‘Batman Forever:The Red Book Edition’

Feb 25

Batman Forever: The Red Book Edition by Scaperat is one of the first Batman fan film edits, created to try and improve the campy 1995 release. Batman Forever leaned into the comic book style and away from the first two Batman films that everyone had grown to love. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin were more Adam West than Michael Keaton, with zany humor and bold colors. The films feel out of place with all the different incarnations that have come after.

In 2007, twelve years after the original movie, just after the Christopher Nolan films had reset the franchise, Scaperat decided to give some much-needed love to Batman Forever.

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Back in the early 2000s video editing tools were less user friendly, less advanced, and less widespread. To put it into context, The Red Book Edition was made the year after the launch of YouTube, and Facebook’s release to the general public. Few people had the skills to generate content at this level. This made Scaperat’s decision to create a fan edition even more incredible.

The biggest noticeable difference between the Batman Forever: The Red Book Edition and the original is the color pallet. Scaperat toned it down massively, to a detective-like noir look. It’s much more fitting for Batman and less migraine-inducing. Some of the cheesier dialogue has been cut out, although Jim Carrey’s ‘joygasm’ unfortunately is still there.

Director, Joel Schumacher was forced to take forty-nine minutes of footage out, all of which ended up as extras on the DVD. The missing scenes gave the movie a darker tone and developed the characters. It would have been a completely different film if they had been allowed to remain. Batman Forever: The Red Book Edition restores them to the reel. A whole subplot involving Thomas Wayne’s diary (the red book) that ended up on the cutting room floor has been reinstated. That is where the famous fan edit gets its name.

There has been an online campaign fronted by Kevin Smith to get Joel Schumacher’s version a theatrical release. The View Askew filmmaker has the cut in his possession and even screened it privately in New Jersey in 2023. Until Joel Schumacher is allowed to release his cut of Batman Forever, the Red Book Edition is as close as fans can get to a glimpse of what the director had in mind for the original movie.

Scaperat was working with footage ripped from a DVD, which at best is 480p. On the original version, the inserted deleted scenes are noticeable, and some of the cuts are rough. But the good news is that another filmmaker, INIGHTMARES decided to make a 15th anniversary version back in 2022 using an AI product. This improved the quality to a point where the image is approximately 1080p. INIGHTMARES has also made a few improvements to the audio track.

Although the 15th-anniversary version and the original cannot be shown or distributed legally, it can be found online in various places and is a must-watch for any fans of The Dark Knight. Batman Forever had a great cast, and it’s a shame that the script and edits did not allow them to shine. Batman Forever: The Red Book Edition has helped to correct that.

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