Review Detail

This was an extremely ambitious fan edit so I give it the utmost respect for that.

The video and audio quality were all excellent, which is pretty necessary for a film as dark as this lol.

There were a few Audio edits early on that didn't work for me, both when going between The Batman and Batman Begins footage, as well as just cutting stuff out. The score had a few repeating notes that made the cut a bit too obvious. Or a transition between songs didn't quite work or could have overlapped scenes a bit more. If you ever decide to make another version, using the separate score from the film instead of the music thats in the footage already can help as a band aid and really sell these transitions. The score in general was a challenge for me, since the two films have very different scores. So combining them made that more apparent. I don't know how you could solve this. Perhaps trying to rescore some of The Batman with Hans Zimmer's stuff. Or trying to blend the two. But this is an area that's far out of my expertise so it might just be way too difficult. More of an issue conceptually than with the actual edit.

From the jump, Christian Bale has a very distinct mouth/chin area. So this edit rubbed up against my suspension of disbelief a bit that Bruce and Batman were the same character for the first half. But I assumed that would be the case going in. The visual style and energy of the two films are different, so they did clash a bit. But this isn't really your fault. However it does help that the color grading in both films are a brown/orange hue. The editing around Bruce at the memorial service in order to hide that his face was Robert Pattinson was a bit too obvious. I think just not including him and having Batman arrive would have helped this. Or perhaps just showing him arrive in the car and not including the other shots of him until Bats shows up. Otherwise I didn't really notice any problems

I really enjoyed the transition from his parents death and aftermath to him driving his motorcycle into the Batcave. The musical transition from the Zimmer score to Nirvana couldve lingered a bit more to hide the seems but I thought that worked really well. Unfortunately the pacing of the narrative in general suffered in this edit. It feels like 2 films stitched together. Like 2 separate story arcs that rise and fall instead of 1. I do like that there is a throughline of Bruce "having no need for vengence," after his arc in The Batman. But otherwise it feels pretty separate. Perhaps a way to combat this would be weaving more Batman Begins scenes into The Batman. Like Bruce experimenting with building a new suitm, more Bruce Wayne scenes, or maybe his training on the mountain happens prior to his reveal as The Batman. It also felt weird that Crane was introduced early and then disappeared til the last half. The Begins scenes were very front heavy and then disappeared for too long. Bruce tryin to assassinate Joe Chill after already being Batman stuck out to me, but that might just be because of my familiarity with the movies and the character. It's possible I missed the set up, but the call audio log in the penguin interrogation seemed out of nowhere since alot of Falcone's scenes were cut. Some of the dry humor of The Batman was lost, but I think a lot of the cuts were necessary to move the plot along since it is pretty long. It was also a bit weird that Batman had a ride or die cop in the department who wasn't Gordon. But thats another issue that there isn't really a way around unless you cut out the other Gordon completely. Im also curious why Catwoman was cut out cause I really enjoyed her in the movie. I assume this was so it could fit in with the rest of the Nolan Trilogy, or so she didn't compete with Rachel.

So yes I had a handful of problems with the edit, but I still enjoyed it, especially since you are combining 2 really well made films. And like I said, a lot of my problems stem from tackling such an ambitious project. But I respect and applaud what you were trying to do. Thanks you for letting me watch your edit and I hope to see more from you!