[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
I should probably be prohibited from even talking about this film anymore–but, as bad as the theatrical version Return of the King was, the director’s cut was worse.
[/QUOTE]
Yea, for this double blasphemy, thou shalt be cast into the void, there to rot with Melkor unto the end of days.
One Director’s Cut to which I’m looking forward is Kingdom of Heaven: I’ve heard that it’s a vastly different and better film.
Something noone else has mentioned but while DCs are typically longer, they’re also typically viewed in situations where one can take a break - either on TV with ad breaks or on DVD where one can hit Pause.
I guess I’m the only who prefers the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner. My two primary reasons: No voiceover and the unicorn dream sequence. I find voiceovers generally annoying and the original Blade Runner’s was extremely so. The unicorn sequence I like because it is necessary to clarify the significance of the unicorn figurine at the end of the movie (ie, Deckard is most likely a replicant).
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
I should probably be prohibited from even talking about this film anymore–but, as bad as the theatrical version Return of the King was, the director’s cut was worse.
::shuddering in memory of the over-literalized mouth of Sauron::
[/QUOTE]
I agree halfway. The theatrical cut of ROTK is pretty pisspoor in a lot places. Jackson’s view was apparently “Eh, it will make sense in the extended cut.”. The previous two theatrical cuts (Fellowship and TT) were excellent on their own. The extended cuts were just extra character bits, action and added fanswanks. ROTK needs the extended cut in order to make any sense.
[QUOTE=Quartz]
One Director’s Cut to which I’m looking forward is Kingdom of Heaven: I’ve heard that it’s a vastly different and better film.
Something noone else has mentioned but while DCs are typically longer, they’re also typically viewed in situations where one can take a break - either on TV with ad breaks or on DVD where one can hit Pause.
[/QUOTE]
Definetely agree on that one. That’s the first movie where I actually noticed how poor the editing was and how the removal of scenes really detracted from the story. I’m withholding my judgment on that movie until I can see the whole thing.
[QUOTE=Euthanasiast]
The Abyss is basically a completely different film with the director’s cut.
[/QUOTE]
If by “different” you mean “signicantly worse”, you’d be right. All of Cameron’s absolute worst instincts came through in that preachy, maudlin, remarkably stupid Director’s Cut. Ugh.
I agree that, generally speaking, the Director’s Cut is worse than the original theatrical version. The one exception I’d make is Close Encounters, not because of the ending, but because of the small little details they throw in throughout the film that I can’t imagine doing without now.
[QUOTE=Quartz]
One Director’s Cut to which I’m looking forward is Kingdom of Heaven: I’ve heard that it’s a vastly different and better film.
[/QUOTE]
It’s a vastly different and better film.
And for me there’s no question that the director’s cut of Blade Runner is better in all respects than the theatrical release. Why Ridley Scott doesn’t contract his way into better deals I don’t know.
I think Terminator 2’s extended cut is a BIG improvement.
The only one I can remember that I think is actually definitely worse (as opposed to something like “meh, not really worth the extra 15 minutes, but neat to see a few extra scenes”) is Amadeus. Almost all the scenes added in are actively pointless and boring.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I was disappointed by the director’s cut of Blade Runner because they removed things that didn’t need to be removed, and added nothing of any value (unicorn dream? feh).
[/QUOTE]
I so much prefered the director’s cut, but I also think you are a pretty sharp guy, so I have to ask–what was removed? I ion’t remember.
To my mind, the voice-over and the quasi-happy ending made the theatrical version much weaker. Dick was not much for happy endings.
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
I so much prefered the director’s cut, but I also think you are a pretty sharp guy, so I have to ask–what was removed? I ion’t remember.
To my mind, the voice-over and the quasi-happy ending made the theatrical version much weaker. Dick was not much for happy endings.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that was it, actually. I liked the voice-over, in that it added to the noir-ish atmosphere, and the happy ending doesn’t strike me as tacked on. It’s clearly foreshadowed, if not telegraphed in the movie (Rachel: “What if I went away, went North? Would you follow me?” and she does go North and he does follow her, though not in the way he expects). The director’s cut simply chops this ending without replacing it with anything. Deckard and Rachel climb into elevator… roll credits. What the…? If there’d been an alternate ending, say Gaff is waiting outside to “retire” Rachel, but Deckard, spurred by his love for her and spiritual reawakening after witnessing Roy’s death, shakes off his depressed alcoholic stupor and takes a bullet meant for her… or something more than just “elevator door closes - the end”, I’d likely have a different opinion.
Besides, the so-called happy ending isn’t really all that happy. There’s no indication Rachel and Deckard lived happily ever after - only that they lived, but how happily and for how long, Deckard didn’t know. Who does? The last-minute note that Rachel wasn’t subject to the conventional Nexus-6 four-year lifespan doesn’t feel artificial either, since I can’t see why Rachel would have such a limit - her “programmed” memories were, I thought, a way to avoid the need for the four-year limit, after which it is expected that unprogrammed Nexus-6 units become violently emotional unpredictable.
