Batman: City of Scars

Fan films are kind of an interesting breed. You can get some really great ones and then you can get some that rival Ed Wood in production values.

But keep in mind when you're watching them. You're not watching something produced by a huge Hollywood Studio with a million dollar budget. A great deal of time you're watching something produced by some enthusiastic young fans either in their mid-teens or mid-twenties paying tribute to their favorite show, movie or character.

And there have been some really well done fan films which actually pass over the line from fan film to independent film. A good example of that is Timebase Production which produced a great series of Doctor Who adventures between 1994 and 2001 starring Rupert Booth. I'll probably blog on Timebase at a later date.

Recently I came across this Batman film titled City of Scars by an Aaron Schoenke on Dailymotion couple days back. I've seen a series of Batman/Joker films on the web.

To be honest, I haven't watched the entire film straight through. But what I have seen of it thus far it's quite good!! Very good actually! Visually it's very good. And the design of the Batman costume is actually the way I would want to go if I were to produce a Batman movie. Something along the lines of a darker version of Neal Adam's Batman from the 1970's. The cape and mask in black leather with the costume in a dark gray. But with the style of the bat insignia from the 1943 Batman movie serials.

I'll blog more about that later. Back to the film at hand.

The actor who is playing Batman in this film does a great job. I would be bold to say Christopher Nolan should get him on the phone and hire him for the next Batman film. The one thing I like the most is the actor playing Batman Kevin Porter does not overdue the Batman voice. So many actors do that. Christian Bale just sounds like he's been gargling a glass of thumbtacks.

But this guy gets it's pretty close to right. You want his voice to sound brooding without overdoing it. But at the same time, you don't want to underdo it like George Clooney did in Batman and Robin.

That was the only time I felt like I could kick Batman's ass.

Paul Molnar who plays the Joker in this I found a bit on the weak side. I didn't mind the producers of this film going back to the more comic book version of the Joker. But I didn't this Joker to be too terrifying. And you can still take the more comic book version of the Joker and make him terrifying.

But check it out for yourself. It's a great example of both enthusiastic young fans paying tribute to a character they like AND doing it with style!!