I've had the Goodtimes Home Video releases of both Bat serials for years on VHS, I'm just glad that some cliffhangers are finally making it to the digital format...
On the note of the anti-Japanese sentiment found int he '43 serial, it makes sense that it woulda got editted...Columbia Pictures holds the rights to it (one of the few DC film adaptations that WB was never able to scoop up the rights to...which is weird, they somehow snagged the rights to the two Columbia SUPERMAN serials years ago), and who holds Columbia's reins? Sony. One of the biggest corporations in Japan.
I'm all for an uncut release...I mean if Disney can release it's derogatory work (see several of their Disney Treasures sets, specifically the "On the Front LInes" set, which contains a ton of Disney's wartime propoganda stuff), with a disclaimer (usually a video one, made by historian and critic Leonard Maltin) which states, and I paraphase, mind you, that basically, "early Disney artists were uneducated hicks who didn't know any better and their views were shared by the majority of their contemporaries....so it's alright"...I don't see why Columbia couldn't do an uncut disc set. Though, having mentioned that theri parent company is Sony...I doubt it'll ever happen. Sony was the ones who pushed for and did the edit hack job to begin with...
On that note....Disney is supposedly gearing up for a release of a film they've tried to make the public forget for nearly 4 decades now, "Song of the South"...so anything's possible. It's like I told someone at another MB, "Disney has been trying to cover up this 1946 release since the late 1960s, because of fears of backlash from ethnic groups...but what they don't seem to realize is that they're still in the business of making cash off bad stereotypes of minorities.
Exhibit A: Poor, underclass uneducated midwesterners= "The County Bears".