The idea that Deckard is a replicant strikes me as a pointless muddying of an otherwise clear theme: humans (including Deckard) are dying out, drowning in their own soul-killing technology, decadence and pollution, while advanced replicants are eagerly struggling for life. The message I got from the theatrical version is that life is short and grab happiness while you can. How is any of this improved by Deckard being a replicant?
Plus I was most keenly disappointed at paying to see the director’s cut in theatre the first day it got to Montreal and finding out it didn’t resolve some earlier errors, most notably the missing replicant.
Anyway, there’s nothing here I haven’t said in previous Blade Runner threads, so I suggest a new thread be started if you want to further analyze that film, to avoid hijacking this one.
As for the extended Aliens, the scene of the pre-infested colony (when Newt, Timmy and their parents become the first unfortunate contact for the facehuggers) is useful (though not critical, I admit) because if nothing else, it established that the colony’s children amuse themselves by playing hide-and-seek in the ventilation system and Newt, by virtue of her small size, is particularly adept. This helps explain Newt’s extended survival and her skill at leading Ripley and Hicks through the vents to the landing pad.
And the robosentries were just cooo-ul.
There was also an extended version of Superman televised by ABC to stretch the movie out to two two-hour broadcasts. I don’t recall most of the details, but I believe there was a brief scene of an angered Lex about to drop Miss Teschmacher to the crocodiles, after she’d rescued Superman.
Anyone remember a made-for-TV version of Stephen King’s The Langoliers? Man, that desperately needed a chainsaw edit. It was a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode stretched into a four-hour miniseries. I was watching just to see how the damn thing ended, and it was so dumb that it put me off King for about a decade.
Similarly, Dateline is fond of dragging out stories. The Sunday July 16 broadcast, for example, took about two hours to tell the story of some woman who’d poisoned her husbands and kept repeating “It’s antifreeze! She did it with antifreeze! In case you missed it, she poisoned them with antifreeze! For the benefit of our more retarded viewers, let us reiterate (that means “say again”) - it was antifreeeeeze!” American Justice could’ve squished this case into a taut 30 minutes. What the fuck is Dateline’s deal? It’s the repetitive, spoon-feeding, pulverize-everything-to-easily-digestible-mush newsmagazine equivalent of the Teletubbies. Thank God for 60 Minutes, which still treats its audience like adults.
I missed the mashed potatoes in CE3k. 
[QUOTE=Quartz]
One Director’s Cut to which I’m looking forward is Kingdom of Heaven: I’ve heard that it’s a vastly different and better film.
[/QUOTE]
It is better, and makes far more sense. I’m on the record stating that I loved the theatrical release, dispite what I recognized as some serious plot holes. The Director’s Cut resolved all of my objections.
In particular:
a) Belian (sp?) is not just a blacksmith in the beginning. He’s a siege engineer working for the local lord (who is his uncle). This makes his sudden and seemingly overnight mastery of siege warfare believable.
b) The priest whom he kills is his half-brother, (albeit a cruel, vicious asshat) thus making his remorse all the more compelling.
c) Sybilla has a son from her previous marriage, a son who is to inherit the throne when the leper king dies. The fate of this son is a major element in the near self-destruction of her character during the siege.
I only watched it once, then leant it to my brother (who has yet to give it back), so there’s quite a bit more to it than I can recall at the moment.
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin]
Apocalypse Now vs. Apocalypse Now Redux is a no contest. Why add 50 minutes of crap to a masterpiece?
[/QUOTE]
I agree **Apocalypse Now ** is a masterpiece, but I really enjoy the redux, especially the scenes w. the french. I can see why it was cut out, but in itself it is some of the best 30 minutes (or whatever it is) of filmmaking ever done. Pure genius, and it captures the whole picture in it’s little meta sequence.
Also, all the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings series are much much better than the maimed versions they showed on theaters. There’re no comparing, but if you don’t enjoy these movies any, of course you enjoy’em less if there’re longer.
By making the audience care about a replicant and realize at the end that ‘retirement’ really is murder. More abstractly, it’s the premise that what makes Deckard human is his memories, true or false, and that he can go on to live and to love even with the knowledge that his backstory was concocted to make him effective at a job he now regards as inhuman.
Except that it doesn’t, really. They presumably could have given him a backstory to instill in him an irrational hatred of replicants and made it psychologically impossible for him to rebel before his own planned death. Which makes me wonder if his rebellion wasn’t planned.
