The director’s cut of The Butterfly Effect differs mainly in the ending, but there are other changes in the movie as well. To sum up the plot: a guy finds that he can use memoirs of his childhood, such as photographs and diary entries, to jump back to that point in the past and change events in ways that have massive repercussions in the future. He uses this ability to try to improve things for his girlfriend, friends, and himself, but in general it just goes horribly wrong. In the theatrical version:
the protagonist uses a home movie to jump back to a birthday party from when he was a kid. At the party, he says mean things to the cute neighbor girl, so that she’ll think he’s a jerk and stay away from him (much of the movie is about how he screws up her life in various ways). She never speaks to him again. Back in the present, they’re both successful twentysomethings who don’t know each other. They pass on the street, stop, and each looks back at the other in half-remembered recognition. The end.
But the director’s cut is a whole different dose of medicine:
[spoiler]He uses a home movie of his birth. Feeling that everything would have been better if he’d never been born, he wraps the umbilical cord around his neck in utero and strangles himself to death before he’s born. Additional scenes show his friends growing up separately, having long happy lives, never knowing of him.
There’s also an earlier scene added where the protagonist’s mother tells him that she had been pregnant twice before he was born, but both were miscarriages. In retrospect, you think to yourself: has this happened twice before? Did his older siblings kill themselves at birth to stop the butterfly effect?
The cuts were made when the original ending didn’t play well to test audiences. I guess most folks are unsettled by onscreen infant suicide.[/spoiler]
It’s actually a really good movie. Kutcher has a bad rap, because he’s taken on so many fluff roles, and his typecast is typically so ditsy - but he’s good in this. Not great - but good.
I bought the DVD recently thinking it was a boxed set of Superman and Superman II, imagine my surprise when I found myself watching some strange, alternate universe version of Superman II
I far prefer the theatrical version (which was in the set)
The U.S. theatrical release of Brazil did not change the ending — not the final climactic sequence anyway. About 10 minutes’ worth of earlier scenes were cut for time, but without changing the overall story.
The 94-minute television cut you mention was indeed the butchered version, made contrary to Gilliam’s wishes, and did indeed change both the plot and tone significantly. I believe this version was only ever shown on television, and not in the cinemas, though I could certainly be mistaken.
First thought on seeing the OP… although I suppose in a way this is the reverse… the 1980’s US cut release of Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
In this case the “Director’s cut” was butchered for US release… so much so that Miyazaki has asked fans to forget it exists. And in the wake of it adopted a strict policy against allowing his movies to be re-cut for foreign release – something that Studio Ghibli has stuck by.
I also highly recommend this movie - the theatrical version was IMHO a poor movie, but I really enjoy the directors cut. Like RandMcnally says, it added quite a bit to the film. All of a sudden, many of the characters motivations make more sense and the events of the film don’t seem so random. Seriously, the theatrical cut completely gutted the character of Sibylla. For example, did you know that, among many other changes…
[spoiler]The asshole priest at the beginning of the movie that Balian kills was Balian’s half brother?
We find out that Balian isn’t just some random smith, but he has experience in battle and with strategy, and that he’s built seige engines before. So it’s not totally out of the blue that he knows how to defend Jerusalem.
Sibylla has a son (by her first husband) who is next in line to inherit the throne. After Balwin IV (her brother) dies of leprosy, Baldwin V inherits the throne, but when Sibylla finds out her son has early symptoms of leprosy, she kills him to prevent him from dying the same long death her brother did. Only then does her husband, Guy, become king.
[/spoiler]
The 94 minute cut was not the television cut. It ended up shown on television and made the criterian edition dvd, but it was not a cut produced for television. It was the original cut of the movie made by the studio, who completely ruined it. The actual film which was released after a battle by Gilliam was not this version. The “Love Conquers All” cut as it is called, is used as a cautionary tale rather than “a cut of the movie”.
I say this because there are television/airline cuts of movies such as Lethal Weapon, which are cut for so much violence, that the end barely makes sense. But is still the original movie…
And in the wake of it adopted a strict policy against allowing his movies to be re-cut for foreign release – something that Studio Ghibli has stuck by.