Batman Laserdisc theatrical sound mix from @WarnerBrosPictures unboxing The Dark Knight of Gotham City begins his war on crime with his first major enemy being Jack Napier, a criminal who becomes the clownishly homicidal Joker.
I have the US LD and the bat symbol is a lot larger on the cover. It’s a single disc jacket that has 2 discs inside which is the European style as US is usually gatefold. The US dvd is a flipper disc or a mini LD and has an edited widescreen version of the film that edits a Vicky scene with joker for some reason but the open matte side is unedited besides the 5.1 remix that sounds more accurate to the original stereo on LD & vhs than the BD & 4K have. The LD is very bright so you need to lower it more than most discs of the era. It’s a shame the new 4K is a new color grade that has that blue tint since the clarity is very good in that highest disc resolution
Unfortunately, the audio is quite a bit more complicated than that. The LD is still my favorite version and a phenomenal transfer for the time, but both Burton films were brightened on home video releases throughout the years and took ages to be timed darker as the theatrical release prints were. 89 had several sound mixes: the 70 mm six track Dolby mix, the general release Dolby stereo matrix on 35 mm and mono for 16mm and broadcast. The laser disc and also the VHS seem to have been mastered directly from the Dolby stereo print master as they sound wonderful and unmanipulated with a particular warmer feeling low end that I have always adored. There was a plan to reissue all four Batman films as a final late release laser disc with AC3 5.1 upmixes for the Burton films, but those were canceled. Instead, we got the 1997 flipper disc early release DVDs, which took the place of those. They use the pre-existing laser disc masters except because they’re early DVDs have loads of early DVD problems and so the image is actually inferior to the LD version but they do feature a discrete 5.1 audio track in lossy ac3. For 89 this is basically a discrete version of what the laser disk and VHS had as 2.0 matrix. It sounds fantastic but the wide screen side of the disc for some reason remove the tiny section of Vicky, removing the piece of lint from her mouth and the ending sequence with the Joker. In 2005 when they prepared the special edition DVDs, new audio transfers were done and all of that wonderful warm cavernous low end was lost in the sound mix, which otherwise was still the original mix. This version of the audio was on the special edition DVD and also turned up on the Blu-ray release as the trueHD track in a higher quality codec. So for diehard fans of 89 any of the older releases are an absolute must because in my opinion, they not only better reflect the original audio presentation, but I do think they sound better. Due to the revisionist problems of the 4K master in picture and sound I always watch older versions and am usually watching the LD which is still my favorite. Just compare the opening title on the laser disc to the Blu-ray or the UHD and it is literally no contest. The LD wipes the floor with them.
Thank you so much for a very long detailed comment. I am very much looking forward to watching it. I have the snapper case dvd and the special anthology dvd release with all four in it. And then Blu and of course 4ks. Very intrigued to see and hear this Laserdisc release. 👏
@@4kCollectivE no problem! I’ve done admittedly quite a lot of research on the Batfilms and their releases over the years so I’m always happy to share info and the LD is one of my favorite LD releases to watch.
