CITY OF SCARS, Latest Batman Fan Film

On Thursday, City of Scars made its debut. Shot on a budget of $27,000, this 30 minute short is the latest in a long line of impressive Batman related fan films, the most famous of which is probably Batman: Dead End.

Check out City of Scars below:

 

 

The film is really impressive from a technical standpoint. Writing and acting? Weeeell… whaddya gonna do? Can't have everything. I'm not going to complain too much. It's way more ambitious and impressive than most non-professional work. They should be proud of themselves.

My only question: Black Canary was listed in the credits… was she the bartender (and therefore the All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder version) in the strip club?

 

Thanks to Ibrahim for being the first to send us the tip!

Comments

  1. lol. This isn’t bad at all considering the budget. Thanks for the share.

  2. WOW! This was so fantastic really made my day. You could really tell that they didn’t waste a dollar on making this film. Probably the best fan film I have ever seen!

  3. That was a lot of fun, the best fan film I’ve seen.

  4. Thought it was great.

  5. gonna watch it when i get home

  6. Caught this yesterday – really impressive given the budget used.  It really spoke more to what a rated R Batman movie would be like with a bigger budget and more time.

  7. A for effort, C overall.

  8. Bat in the Sun makes fantastic Batman fan films all the time.

  9. I love how much this feels like reading a one-shot issue, or watching an episode of Batman TAS.  It’s a very impressive effort. 

      @Conor, on the Black Canary thing, I drew the same conclusion.

    Ibrahim

  10. I don’t normally watch these fan-made films, but I gave this one a shot and it blew me away on every level. The production, the acting, the plot, everything was amazing.

    Christopher Nolan had better watch out.

  11. It’s fun, and looks like a lot of effort went into it.  Still, I wonder if a better outlet would be a different character we haven’t seen before, or a different side of Batman even.  Watching this will always look inferior to what we can see somewhere else.

    Kudos to the creators though for taking the time to make it.

  12. Some really nice visuals here. They should definitely be commended for their efforts. I confess I only made it halfway through before I couldn’t stomach the voiceover anymore. But I scanned through the rest and it looks great. 

    I agree with cubsmodano. It would’ve been more interesting if they took a less generic angle. Maybe something like Gotham Central or a story from the eyes of a B-list villain. We’ve all seen this a million times. Telling a Joker story from Bruce’s perspective may have been a bit too ambitious.

    Still, probably the best looking fan film out there. Nice work guys.

  13. I liked it! Very pulp!

  14. That was fun! I will (as usual) plead ignorance: are fan films more common than I previously knew? Anyone have any other good suggestions for others?

  15. Shows you how superhero genre fiction can work if done well and faithfully to the written character.  Glitz it up (Tim Burton films) or spend $100 million and 4 years (Chris Nolan films) and you lose many prospective fans.

    Keep it simple (one & done), low budget (read: made for tv) and you can have kids lapping it up on TV for years.

    How many of us old fogey comic book readers wonder how and where new readers/lovers of superhero fiction will come from?  We grew up watching George Reeve Superman and Adam West Batman re-runs ad nauseum and that just was great for us.

    Make a TV series for kids can love (Human Target comes close) and let the love of comics/action heroes live on in the next generations.

  16. @professorx: How many fans do you think the $1 billion+ grossing Chris Nolan Batman films lost? And after Tim Burton’s first Batman film came out, sales of Batman comics skyrocketed.

    Look, this fan film was impressive for what it was, but let’s not go crazy here.

  17. @HailScott:  The same guys have done a bunch of shorts, but their best one (next to this) is more of a trailer (youtube search Batman Legends).  It has a bunch of characters (like Nightwing and Superman), and is more of an amalgum of their other stuff.

    Another really good one is "World’s Finest".  Much like this one; terrible acting, but great imagery.  Very derivative of Alex Ross, and seems to be based on the Superman/Batman arc from the Superman animated series.  It was made by the same guy who did "Batman: Dead End".

    And, most low budget of them all: "Grayson".  Still pretty cool though.

    There’s a guy who goes by "WormyT", who does really cool fan trailers using some kind of after effects program on existing footage.  I think I read that he photoshops frame-by-frame.  He did one called "Superman Reborn", he did a "Thundercats" one that was awesome, and I think he may have done the Nathan Fillion "Green Lantern" trailer as well.

  18. Pretty good once you get past the porno-quality acting.

  19. Very good looking and nicely put together. That being said, I stopped watching about half way through out of sheer boredom.

  20. Definitely nice production, but the 5 minute narration at the end, frankly all the narrations, were slow and boring.

  21. I actually thought the acting was quite good. Not film-good, but TV-good.

  22. @RapidEyeMovement: What TV do you watch?

  23. Not good TV-good. Daytime soap opera-good. Not that I watch daytime soap operas…

    All I’m saying is; it wasn’t terrible.

  24. Ah crap, I just realised the perfect joke answer to "What TV do you watch?" should have been "Mine."