Is there a director's cut that truly works ? (1 Viewer)

[Robert Anthony]

ooh, Good call on Leon. Forgot about that.

 

[Chris]

Leon would be one. _Bis Ans Ende Der Welt_ (Until the End of the World) where the Japan/international DC release is so superior to the US release it's sad ;( The extra hour makes the film denser, have more meaning, and explains the relationships that just fly by in the poor US release.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Then there are those movies where you wonder why anyone bothered at all. My personal pick here would be Highlander 2 (the so-called "Renegade Version"). The only thing they accomplished by tinkering with that one was downgrading it from truly horrific to merely terrible.

Actually, the only "Director's cut" which could possibly fix this travesty is the one that completely excises the entire thing...

 

[Lars_J]

With all the discussion about Blade Runner, no one seeme to have mentioned the completely different endings of the two cuts. Personally find the directors cut to be superior - all the changes improve the film, IMO.

As for the movie that has improved most with a directors cut - that is in my opinion The Abyss.

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

The long version of The Abyss is not a director's cut. As I stated earlier in this thread (and I think Cameron says it in the LD notes as well) what was released in 1989 was his director's cut, as he had final cut over the movie when it was released.

Neil

 

[Michael Reuben]

With all the discussion about Blade Runner, no one seeme to have mentioned the completely different endings of the two cuts.

I did. In the first paragraph.

M.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Actually, Neil, I believe in the case of ALIENS and The Abyss, Cameron has said he prefers the Special Editions.

If I remember right, both the cuts to those movies were made at the request of Fox, and Cameron didn't like having to remove those--ESPECIALLY in the case of "The Abyss." which was, up to that point, his most personal movie.

So I don't know if you'd call the theatrical versions "Director's Cuts" when the director himself says he likes his own special editions better--but they are "Special Editions" so who knows. It always sounds to me, when I read about those, that if he could have released the SE's of "Abyss" and "ALIENS" to theaters, he would have.

I think the big brouhaha from the liner notes in the Abyss wasn't his preferred cut comments, but that he thought Pan n Scan was better for home viewing than Widescreen. But I think those comments were taken out of context or something.

I'd have to google, I think. Shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Michael Reuben]

That's not the case with The Abyss, Robert. Cameron was very explicit in his liner notes. It's a lengthy discussion, but here are some excerpts:

Sometimes these projects come about when a director has not had final cut. The film comes out and is a big hit or is considered critically important, but the director always feels it is flawed because the Suits cuts his masterpiece. There is then an element of vindication when the footage is restored, and the directors can thumb his/her nose at the studio brass and say "See, I was right!"

That was hardly the scenario on "The Abyss".

Though I didn't always agree with the powers-that-were at Fox in 1989, there was a definite sense that we were all working to gether to put the best, most effective version of the film in theaters.

And I had, by contract, final cut.

But we had a picture on our hands which was much too long in our collective opinion. And after the first test-market screenings, we also found out that it wasn't playing too well. The scene that the Dallas preview audience seemed to object to most was the tidal wave sequence. It was the single most-mentioned scene when they answered the "Scenes I liked the least" blank on the questionnaire. Curiously, it was also the most mentioned- scene in the "Scenes I liked the most" category.

Clearly was had a film that played very well to a broad audience for 90% of its length, and then went badly south for half that audience on the one-yard line. . . .

****

I elected to remove the wave sequence and unweave from the film the subplot which builds up to it -- the newscasts which show the world inexorably slipping toward the brink of a nuclear abyss. I also accelerated the credits to the speed of a roll-up blind, thus pissing off about a thousand people who worked on the film. . . .

****

I believed in the release version. When faced with the inevitability of cutting out substantial running time, I took a hard look at the picture and kept what I thought was the most important element of the picture intact: the human story.

As for the pan and scan controvery, you're correct that Cameron's comments were just a few lines and have been widely mischaracterized. But the bulk of the liner notes discussed the substantive cuts, and the pros and cons of both versions.

M.

 

[Robert Anthony]

damn. my bad

Thanks for that, Michael.

You've won THIS round, Neil! BUT YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF MEEEE!! MUWWHWHWHWHWHWHAHAHAHAAA..

ha..

..erm.

(cough)


(crickets)


wow. Long weekend.

so, does he say which cut he prefers, tho? I could have sworn he likes the special edition better as a representation of his work on the movie. But as we can see--I'm not the one to trust on stuff like this

 

[Bill Williams]

I agree, the Director's Cut of Dances With Wolves is a far superior version than the 3-hour theatrical cut. It really delves into many of the backgrounds and subtexts of the characters.

As for the original director's cut of Superman, the original running length of Richard Donner's "director's cut" was 3:00 even. What was shown on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles in 1995 and in some international markets was the longest cut that ran 3:08 in length, which is closer in length to Richard Donner's original intention but with other footage added to it. That KCOP cut is more of what you'd call a "producer's cut". While the current DVD is technically called a "Special Edition", at 2:31 it's closer to Donner's original cut.

As for CE3K, I tallied it all up, and the final running time of all footage would be 2:42 in length. The only problem with that cut would be the original introduction sequence featuring Laughlin and Lacombe at the airport Spielberg filmed. In the context of the final film, it simply does not work. Their introduction in the desert at the start of the film works better, with their dialog moved to that scene instead.

Another excellent restored Director's Cut that I'm surprised nobody's mentioned is the restored version of Sir David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. It's on one of the cable channels this evening. It was also the first restored cut on widescreen VHS I purchased. Marvelous epic.

