annoying damsel in distress shrieking her way into Joker's traps only to get Batman to save her. This edit cuts back the character and removes the romance to center in the stories of Batman and Joker. Along the way, pointless deviations from the source have been fixed.

Change List:

-Color correction applied all through, to minimize the washed-out image and the slight blue-ish tint. -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.

Additional Notes:

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Other Sources:

A few seconds of new music have been used in the museum sequence (won't tell what it is, it will be fun to see if someone recognizes it), and some foley bits from the Freesound Project have been used.

Special Thanks:

Too many to list, but particularly JMB, the "executive producer" of this edit. He actually had the same idea 20 years before, and even made a VHS version back in the day! I hope he gets to make it as a proper fanedit one day, the central concept was the same but the execution was very different from mine.