Director's cut worse than the original (possible spoilers)

Cafe Society
#1

I can only think of one that I’ve seen: Cinema Paradiso. The director’s cut of this movie is longer, more ponderous, and introduced some trite plot elements that were far better unspoken or ambiguous. Worse still, the DVD didn’t have the original version on it, so I had to go out and buy it twice.

I’ve heard that the DC of Blade Runner suffers from lack of narration too, but I haven’t seen this.

Anyone else got any examples of movies they’d rather had been left in the studio version? What makes them worse?

#2

Sorry about this “dummy” post. I’m just not sure how to block a spoiler so I’m testing it first.

test

test. did I do it right? did I do it right???

#3

O.K. then, here we go with the real reply:
I loved the movie True Romance

When I first saw the Director’s Cut I was pretty happy with it all the way through except for one change. It’s probably less than 20 seconds but it’s significant enough to completely ruin the movie for me.

Alabama shoots Dimes!!! In the other version a dying gangster lifts his gun for one last shot and succeeds in killing Dimes. In the DC when I saw Alabama lift Clarence’s gun and scream “Fuck You!” I thought it completely ruined her character. Clarence and Alabama exist in a world where they are the only two people in existence so I thought it completely believable in the studio version that she would just sit off to the side cradling Clarence and not get involved in the gun play. It was also wonderfully ironic that a major character like Dimes would get killed by an anonymous thug.

Part of the charm of the story is how Clarence and Alabama, aided by true love, are able to pass through all the sleaziness and evil and still remain unscathed, wide-eyed, and innocent. In this D.C. version of the scene I think Alabama is severely compromised as is the whole “love will see us through” worldview that gives her and Clarence their strength.

#4

I haven’t seen any examples, myself – I like the director’s cuts I’ve seen – Cameron’s Aliens, The Abyss, T2 are all better when you see the entire vision. In my opinion, Bladerunner “suffered” from having that awful, atonal narration.

#5

Directors Cuts and “improved” pictures can be a real pain, I agree.
I really wish Lucas left Star Wars alone. (the original parts 4,5 and 6) I know that a lot of the added technical trickery was grin-inducting at first, but more often than not it didn’t add much and often spoiled lots. [The cgi Jabba in part 4? Hello? Leave the improvements till the time you will actually be able to show a credible piece of computer animation. Also: The whole different Singer/Band sequence at Jabba’s palace in “Return of the Jedi” was the greatest WTF moment for me. Like, WHAT? Why fix a perfectly fine scene by making into a disneyesque sterile cgi mtv clip. silly gits.)

As for Blade Runner. I think the director’s cut is incomparably better than the original. The movie had it numerous trials and tribulations. Had it not become cult it would have disappeared in the abyss of Forgotten Flicks and we’d never even catch a glimpse of how it was supposed to look like from the start (the director’s cut). It’s actually very interesting that by changing just a LITTLE (apart from the chucked out narration, good riddance :-)), Scott managed to drastically change or underline different plot solutions and explanations.

SPOILER (I’m really sorry, i’m not sure how to post the spoiler windows yet)


The whole scene of the little origami unicorn left at the doorstep, means very little in the original release, in the director’s cut it’s a definitive hint about the hero, coupled with the dream he has at some point.

#6

Apocalypse Now Redux sprang to my mind immediately on seeing this thread. Most of the scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor, including these:

The scene where the Captain steal’s the Colonel’s surfboard

That was a little too much like a teen movie prank scene

The scene where helicopters blaring recorded messages of the Colonel trying to get his surfboard back That just made the Colonel look childish, he’s supposed to be nuts, not immature.

The sex scenes with the Playboy bunniesDidn’t add a lot for me, it just seemed incomprehensible that the Captain would trade away supplies foolishly like this.

Shacking up with the French girl in the French colonyThe preceding dinner scenes were all right, but this just seemed way out of place.

None of these added to the plot and only showed that Coppola was correct in the first place to leave them out.

#7

I opened this thread screaming “Apocalypse Now Redux! Apocalypse Now Redux!” but BobLibDem already beat me to it. Every added scene cheapened this movie. Finding out what Coppola really intended was very disappointing. Apparently, his editor is the only genius.

#8

Lucas ruining Star Wars having Greedo shoot first, Mini-me version of Jabba, ect.

How about the walkie-talkies added to ET instead of guns.

As usual South Park had a pretty funny episode about this.

#9

Another vote for AN Redux.

I’d have to disagree with CalMeacham and argue that The Abyss DC is worse. Though the ending of the original was silly and abrupt, at least it wasn’t tedious, self-righteous, preachy, and badly written. The Director’s Cut manages to be all those things, too.

