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If you look at this shot towards the end of the alley fight, note where the unconscious goons are lying. Mac McDonald's goon is lying on the rubbish heap where Batman kicked him, but the positions of the other two goons don't correspond with where they fell in the finished fight scene.

This suggests to me that an entirely different version of the fight scene might have been shot with Keaton, McCabe and Newman, climaxing in the one-on-one duel between Batman and Bob, before the sequence was scrapped and reshot with Lea. Either that or the positions of the fallen goons are just a continuity error.

I think you're on to something there. The fact that one goon's position lines up, but the others don't would seem to suggest that the rest was redone. It's fascinating how little we know about deleted scenes from these movies, some were only revealed by 1989batman's still images.

Jon Peters recently spoke about this scene in an interview with Joe Rogan.

https://youtu.be/J17H6X5tBwQ

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Bringing this back since I've had the pleasure of seeing three classic Batman flicks in theaters again this past weekend for Batman Day. Of course I had to drive more than an hour because only Tinseltown Theaters were participating, but it was well worth it. The Mask of the Phantasm was a great primer, then the original Batman was the main event, and finally Returns brought it all home.

Never thought I'd enjoy spending an entire day at the theater that much. It wasn't too packed, but it was readily apparent that I was in the presence of fellow Bat-fans making the pilgrimage.

The original film has slowly became my favorite Batman film, and once again seeing it in theaters is the only way to do it proper justice.

Can you confirm if Returns had the new sound mix? I know '89's latest theatrical screenings have had it but I am curious to know if this is the case for Returns as well.

In the recently published Genesis Trilogy Anniversary Book there's an interview with Nicholas Meyer in which he's asked if he regrets not having a face-to-face confrontation between Kirk and Khan. Meyer answers no, saying that it would have been "cheesy, stereotyped and familiar" to have them duke it out like gladiators. Fun though it would have been to see Khan and Kirk fight in person again, I agree that it's better they didn't. Kirk shouldn't really be able to compete with Khan in physical terms anyway. The only advantage he has over Khan is his knowledge of 23rd century technology. There's a line to this effect in the Director's Cut, where after surviving their first encounter with the Reliant Kirk says something like, "The only reason we're still alive is because I know more about these ships than he does."

Always wondered if the fight between Kirk and Kruge in the subsequent film was added to appease Shatner, who I'm sure was all in for another brawl with Montalban. Judging from Meyer's prior interviews and commentaries, it sounded like he had his work cut out for him to make Shatner play Kirk the way he did in Wrath of Khan so that he didn't come off as his exuberant self, which is not what this Kirk is supposed to be. 

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/michael-keaton-batman-movies-bruce-wayne-1235330293/

They misspelled "PAYCHECK" as "WRITING."

A rather curious post by Snyder on VERO. Word has it the car he's driving is an Aston Martin, the same car model that Bruce Wayne drove to Lex Luthor's gala in BvS.

And we're supposed to be envious because?

So there is some evidence to suggest the parallels were conscious. I'd just like someone from the movie's production team to acknowledge it. But as TDK says, the parallels exist whether they were deliberate or not. And that's the important thing.

I'm sure in Waters case (as it is with many screenwriters adapting comics) would be writing out a basic plot line with appropriate character motivations and story details would be filled in with inspirations from selected comics from DC's archives, hence why there are a notable amount of similarities. It's been pointed out that Mario Puzo spent a lot of time reading through back issues provided by DC back when he was writing Superman. I'm sure this option was open for Waters and Hamm.

I can speak from personal angle that I've implored a similar method in my own adaptations. Similar to my analogy of writing school papers, it is a good idea to keep a list of sources so that we don't we commit an act of plagiarism, which was never very clear to me when I was in school. To me, plagiarism is directly copying and pasting some thing and claiming it to be your own. Adaptations are another animal all together as it is not using it the same dialogue or context. Waters likely reacted the way he did because he probably did see those panels and used them for inspiration and if you don't make a note of your source, it can become your own in your later recollections.

Writers also have to be careful in these areas because it could be used as citation for a lawsuit. James Cameron experience that with Terminator when he cited Outer Limits episodes as his inspiration and Harlan Ellison jumped on that with how his work closely resembled Cameron's. This was something Cameron made sure he acknowledged for Avatar and cited Dances with Wolves writer Michael Blake in the credits to avoid another similar situation.

It's a shame that all these years later we still can't get a quote confirming that any of these parallels were deliberate. Still, the writer of Demolition Man said "Oh sh*t!" in response to something I posted, and that makes the whole endeavour worthwhile.

I'm sure some were deliberate but for people like Waters, they're only truly in the moment when they're writing. Once their job is over, they move onto the next project and channel their energy into that. I always compare us fans asking questions like these to creators as though someone asked us about the papers we had to write in school.

https://bleedingfool.com/news/batmangate-dc-writer-posts-damning-proof-matt-reeves-stole-his-script

The tl;dr of it is Chris Wozniak is claiming that Michael Uslan stole basically the entire plot and setup of TB without compensation. He provides evidence of his claims in his YouTube video.

Decide for yourself if he's telling the truth. Honestly, I think the pieces all fit together pretty well. Well enough to merit further investigation anyway.

This will likely only go as far as Steve Englehart's claims about The Dark Knight stealing from his material.

Hollywood people writing comics has produced some pretty mixed results. Esp actors.

At least this one got great art that's very Miller and Janson influence instead of the bland movie tie-in art that's common.

All of this is to say that you raise a good point here. And it's something that doesn't get brought up very often when the Affleck Batman movie gets discussed. There's a very strong argument that Affleck bit off more than he could chew with that movie. Which could be what actually killed it. Or at least contributed to killing it.

That and his drinking problem that he finally had to come to terms with how it was destroying his life. He thought he could still do things he did in his 20's, but those days are long gone. Snyder's decision to cast him as older and weathered Batman since it takes more to convey that sensibility with greying temples. They tried to warn him how this was going to seriously change his career and he stubbornly dismissed the negative side of it, such as the press mainly being interested in his next outing as Batman than whatever film he was promoting. He really didn't handle well that somehow led him back to being with J.Lo. and made Keaton return as Batman. As Adam West's Batman once said, "I'd say the odds against it, would make even the most reckless gambler cringe!"

The movie could've had Mav looking like Vincent from "Collateral" and it would've had no bearing on the film's overall quality.

It would have had a bearing on the movie overall since we're supposed to see that after all these years, Maverick is the same guy as we left him. One of the key factors that I believe audiences really responded to was to see a character like this, first and foremost in a sequel instead of being sidelined for other characters that we don't care about. Having him look like he did in Collateral, which already looked phony enough where it looked like someone just put baby powder in Cruise's hair, would have been a reminder of the time that's passed. Cruise understands what other long overdue sequels failed at, we don't want to be reminded of how long it's been since we've last seen them. Nobody wants to see an old man version of Indiana Jones doing the same things he did 40 years ago or having characters like Han Solo appear just so the new characters can kill them off or empty dramatic reasons so they can just magically appear out of nowhere.