One sidebar to point out about Jim Cameron: when he authorized the Titanic Illustrated Screenplay book, he considered the 3:14 cut his "director's cut", even though there's more footage out there that was cut from the film. So that's one case I know where the theatrical cut of a film was considered a "director's cut" by the director himself.

 

[Michael Reuben]

It is the best version of the film in the absence of time constraints.

Now, I happen to think time constraints are important, even in the HT environment. When something goes on too long, it loses some of its impact. That's certainly the case, IMO, with the longer cuts of Aliens and Terminator 2, where the cuts add nothing new of substance.

The Abyss is a special case. Cameron notes that they could have kept the wave sequence and the full NTI subplot and still run only about 10 minutes longer than the release version (the extended edition is over a half hour longer). I would like to see such a version. I never had a problem with the theatrical release, but the extended edition has always struck me as way too long. I'd be interested to see how a streamlined "expanded version" might play.

M.

 

[Jacinto]

On the Abyss:

I know what Cameron says in the liner notes for the LD, but they also talk about ILM finishing the tidal wave effects for the SE. So what tidal wave sequence did the audience see in the test screenings that they didn't like? Was it storyboards, rough CGI, or claymation? I'm pretty sure that if I'd made it through the three hour, emotionally exhausting film that the Abyss is, only to be shown some cheesy, unfinished tidal wave shots, I too would have complained about that sequence.

Oh, and Robert, the Abyss SE WAS realeased theatrically, so make of that what you will...

 

[Michael Reuben]

I know what Cameron says in the liner notes for the LD

Everyone seems to "know" what he says in the liner notes, but I seem to be one of the few people who kept them.

M.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Damn. Look at that, some kid on the internet talking like he knows it all (me) and being proved that he's talking out of his Albert Pujols (me again) when all is said and done.

I thought I remembered him saying, outside of those liner notes, later, that he preferred the SE, but I gotta google that. I think time constraints are important too, but I don't think the extra half hour added to both ALIENS and ABYSS are without substance and pad the movie too much. the only additions to ALIENS that I feel I can do without are the Lydecker scenes--I think it might actually increase the sense of isolation that Cameron has running through the whole movie if we never saw who Newt's parents are communicating with: We KNOW there's a whole colony on the planet, but they're the ones out in the middle of nowhere--why not just stick the audience out in the middle of nowhere with them, with no contact with civilization?

I will give you that a lot of Terminator 2's additions don't jump out at you, but I do remember that I enjoyed the special edition a little more than the theatrical when I let em play--but it's definitely more of a "Take it or Leave" it situation with that one than it is for the other two.

I thought someone had already mentioned "Lawrence of Arabia?"

The KCOP version of Superman: The Movie is indeed a producers version, and really has nothing to do with any kind of art--the Salkinds threw all the extra footage they had into that version so that there'd be more commercial revenue. Longer run time = more commercial breaks.

 

[Stephen_Dar]

Perhaps the problem is that willy-nilly recutting of films has been confused with what I would think of as a true "director's cut." And, I agree, obviously, that the willy-nilly recutting is a bad idea.

Case in point - Apocalypse Now Redux really was an inferior film, and the motivations behind it reveal Coppola's flaws as rather ego-driven. To sit in a hotel room 20 years later, watch your film by chance claiming to have avoided seeing it for over 10 years (in other words, to be more out of touch with your own creation than most of its fans), then to suddenly decide you could revisit some pompous ideas you thought you had 20 years ago and improve something universally hailed as a great work, well, those are all warning signs that this is willy-nilly recutting.

And, though I haven't seen it, Alien seems like another classic example. One important point I'd make is that it's considered to be in bad form for the much older artist to go back and edit the work of the young artist, as both Scott and Coppola did in these cases.

The real director's cut is the situation where the director carefully formulated a full version of their work and then had to cut to less than that to get into theaters. In other words, the LOTR SE disks are the perfect example of when more really is better. Ironically, Jackson scrupolously refuses to use the words "director's cut" to describe these, but that's for the excellent business reason that he knows the best way to promote this great mechanism permitted by digital media (ie, to allow different versions of a film to reach the hands of fans) is to be politically savvy. In this case, that means not giving out any impression that what's in theaters is inferior to the extended edition. That's fine, I don't care if he calls it the anniversary JFK version, just as long as we get them in our hands tomorrow

 

[Michael Reuben]

it's considered to be in bad form for the much older artist to go back and edit the work of the young artist

"Considered" by whom?

M.

 

[TheLongshot]

I don't much like "Untitled". I think it's too long and tedious - it spends too much time with unnecessary plot points that are already understood. It's still enjoyable, but the theatrical version is tighter and more coherent.

I don't agree. There are a lot of nice character moments that are in that cut, particularly with Mom, that I now couldn't see the movie without.

While I do think "Almost Famous" is a great film, "Untitled" is an even better one.

Jason

 

[Clay-F]

Conan the Barbarian - The extra scenes helped to show how Conan was a thinker more than just a killer.

Highlander Endgame - The theatrical cut was a butcher job.

Terminator 2

 

[Chad Ferguson]

Kind of surprised no one mentioned it but Natural Born Killers directors cut. It's amazing how much of a different film it is with only 3 minutes added. As well, JFK, a movie so long that goes by so fast. I will admit I'm a huge Oliver Stone fan boy though. Another I personaly think was very good was the Hard Target DC. It really was a true Old School John Woo film.
THanks

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

damn. my bad

Thanks for that, Michael.

You've won THIS round, Neil! BUT YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF MEEEE!! MUWWHWHWHWHWHWHAHAHAHAAA..

Nice to see you're not bitter. Occasionally I do know what I'm talking about.

Neil - proud owner of The Abyss LD boxset (and the notes within)