Sometimes a director's toiling turns the original into a different, less respectable picture.
Here are few films we feel have not been positively served by the director's cut.
Movies
Ruined by Their Director’s Cuts
When we think of director’s cuts, we imagine our favorite
storytellers trying to impart their tales to us with one arm tied behind their
backs. A number of factors can go into a director not having final say on the
finished product, due to either relinquishing final cut for more money on the
playing field or a suit standing over the director monitoring the Moviola in
the editing room. Censorial filtration of films before they’re allowed into the
multiplexes, either due to ratings or negative test audience reactions, is
another commercial factor involved in the making of every film we see. In the
business of filmmaking, directors have come to expect compromises to their
visions, some greater than others. A director’s cut, however, is usually borne
out of instances when the film which went out into theaters the first time
around wasn’t quite how its creators envisioned it. Nine times out of ten, the filmmaker knows
far more about how his story should be told than the bigwigs financing and
releasing them. But sometimes, there’s the rare occasion when the powers that
be were right the first time, and allowing an artist to run wild in the editing
room isn’t always to a film’s benefit. With this list, here are a number of
films that we feel were actually damaged by unnecessary tinkering or extensions
by what could be characterized as counterproductive self-indulgence.
Opera
(1987 – directed by Dario Argento)
We’ve heard of someone having a “hot streak” or being “on a
roll.” Steven Spielberg had such a streak that began with Jaws in 1975 and ended with Always
in 1989. Dario Argento had a similar streak, but with fewer films;
beginning in 1975 with Deep Red, a
giallo mystery phenomenon that began to popularize the Italian style in the
States, and stretching through a slew of visual masterpieces like Suspiria, Tenebre, and Inferno.
What makes this case unique, is that Argento managed to keep his streak alive
even in the film that broke it… if you saw the film as he intended it.
Opera is the story of a young singer (Cristina Marsillach) who is
apparently so damn hot that she’ll drive people to rampaging homicide. In fact,
she’s so hot that William McNamara had his voice dubbed to be much deeper and
more seductive just to keep her attention while he’s putting on his snazzy
leather belt. The killer’s ways of grabbing her gaze are much more… subtle? He
tapes needles under her eyelids so she can’t blink while he guts her friends
and associates like wild animals in a Deodato movie. These murders are shot and
cut with such fervent viscera that they could almost exist as independent snuff
pieces, if not for the emotional center provided by Marsillach’s performance.
We, like her, are the captive audience. Even when Argento cuts to
stomach-churning POV shots like a pair of fabric sheers cutting into a
windpipe, we can’t look away. There is one set piece involving a peep hole and
a telephone that proves he still had the stuff—it’s downright worthy of
applause.
The version of Opera
that American audiences received in 1987 is one of the few documented cases of
studio interference that actually resulted in a superior product. Although cut
down from 107 to 88 minutes for its US release, most of the cuts made were for
gore and violence, and didn’t effect the story—except for the decision to
excise Argento’s chosen ending. In the US version, her stalker succumbs to a
fiery blaze that engulfs the opera house where all of the horrors in the film
took place. As the support beams and curtains become an indistinguishable
inferno, the credits began to roll. Apparently, a neatly-tied off thriller
ending is not what Argento had in mind. He was more interested in ripping off
one of his favorite popular novels at the time, Red Dragon, which also featured a false death sequence where the
killer stages his own demise in a fire, only to turn up later for one last
dance with the devil by the pale moonlight.
This would be all well and good if Argento had not tried to
create some sort of “psychologically edifying” ending that not only has no
basis in psychology, but does not make one single lick of sense. It’s as if
someone handed the script over to some Adderall-ridden pubescent kid to finish,
without letting him read the first 90 pages. It doesn’t fit, it doesn’t make
sense, and it turns our heroine into a laughing stock. Instead of a concrete
coda with an almost Cronenbergian crescendo, Argento leaves us on the image of
this preening bitch we spent the whole movie empathizing with crawling through
wildflowers like a My Little Pony fan
on PCP. All of this just moments after she allows someone to be murdered in
front of her for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. Wow, this movie is so damn good… if you
press stop before it gets this far.
Dumb
and Dumber (1994 – written and directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly)
When The Ren and
Stimpy Show first attained popularity on Nickelodeon, what people saw
wasn’t quite what chief creator John Kricfalusi initially brought to the table.
Many of the far more grotesque gross-out gags and loosely homoerotic elements
in the original production were toned down to make the show more palatable to
Nickelodeon’s child audience. While a debate can be made about whether or not Ren and Stimpy was healthy for child
consumption, everyone can agree the newly created Lost Episodes, with all the cold sores in full bloom, wasn’t nearly
as funny as what passed through the censors the first time around. The show was
funnier without animated close-ups of testicles bouncing or an overabundance of
scatological humor farting in our faces. Simply put, the show was ruined with
all that stuff back in, and went from a lowbrow psycho comedy to just plain
lowbrow. And this illustrates perfectly why I refuse to own the unrated
extended cut of Dumb and Dumber.
