Tue Apr 29, 2008 — by Rick Marshall

A Tale of Two Trailers: 'Batman' and 'The Dark Knight' Compared?

False alarm: It's just another mash-up...

In case you haven't seen the most recent Dark Knight Internet meme to hit Instant Message clients, blogs, Twitter, humor sites and just about every user-generated link farm around (I know it crossed my computer screen at least 20 times today), let ComicMix be the latest site to post the "Dark Knight/Batman Trailer Split-Screen" video -- but with a twist. For those who haven't heard about it yet, the video was passed around by many InterWebs users who claimed it was a split-screen comparison of the eerie similarities between the trailers for the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film and the upcoming Christopher Nolan film, The Dark Knight.

Despite the video's sudden popularity today (with quite a few people linking to the video via the College Humor website -- which also seemed to frame it as a comparison of the two trailers), this video has been around since late 2007, and was created by YouTube user VaportrailFilms after the Dark Knight trailer was released. As many Digg.com users have pointed out, this is also not a magical moment of synchronicity in the vein of Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz, either. In fact, it's actually a "mash-up" of the Tim Burton film and the Dark Knight trailer -- made up of bits and pieces sampled from the 1989 film and arranged for the best possible match.

So, while I hate to burst a good online conspiracy bubble, that's not the original Batman trailer in the video, folks. It is, however, the product of some very nice video editing skills.

But I have to admit, the version that used the 1966 Batman film is more my cup of tea.

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