I was pleased to be invited to a special screening of family, friends and crew of Reign of Fate on Sunday night. Reign of Fate is the web serial Batman fan film that director/writer/producer Jonathan Chiovitti created. For this one night only he edited together a full length version of the serial for the big screen at The Royal.
Batman Reign of Fate is, as mentioned, a web serial about the Dark Knight Detective and the issues he faces in Gotham. Designed to be less of an action piece and more of a look at the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Written 5 years ago, with photography spanning 4 years, the short film – 37 minutes in total – is a great addition to the fan film family. Chiovitti based much of his philosophy for this film around a quote from Kierkegaard, “There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
The serials have been released over a period of 12 weeks with the last one coming shortly, in which the final “big” villain is revealed and – of course – fights Batman. Both Bruce and the Bat costume are imposing with Shaughnessy Redden as the face of Bruce Wayne, but as is usual, everyone wants to know about the Bat suit. The suit was created by David Pea of Universal Designs and apparently there was quite a great debate about what the costume should look like. David tells this story more than eloquently in the Q&A footage below, but I got the chance to speak to him after the screening and he noted that, while the shorts were not designed to be about the costume there were still a lot of touches he could give to the costume to give it some life of its own – including a half flocked cowl (to play with the light) with a spine up the back for some style.
All in all I think that this is not only a stellar effort by a local filmmaker, but also a pretty good Batman story. If you haven’t started watching already, check them out at loosenoose.ca – you’ll enjoy yourself, I promise!
SPOILER ALERT for these Q&A videos. If you’re picky about that sort of thing, watch them after you see Serial 6.
Note: I made Jonathan a little nervous with this last quesion since he knows what the nerd quotient is with me. He did pretty good even though he was afraid to see me at the bar afterwards. Johnathan – it was fine! You wrote a good story and did a great job! I think we can all agree on that, right people?
