Joel Schumacher’s Batman films haven’t always been the most beloved in the Dark Knight film canon, but they’re perfectly in-line with the camp qualities of the original Adam West series, with a little 90s flourish for good measure. Still, compared to the most recent Batman stories, films like Batman Forever don’t really measure in terms of mood and atmosphere. That is unless you add a little Daft Punk and some cool edits like Sam Ibrahim did in his YouTube Re-edit of the film.
Batman Forever was the Val Kilmer starring Batman film which featured Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face, and more memorably, Jim Carrey as the Riddler. The film was more-or-less what you’d expect from a Schumacher Batman film, with crazy neon lights, hammy Jim Carrey playing the Joker via the Riddler, and a gangster-like Two-Face who looks more like a rave demon than a career criminal. But now watch the film with a little Daft Punk and see how it changes.
The thing about Batman films is that they all use the same general, gothic iconography that can be terrifying if the tone is right. The Christopher Nolan films modernized the setting a little too much for the films to be “scary”, and Schumacher covered his films under too much glitz and neon for them to be taken seriously. However, underneath them all are the same basic design principles that make up any Batman story.
Namely, costumed psychopaths, dark city skylines, and bats. The new edited trailer from Ibrahim proves that Schumacher’s film can also look like something from Tim Burton’s Bat-costumed nightmare under the right circumstances.
