Many valid points there CC and I agree for the most part. There are some awkward moments that were destined to be there.
Bane should have been a strong enough (no pun intended) character to build a whole film around instead of throwing him in, likewise a Batgirl (I say 'a' because we all know that character *wasn't* Batgirl
). Oh and btw- did your catch the Bane bit after the credits? Its funny because I envisioned sort of a psuedo-story going on during this version of the film- including the set-up for Bane to appear in a 'sequel'.Most of Batgirl's stuff stunk so again in 'story-in-my-head' mode I pictured that Batman, much more intelligent than Schumacher or the script gave him credit for, *knew* that Barbara was up to something and you even can (hopefully) get the impression that Bruce and Alfred baited her.
I fully admit the 'Robin-signal' makes no sense in the edit, but god help me I couldn't bring myself to put more Bane in the film! And regretfully Bane and Ivy are joined at the hip in the film.
As to the transitions, yes in the 'version' I was trying to stay as true as possible to the other 3 films in the series. My friend BatmanMD (who is obviously too good to post here anymore
) also liked the idea of more wipes, etc. I know, as stated before, that I'm going to do a version 2.0 eventually (audio commentary, etc) and I very well may re-visit severla of these points. I don't know about other editors but there is always the temptation to keep re-doing and re-doing the work. This works well to a point but eventually one will end up like George Lucas and tweaking and tweaking... a bad thing IMHO. 