Riddle me this: Why would Tyrell, the Man behind the Ziggurat, the God-Fucker who designed the brains, throw his life away when a cheap security system would have revealed that Roy was coming up, and not Sebastian? Even the chess moves were wrong, come to that, and Tyrell would have known. The only solution is that the person Roy killed was a replicant made in Tyrell’s image, probably one of many, thrown as a sop to Roy so he could complete his final mission and die with at least that much dignity. Only a replicant would care about Roy that deeply. Just like only a replicant would orchestrate a successful (at least at some stage) replicant rebellion here on Earth.
Why only those two? Because the Tyrell Corporation is just a corporation in a country where the laws work, at least regarding replicants. Only four people need to be in on the conspiracy, and two only need to know at the very end: Tyrell, of course, masterminds, and Gaff is Deckard’s hander. (Rachael is watched directly by Tyrell.) Deckard and Rachael only find out when it is time for them to leave, presumably with Gaff and under the auspices of the Tyrell Corporation. Deckard and Rachael are off the books, in that everyone else on Earth thinks they are human. If they work, if Gaff doesn’t need to kill them and help to begin the experiment anew, Tyrell can make more like them and repopulate the Earth with people who aren’t defective. (Remember, all ‘quality’ humans have fled to the Off-World Colonies.)
Almost forgot:
“Blade Runner” FAQ
[QUOTE=Derleth]
By making the audience care about a replicant and realize at the end that ‘retirement’ really is murder. …
[/quote]
This all adds more complexity to the story without making it any better, which is the perfect sign of a useless director’s cut. It’s not necessary to make the audience care about a replicant - one assumes the cinematic deaths of Zhora, Pris and Roy take care of that, as well as showing Roy’s sadness over Pris’s corpse.
Right… so? By the same logic, the replicants are now fully-realized humans because they also can form memories. More human than human. Why would this affect Deckard? In fact, arguably he’s losing his humanity (sinking into depression and alcoholism, letting hinmself get pushed into doing a murderous job he’s come to hate) so if he took the VK test as Rachel suggests, it might not not show he’s a replicant, but it could show that he’s lost his humanity, which I always took to be the point of that scene. Rachel’s not challenging him with the idea that he’s a replicant, but with the idea that whatever alleged “humanity” made him more special and worthy of life than a replicant has been pissed away.
Because he’s a cold-blooded arrogant jerk, that’s why. He wasn’t expecting Roy to show up at his place (even Deckard noted how unusual the replicants’ behaviour was) and when Roy did, Tyrell thought he could argue his was out of it and that Roy would actually be proud of “burning twice as bright for half as long”. It’s rather like a white overseer telling a black slave “You should be proud of knowing your ABCs, boy. That puts you far above others of your kind” who is then shocked - shocked! - to learn that the slave wants more.
That makes no sense whatsoever and sound like first-class fanwankery. You may as well argue that the pigeon was a replicant and Roy did a Spock/McCoy “remember” number on it, letting it escape with his soul.
Anyway, I broke my promise not to further discuss Blade Runner in this thread, but I mean it this time. If you start a new thread on the movie, I’ll be happy to debate you in it.
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin]
Apocalypse Now vs. Apocalypse Now Redux is a no contest. Why add 50 minutes of crap to a masterpiece?
[/QUOTE]
Ooh, so seconded! The original was fantastic. Dark and tense. Why do I have to listen to annoying Frenchmen who think that the height of all dramatic tension involves bitching about politics while playing the accordion?
I’ll also confess to liking the director’s cut of Blade Runner better than the theatrical version. Voiceovers in general are annoying. They basically say the same thing: “OK, we’re going to do you a favor and add a little exposition in a bored monotone, because we know you audience members are too stupid to pick up visual clues in context.”
Betty Blue is one of my favourite films. I was excited when it came out on DVD. But the director’s cut is overlong. It does explain some things, but I was fine with the theatrical cut. I guess I’ll have to figure out how to burn a copy from LaserDisc.
[QUOTE=Wakinyan]
I agree **Apocalypse Now ** is a masterpiece, but I really enjoy the redux, especially the scenes w. the french. I can see why it was cut out, but in itself it is some of the best 30 minutes (or whatever it is) of filmmaking ever done. Pure genius, and it captures the whole picture in it’s little meta sequence.
Also, all the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings series are much much better than the maimed versions they showed on theaters. There’re no comparing, but if you don’t enjoy these movies any, of course you enjoy’em less if there’re longer.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t say that’s quite true. I think the extended version of Fellowship is as good as the theatrical release, and the director’s cut of Towers is a definite improvement – but the dreck that is the DC of King drowns the few good moments of that movie’s shorter version.
In Terminator 2 there were some important scenes cut out that showed them enabling Arnold’s “learning chip” or something, which explained some of the later scenes with the boy teaching Arnold about people. On the other hand, the flashback/dream scenes with Reese weren’t necessary at all.