With the industry being halted to stand still as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, it has given us a unique chance to look back on film history and wonder What If? After fans successfully petitioned Warner Brothers to release a director’s cut of Justice League, fans and creators alike have used this to look back at other tumultuous projects and explore whether the true vision of those films exist. As a result of this, it has been revealed that a director’s cut of Batman Forever exists, one that is much darker than the campier version that we got in theaters.
Like the aforementioned Justice League, the late and great director Joel Shumacher hoped to follow in Tim Burton’s footsteps, creating another gritty and dark Batman film that had previously lead to great critical and financial success. Batman Forever is notable for its stark tonal departure, one that lead original star Michael Keaton to leave the project in protest. According to the writer of the project, Marc Bernardin, a cut of the original film does in fact exist, “Schumacher did assemble a longer cut of “Batman Forever” that was indeed much darker in nature.”
This cut is supposedly closer to the films that came before it, even going into the psychological and emotional damage that lead Bruce Wayne to turn into the Caped Crusader we all know and love. So, movie lovers everywhere, does ‘The Shumacher Cut’ sound enticing?
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