A snark comment in the “Big” thread made me think about the series of revisions Lucas has thrown at the Star Wars trilogy.
I know some movies have been re-edited or extended immediately after a flop first showing. I know some movies were edited to conform to Hayes Office complaints (The Bad Seed comes to mind.) But I can’t think of movies that were notably edited well after first release, other than Lucas’s.
Excluding ones revised at or near birth for all the reasons those things happen, and the odd substitution of improved footage (such as the final cut of Blade Runner, with the Zhora death scene reshot pretty much frame for frame)… what movies have been revised to some notable degree years after initial release?
Disney has made minor alterations to Fantasia for various rereleases. The original “Pastoral Symphony” scenes had the racial stereotyped images removed, for example, and they’re rerecorded some things.
The one that comes to my mind is Apocalypse Now, which was re-released as Apocalypse Now Redux 21 years later, and which had 49 additional minutes of cut footage. For me, it was a much more coherent version of the story, if exceedingly long.
Speaking of Disney, they have deleted 94 minutes from Song of the South. (Yes, I did google Song of the South just so I could get the correct length for this lame joke.)
On a more serious note, there is the revision of E.T. that adds footage and replaces guns with walkie-talkies. And there are several versions each of Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.
How about films altered NOT by their original makers?
Rocketship X-M was made in 1950, arguably to beat Heinlein’s Destination Moon to the theaters. They cut a lot of corners, and it apparently rankled people through the years.
The Star Wars parody Hardware Wars, made by Ernie Fosselius within months of Star Was’ release, had “special edition” scenes added to it after the release of Lucas’ “Special Edition” release of the original Star Wars. I the spirit of the original, the additions were clumsy effects scenes and clunky CGI. I thought this was hilarious, but apparently Fosselius didn’t feel that way – he neither participated nor approved the Special Edition.
If I were going to make changes to a film, it would be one in which most of the effects are good, but some are clearly inferior. I’d add better, CGI-type animation to the “Pillar of Fire” and the “Written with the finger of God” scenes of the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments, but leave most of the state-of-the-art effects work alone. Those clumsily animated flames have always bothered me.
Similarly, I’d put new CGI effects in the Hunt for Red October. The primitive CGI they used in many scenes not only looks bad now, it did so at the time. (Mad magazine gleefully pointed this out in their parody).
the Star Trek franchise, of course, has not only updated the effects of the Original Series, they fixed the effects in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, too. especially in the “Special Edition” scenes, in which, admittedly, the effects were never finished originally.
Colorizing has been mentioned already, but in many cases the colorization DEFINITELY goes against the original wishes of the filmmakers. King Kong, for instance, was intended to be black and white, and the scenes took advantage of this. Ray Harryhausen hated the colorization that Ted Turner did, with all the foliage the same shade of green. He colorized Merian C. Cooper’s next film, She, defending it on the basis that Cooper wanted to film it in color, but got double-crossed at the last minute by the studio, which pulled the funding. The result is great, with enormous attention to detail. Harryhausen also colorized H.G. wells’ Things to Come and several of his own films.
Anyone remember the “flying” in the original Superman serial?
No, not George Reeves (I’ve been watching those and am impressed by the realistic takeoffs and landings, precisely because they were done with no effects, just a springy board below the camera) (or a mattress below any window he’d fly out of).
No, it’s the earlier Kirk Allyn serial where, whenever he started to fly, they painted an animated flying Superman on the film. Which would then disappear behind a huge rock, presumably landing off-camera. Followed by Super-Kirk stepping out from behind the rock to confront the mobsters.
Someone needs to fix those… or do people prefer to point and laugh?
Actually heavy editing used to be fairly common in the era of the roadshow release, sometimes to fit demands for more screenings in neighborhood theaters and sometimes in attempts to save a bad picture. For example:
–“The Happiest Millionare” opened in June 1967 in LA as a three hour movie. When it had its New York premiere in November, it was down to 141 minutes. When put in general release in 1968, the movie was down to only 114 minutes.
–“Star”, the infamous Julie Andrews flop of 1968, had a New York premiere in October of 190 minutes. It was removed from theaters by the spring, only to be rereleased as a 170 minute movie. It was pulled a third time in July, retitled “Those Were the Happy Days”, and cut to a mere 119 minutes. (I’ve got all this info from a fantastic book called “Roadshow!” about flop musicals of the sixties.)