BATMAN OF THE EAST

Inspired by Backstroke of the West, Myrick offers Batman of the East.

We saw our first in-cinema movie here just before going on vacation; checking "Batman Begins" at the cinema in Xintandi. The tickets were 70 yuan each, making it 140 yuan for the two of us (not including snacks).  You can buy the DVD on the street for 7 yuan. This is one of the reasons why people don't go to movies in China (another is that the authorities only allow a handful of decent films in each year).

Still, as a fan, paying US$17 for two tickets rather than less than a buck for a bootleg DVD wasn't a big issue. What was an issue was that three times during the showing, sloppy edits in the film ruined my experience.

Naturally, I picked up the DVD to see what I was missing.

The censored Chinese cinema version of the film cuts out scenes of (a) Bruce Wayne robbing one of Wayne Industries China outposts, (b) Bruce kicking the snot out of prisoners in a Chinese work camp, (c) Bruce and Alfred ordering defective helmets from China.

These scenes were all available on the DVD. About a third of the movie wasn't, the Russian bootleggers neglected to add a reel, but I only picked it up for the censored scenes, so it was decent enough for filling in the blanks.

As the DVD was a new release, the bootleggers didn't have time to translate the script into subtitles though. So they just borrowed an existing track from errr... the Intrepreter, perhaps.

Among the highlights.:

Ra's Al Ghul is more Zen, or something.

His offer to turn Bruce evil is a lot more attractive, or it would be if Bruce wasn't already a billionaire. Still, this does provide some insight to the motivation for all of the other henchmen.

Carmine Falcone is a lot more vulgar.

Bruce's initial impression of the Batmobile is much more excited and off-the-cuff.

Bruce uses Japanese when he fires Earle.

Probably due to the success of the X-Men films, the producers decided Batman could use Wolverine's keen sense of smell.

He's also more violent; he keeps the "no-gun" rule, but nukes are seemingly ok.