I’m quite certain I disagree 
. I think the no opening narration version is much superior. IMHO it makes the visual reveal at the end far more impactful. It’s how I first saw the film and when I saw the narration version later I knew immediately it was a mistake.
Some people will enjoy figuring out what’s going on and others will be confused and annoyed.
Likewise, some people will like the creamy mildness of milk and others will prefer the sweet tanginess of mango juice. It’s not clear that there’s a definitively right answer. There are right partakers not right offerings.
That’s pretty different from, “It doesn’t make a large difference either way,” though.
Besson also had a much longer cut of The Big Blue. The European version is 168 minutes long, with a score by Eric Serra; the American cut is under two hours and the music is by Bill Conti. They may as well be two different movies (one beautiful, one incoherent). The long version was released on DVD here as the “version intégrale” as was the director’s cut of Léon.
Milk is good. Mango juice is good. If you prefer one, go for it. If your world is ruined because you were given one over the other, it bears reminding yourself that neither one is yak bile and life is still good.
Pretty sure nobody has said their world was ruined because of a film edit, so I’m not really sure what your point is.
One has narration that sets the scene, one does not. It’s not a big difference.
Maybe for some people, it’s a big difference but I’m not sure that, that would bear scrutiny when you’re asking about most people. I’m sure that I could find someone who would tell you that there’s a world of difference between a sauvignon blanc and a pinot gris, go up and down the street waving and shouting that everyone is a fool for not understanding the difference, and cursing the gods for putting him on the same planet as all the other heathen.
Both films have a good dose of mysterious world building but neither film is about mysterious world building. Bladerunner is a movie about what it means to be human and Dark City is a movie about a man trying to deal with being stuck in a (metaphorical) conformist society and his desire to break through that and be independent.
For Dark City, I’ll grant, the world building is more fundamental to the story since there’s really not much story there. But I can’t say that the narration spoils anything any more than a book does by describing the opening scene. For example, it might say, “John woke up in a land that was always dark.” If it didn’t say that then, sure, we have to notice for ourselves that it’s strangely dark when the movie is saying that it’s “day”. But maybe we just think it’s darkly lit for atmosphere - like the Batman movies - and not meaningful. If you point it out that it shouldn’t be dark then it’s definitely mysterious for 100% of the viewers. If you don’t point it out then some will notice and be mystified and the rest - the majority - won’t. But pointing out the mystery never removes the mystery. Maybe some viewers feel like they weren’t given a chance to figure out that the scenes are always dark - and, yes, that’s true - but the mystery isn’t whether the scenes are dark, it’s why the scenes are dark. Wanting that extra level of “whetherness” is tangential to the explicit and intentional mystery of the movie.
At some point you have to say that there’s a mystery and then there’s being deliberately obtuse for the sake of that one in 10,000 individual who loves not knowing what’s going on. Neither narration reveals any secrets or spoilers, they just let you know what strange things in the picture are relevant to the mystery of the story and which are merely cool, atmospheric set dressing that can be ignored. In Dark City I know that the darkness is meant to be interpreted as strange but the fashion choice is irrelevant; in Bladerunner I know that I can dismiss the flying cars but I should pay attention to the people and whether they’re “people”.
But to use your milk and mango juice analogy, I doubt anyone would say there isn’t “a large difference” between them. A difference does not evaporate just because it is one of taste.
And IIRC, the narrated version of Bladerunner features narration in far more than just the opening.
There have been several releases of The Wild Bunch (1969) of variable lengths. According to IMDB:
"In a documentary on The Wild Bunch, it was mentioned that Sam Peckinpah prepared a version of the movie to screen for studio executives. This version seems to have disappeared, but the documentary says it was 8 hours long.
The complete film, and the only version to which Peckinpah ever lent his wholehearted imprimatur, is the European version of 1969, which is 145 minutes long…" This included an intermission which was removed in a 1995 “restoration.” That “director’s cut” is the version to see, imo.
Mmmm-yum.
I wonder… was the intermission to The Wild Bunch inserted after the scene where they leave the village to the people singing La Golondrina? It feel like a good place for an intermission, and IIRC the next scene is a hard cut to a baby sucking on its mother’s teat.
“The 1995 restoration, which runs 144 minutes and 24 seconds, returns to the European version but drops the intermission, which was originally inserted just before the train robbery, the first half of the film ending with Pike and Dutch on the trail and Pike’s line, “This is our last go-round, Dutch, this time we do it right.” As the intermission was created in the first place only in response to the European distributor’s demand for a roadshow engagement, it has been left out of the restoration…”
Ah, well, thanks.
This poster appears to disagree:
Again, the actual opinion expressed here was, “I thought the movie was better without it.” I’m not sure why you keep conflating that with some exaggerated caricature of snobbishness, but it’s not doing your argument any favors.
Which is entirely the point: with the narration, the film is not about the mysterious world building. Without the narration, it is. It’s a profoundly different first viewing experience of the film.
The narration explains that the city exists in outer space (not revealed in the DC until William Hurt’s character is sucked into the void on the other side of a brick wall), that the city is run by aliens (not revealed until one is killed by the animated billboard and you see what’s in their heads) and that they set the whole thing up as an experiment to discover the nature of the human soul (not revealed until John meets Keifer Sutherland’s character).
That’s a hell of a lot more of a spoiler than, “it’s always dark in this city.”
“Why the city is always dark,” is literally one of the things they explain in the opening narration. And yeah, explaining at the beginning of the film that the city is always dark because its in space does, in fact, completely remove the mystery of why the city is always dark.
I assure you, absolutely no one was disappointed that the narration spoiled whether, in a movie named “Dark City,” the city was going to be dark.
Mango juice is fine and all, but I’d be unhappy if you poured if over my Cap’n Crunch. Which, I guess, makes me some sort of an elitist snob, because apparently most people can’t even tell the difference.
Speaking of extended cuts -is it worth buying the 197 minute version of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World ?
They should add more “Mads” to the title for the longer cut.
If it’s the Criterion Collection version, then yes.
Came here to mention this.
Personal preferences aren’t snobbish, but they are personal - and I haven’t said otherwise. To you, perhaps, it’s a big difference. To others, it might not be. I can’t answer for someone whether it’s a better experience, all I can say is that if you like more mystery then go with option 1 and if you don’t care too much then it doesn’t matter - nothing horrible happens with the narration or without.
I don’t recall the precise narration but I’ll note that we all exist in outer space. Outside of some small exceptions like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Discworld, that’s generally true in most films and neither your life nor most films are unendingly dark, despite floating in outer space.
Otherwise, you are describing how they avoid spoilers and - as described - use narration to help you understand what you’re seeing, as you see it, so that you better follow what’s going on.
Data point: I saw it new in the theater, I prefer the original version.
At first, as soon as the movie started, I rolled my eyes at the “hard boiled detective” narration, but it grew on me, and now if I watch the DC, I have to fill it in in my head. I think it is needed. I don’t think you can omit “…All I could do is sit there and watch him die” any more than you can omit “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”
Meanwhile, I didn’t even know there was a DC of Terminator 2.
In fact, you have:
Yes, the vast majority of films technically take place “in space,” because they take place on Earth, which is in space. Super useful observation, but I’m pretty sure you understand that when most people say something takes place “in space,” they mean “as opposed to on a planet.”