Um, We Probably Don’t Need A New Cut of ‘Batman Forever’

We recently lost the great Joel Schumacher, a legendary filmmaker who somehow found the time to make some of the most memorable films of the '80s and '90s when he wasn't busy having sex with a whopping 20,000 human beings. In the wake of his death, rumors have surfaced of a "darker" way longer cut of his first Dynamic Duo-based film, Batman Forever. Predictably this has led to yet another social media movement demanding that Warner Bros. release yet another director's cut of a Batman movie, using the hashtag #ReleaseTheSchumacherCut.

But the thing is, most of that missing footage has already surfaced online and it's ... pretty goofy. There's even an anonymous fan edit that incorporates many of the deleted scenes. Batman Forever: Red Book Edition opens in Arkham Asylum, where we discover Harvey Dent has escaped.

Then there's the scene where the Riddler tricks Batman into barging into a hair salon, where he's promptly ridiculed by the staff for some reason.

Most famously, as we've mentioned before, Bruce Wayne's emotional turmoil is resolved in a surreal scene in which he randomly discovers his father's diary then has a staring contest with a giant bat puppet that seemingly escaped from a Halloween Superstore.

To be fair, some of the deleted scenes would have added a certain poignancy to the film, such as the moment where Bruce counsels Dick Grayson not to let his love for his family "twist into hatred."

But really, if we're going to pour our collective outrage into demanding alternate cuts of Hollywood movies, can we please just channel our collective energy into bombarding Universal with calls to make either the butthole or pee-pee cut of Cats available for the world to see?

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