#10

Well, I’m not very much in favour of Cameron’s personal cuts. I haven’t seen The Abyss DC but I have seen Aliens DC and I can’t say that I’m not glad all of those additional scenes were chucked out in the final editing. Cameron needs someone looking at his hands very closely, methinks. Thank god for his co-workers. :wink:

Having said that, I’ve heard nothing but praise about the extended T2.

#11

I’m mixed regarding the director’s cut of Cameron’s Aliens. There are two notable additions, and I feel that one should be included and one should not. (No spoiler boxes, as the thread title warned already.)

The first is the sequence in the colony showing Newt’s parents find the derelict spacecraft, explore it, and then radio an SOS when a facehugger nabs her father. Though this does bring up how Newt is good at hide-and-seek because she’s small enough to fit in the airducts (and thus gives a little background to the escape through the ducts), I feel that it makes it way too obvious that aliens did overrun the colony.

Without it, the first indication of aliens is the barricades, acid burns, small arms fire, et cetera that the marines notice when they move in. And the movie would be boring as all hell if it were just a downed transmitter, I feel that the scene of Ripley + marines finding captive facehuggers in glass jars is far more jarring (heh, heh) if it hasn’t been made abundantly clear that the colonists have already fought the aliens.

The second, and what I feel should be included, is the sequence of the remote sentry guns. The eventual point of that is that the aliens have decided against a frontal attack, and need to find another way in - hence the ceiling and floor. It gives a little more reason to the sneakiness of their attack on Operations, rather than the brute-force straight-ahead you’d expect.

#12

I agree that Apocolypse now is better without the replaced scenes; Coppola himself made a very convincing case for why he chose to cut them in the first place, in the documentary Hearts of Darkness.

And as much as I didn’t LOVE the Abyss, the extended remix is way worse.

I’m sorry to say that the first thing I thought of is one of my favorite directors. There were shots cut from Robocop and Basic Instincts that should have stayed cut. In the director’s commentary he says they were cut for being too gory, but personally I think they were probably cut because they looked fake. Verhoeven has one weakness I’ll readily admit to: he has a thing for fake heads. Just about all his movies contain a scene where great violence is visited upon a person’s face, and his wonted method for achieving this affect–at least before the ubiquity of CGI–was to build a fake head to do it to. This is seldom a good idea. Fake heads almost always get more of a laugh than they should. The knife into the eye, “restored” to the opening scene of Basic Instinct, is to larf, and should have been redone, or left out. Ditto the bullet in the face in Robocop. Frankly, I think Arnold’s fake head in Total Recall did not work well, though it was more necessary to the plot and so stayed in. But it grows more realistic daily: Schwarzenguvnor seems to be slowly replacing himself with shiny “skin-tone” plastic in real life, so maybe Verhoeven was just foreshadowing reality . . .

#13

I’ll go on the record as saying that I preferred the theatrical release as opposed to the extended version of Terminator 2. Sure, it had some good points, but some scenes were completely unnecessary, such as Arnold learning to smile and the portion where they change his chip from Read Only to Writable.

#14

I didn’t think Dune (by David Lynch, not the miniseries on the SciFi Channel) could be any worse until I saw the director’s cut.

#15

I’m in utter agreement about Aliens. Them going to a lifeless colonly and slowly figuring things out was WAY better then that stupid Newt’s family scene. The other additions were ok.

#16

Thank you, elf6c. You nailed both of those. The “yes, I’ll bet you have” line, dripping with sarcasm, was one of the best moments of SW4:ANH. I was disgusted with the way Lucas changed it. Totally pointless. Ruined a fabulous scene.

And Spielberg spent how much money just to remove the guns from the agents’ hands? The guns nobody even noticed? C’mon. Give us a break.

I didn’t like the way X-Men 1.5 incorporated the extended scenes in their “enhanced viewing mode”. They would show the scene before it was trimmed down, then show it in it final form. Rather annoying, I thought.

#17

The extended version of The Exorcist was not an improvement. Some of the additional background scenes were OK but not a great additions. The additional “subliminal” cuts just made the film look too cluttered and gimmicky.

The new ending was awful, reducing the power and grim ambiguity to an original to something more appropriate for a light hearted buddy comedy.

#18

Agreed on Star Wars.

Also, the Blues Brothers. Mundane pointless additions that slowed the pace to no purpose. An extra 20 seconds walking down an alleyway? Why???

#19

Apocalypse Now Redux was the worst piece of trash I ever fell asleep trying to watch. Abomination.

True Romance was annoying as well, but I disagree about 'Bama shooting Dimes; I thought that was a great addition. What really ruined it for me was the over-the-top 'Bama scene after she kills Gandolfini’s character. It was perfect in the original. Her hystrionics in the director’s cut were, to coin a phrase, an abomination.

#20

The director’s cut of the first Star Trek movie was worse than the original version. Remember how in the movie, there are painfully long sequencies of Shatner circling the Enterprise for six hours in a shuttle? And painfullly long sequences of entering V’Ger?

Well, they made them longer.