Batman Forever Fans Planning "Release the Schumacher Cut" Trending Event

By Russ Burlingame

Fans of Batman Forever are planning a social media trending event tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. ET, followed by a watch party for the movie at 7 p.m. ET. The idea is to support the #ReleasetheSchumacherCut movement -- a group of fans who hope to get a commercial release for director Joel Schumacher's early cut of the film. The movie, which runs significantly longer and has a darker tone than the theatrical cut of the movie. Since WarnerMedia announced that they would release Zack Snyder's Justice League, there have been dozens of campaigns to restore director's cuts of movies, hoping to capitalize on the enthusiasm of fans like Snyder's. Two of them -- David Ayer's Suicide Squad and the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever -- seem to have floated to the top of the heap.

Why? In part because people in the know have said that in both cases, the cut is either completely or nearly-completely finished, and that it is better than the versions that we got in theaters. In the case of the Schumacher cut, the storyline has been particularly sympathetic, because the filmmaker behind gems like Tigerland and Falling Down passed away shortly before a story broke that Warner Bros. had a longer, darker version of Batman Forever in the vault somewhere.

"I got to see it recently, the very first one, which was referred to as Preview Cut One," said Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the movie, last year. "And it was really dark, it was a pretty psychological exploration of guilt and shame."

The movement to restore Schumacher's original cut has also brought out some older comments, like one from monster effects legend Rick Baker, who in 2014 tweeted about a scene featured in the movie's trailer but cut from the final film, in which Bruce Wayne dreams of a giant bat.

"We made the giant bat, and I was so sad to see the scene cut, because it was cool!" Baker told a fan.

The first film following Tim Burton's Batman Returns, Schumacher's Batman Forever was charged with trying to live up to one of the most significant cinematic experiences of the previous decade, while also making a movie that wouldn't scare kids and would sell a lot more toys than Returns did. It starred Val Kilmer as Batman, alongside Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face/Harvey Dent and Jim Carrey as The Riddler.

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