Tim Burton's "Batman" is a classic and will always be the best of the original movies, which became progressively worse and more cartoony with each sequel. Jake Nicholson as the Joker played his role perfectly, with great humor, darkness and depth. Michael Keaton portrayed Bruce Wayne with style and emotional strength that wasn't seen again until Christian Bale took the reins with "Batman Begins" and the sequel films. Who can forget the beautiful Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale. The supporting cast were also just as excellent in their character roles. It was a comic book to movie success and continues to be so. Other than the actors, fantastic sets and art, an unforgettable Batmobile and amazing Batsuit (though the neck was too stiff), fans will always remember the movie due to one major thing - the music by Danny Elfman. Next to "Beetlejuice", this film pretty much set the tone for all the scores Elfman created after it. The music is amazing in tone and energy for all the areas that call for it, then becoming soft and tender for intimate pieces. Danny knows his stuff when it comes to creating music that you never forget and thoroughly enjoy. "Batman" is definitely one of his masterpieces.
Thanks to a La-La Land Records 2-CD release of Batman's score called the "Expanded Archival Collection", Phaota was able to put together an ultimate edition, incorporating Prince's great funk songs from the film. You will also find other songs by Prince made for the movie or as a homage to it as bonus tracks, most from his Batman album released at the time of the film. There are also several unused/alternate Elfman score pieces. Thanks to a fan of the soundtrack, "jacksparrow900", there is one added piece of music with track 25, "Jack Meets Bruce [Beautiful Dreamer]". It was oddly not released on the La-La Land Records collection. Phaota had ripped the song from the Special Edition DVD's 5.1 audio and edited out various sound effects, but the fan sent Ripper a perfectly clean edition that they found somewhere or were given that was superior to Phaota's version. So, the former was switched for the better. Why this piece of music wasn't included in the "Expanded Archival Collection" is a mystery since it was an important musical part in the film. Concerning track 31 "Joker Flies To Gotham-Batwing I", the first part wasn't used in the film, but Phaota decided to leave the piece intact instead of cutting it off since it was released in the La-La Land set that way. Lastly, two bonus tracks by Prince, "We Got The Power" and "Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic", were found by Phaota years ago from a torrent collection of the artist's music and are probably demos. At the time, they had a lot of white noise on them, which was cleaned away and recently enhanced for better clarity, but they still have some digital artifacting noise on them, which can not helped. Both tracks are very rare and hard-to-find, so please do not complain about sound quality. As with all of Phaota's contribution, the songs are in play order, so you can audible enjoy the soundtrack as you would if you were watching the film.
UPDATE! (9/12/2011)
- This soundtrack is now updated with a new rip of track 25, "Jack Meets Bruce [Beautiful Dreamer]" without sound effects. So if you downloaded this soundtrack already you can now delete that copy's track 25 and replace it with this one. Thanks "jacksparrow900" for sharing this. You can download this link below if you just want the updated track and you previously downloaded the soundtrack. Also, the links below this link are for the full soundtrack with the update already included. Also the password for this updated track rar is the same as the soundtrack password.
