James Luckard
Second Unit
I also thought the director's cut turned one of the worst movies of 2005 into one of the top 5. Fox sure isn't promoting the run, however. It ends tomorrow and I only saw one tiny ad on Xmas, when it came out. I saw it last Friday night with a friend and we were the only ones in an auditorium that probably seats 400. Nobody here in LA even knows about it.
About halfway through, I actually turned to my friend and said "My God, this is a completely different movie." Basically the studio cut all the quiet, contemplative bits, and most of the backstory for each character. They decimated Sibylla, the Eva Green character, cutting about ten minutes in one giant chunk towards the middle that explains why she allows her husband to become King of Jerusalem.
When I saw the theatrical version I was totally disappointed by Ridley Scott, one of my favorite directors, for wasting two years on such a mess. Now I see why he made the film. It's brutal (thanks to the reinstated carnage which got it an R) and intelligent and perfectly paced. The three hour version feels like two, while the two hour version felt like five.
It seems like the studio just hacked out all the dialogue scenes and left in the big effects scenes, making for a film that was incessantly noisy and mindless, when Scott had filmed a piece that looks at the Crusades with genuine intelligence. It'd play perfectly as a companion piece to Munich, which I had seen only days before.
Pity most people will only ever see it on a TV screen, because it was amazing on the big screen. It combined the epic sweep and emotional depth of Gladiator with the absolute mastery of war moviemaking that he demonstrated in Black Hawk Down.
As I read in one review of Black Hawk Down, despite the insanity, you never for a moment feel confused about where you are or what is happening, unless he wants you to. The man knows how to stage scenes and gives a sense of geography and proximity like nobody's business.
There really were too many great things about the KOH-DC to list, and everybody should experience the film for themselves when the DVD comes out, just forget that the two hour atrocity ever existed, this is the film Scott intended to make, and it's fantastic.
About halfway through, I actually turned to my friend and said "My God, this is a completely different movie." Basically the studio cut all the quiet, contemplative bits, and most of the backstory for each character. They decimated Sibylla, the Eva Green character, cutting about ten minutes in one giant chunk towards the middle that explains why she allows her husband to become King of Jerusalem.
When I saw the theatrical version I was totally disappointed by Ridley Scott, one of my favorite directors, for wasting two years on such a mess. Now I see why he made the film. It's brutal (thanks to the reinstated carnage which got it an R) and intelligent and perfectly paced. The three hour version feels like two, while the two hour version felt like five.
It seems like the studio just hacked out all the dialogue scenes and left in the big effects scenes, making for a film that was incessantly noisy and mindless, when Scott had filmed a piece that looks at the Crusades with genuine intelligence. It'd play perfectly as a companion piece to Munich, which I had seen only days before.
Pity most people will only ever see it on a TV screen, because it was amazing on the big screen. It combined the epic sweep and emotional depth of Gladiator with the absolute mastery of war moviemaking that he demonstrated in Black Hawk Down.
As I read in one review of Black Hawk Down, despite the insanity, you never for a moment feel confused about where you are or what is happening, unless he wants you to. The man knows how to stage scenes and gives a sense of geography and proximity like nobody's business.
There really were too many great things about the KOH-DC to list, and everybody should experience the film for themselves when the DVD comes out, just forget that the two hour atrocity ever existed, this is the film Scott intended to make, and it's fantastic.
Eva Green's character is significantly expanded upon. Possibly the best of the contemporary epics, and certainly the best photographed. You can also check out the dvd thread on the DC over in HT Software.