The story of two idiots, Harry and Lloyd, trying to return a
lost briefcase to its rightful owner is familiar to countless fans of Jim
Carrey and Jeff Daniels. While trashed
upon initial release by the critics, the PG-13 rated comedy was a box office
smash and was a key factor in catapulting Carrey to superstardom. Years after
the fact, studio New Line Pictures attempted to cash in on a sequel without the
original actors in the form of Dumber and
Dumberer, a move which much like that other non-Carrey sequel Son of the Mask, backfired and tanked
hard in theaters. A recent forthcoming sequel in the works will hopefully
dispel the stink left by the prior “sequel”, but that didn’t stop the Farrellys
from capitalizing on the recent ‘unrated version’ trend spiraling out of
control on home video. Numerous comedies that were previously balanced and
taught now became bloated and turgid with additional footage wisely left on the
cutting room floor the first time. In the case of Dumb and Dumber, the unrated version provided the Farrellys with an
opportunity to show off all the things they had to wipe clean from their comedy
classic to avoid an R rating. Needless to say, the PG-13 gross out classic was
now just plain gross and oddly creepy.
For example, the redneck Sea Bass (Cam Neely) has some
particularly disgusting and uncomfortable moments restored to the unrated cut,
such as showing the loogie he hocks on Harry’s hamburger as opposed to simply
implying it the first time around. In the scene where Lloyd is accosted in the
gas station bathroom by Sea Bass, Lloyd pleads for a ‘happy place’ to which Sea
Bass promptly drops his drawers and squeezes his hairy crotch while notifying
Lloyd where his ‘happy place’ actually resides. If that isn’t enough, little
things like Lloyd’s pet bird being decapitated or Lloyd listening in to the
sounds of couples sexing through the walls of his hotel room in another scene
just amplify the creepiness to such a degree that Dumb and Dumber actually stops being funny. Of the additions, only one gross out gag kind
of works even though it’s pure overkill: a shot of Harry dumping a toilet bowl
of feces out the bathroom window since it won’t flush. Not exactly a useless
thing to add to the cornucopia of toilet humor, but he scene already had a
perfect mixture of vulgar hilarity and didn’t necessarily need more than it
already had. The rest of the extra stuff thrown back in just kills the film and
ruins many of the jokes that worked so well the first time around.
To illustrate just how much more needlessly obscene and vile
this new longer cut of Dumb and Dumber really
is, take a gander at some of the comments customers have left on Amazon.com,
who upgraded to the Blu-Ray edition only to return it in disgust and opt for
the original DVD edition of the PG-13 version instead. It just goes to show
that more often than not, less is more. Gross out comedy is a tricky feat to
pull off because of how easily that finely tuned balance between the two
extremes can tip over into a negative experience. In the case of the unrated Dumb and Dumber, a once classic and
timeless late 90s comedy at the height of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels’
respective careers, the laughs instead have been soiled by one too many dirty
diapers, leaving a stink that eclipses any of the virtues that made the
Farrelly Brothers such a hot comedic commodity in the first place.
Donnie
Darko (2001 – written and directed by Richard Kelly)
In 2001, a new and unique voice in surrealism emerged from
the independent circuit in the form of Donnie
Darko, the story of a troubled teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal) in high school
haunted by hallucinations of a 6 foot tall demonic rabbit who invokes Donnie’s
destructive tendencies. An amalgam of genres from the early 1980s, the film
blends the coming-of-age high school comedy with a bizarre character study that
proceeds to shift gears in the second half with notions of bending space and
time itself. Soon Donnie begins seeing portals, strange cloud formations and
premonitions of a great flood. Full of intrigue, open to interpretation and
frequently hilarious, Richard Kelly’s offbeat directorial debut died a quiet
death in theaters but exploded upon home video release to such a degree, it
became a mainstream hit with the public. Soon stores like Hot Topic jumped on the trendy bandwagon and all forms of
memorabilia, including the fictional book highlighted in the film, The Philosophy of Time Travel.
Long before studio executives produced an eventual sequel
entitled S. Darko without Richard
Kelly’s participation, the success of Donnie
Darko prompted the release of a newly created director’s cut in 2004. Previously unable to afford the rights to
popular pieces of music intended for certain scenes as well as newly rendered
special effects transitions and readings from the book The Philosophy of Time Travel, Richard Kelly’s cult phenomenon, now
20 minutes longer than previously, was re-released in theaters followed by an
extensive DVD package loaded with extras. The question is, did the changes
improve the film?
Well, not exactly. While we do get more scenes of the family
together at home, more with Donnie’s high school teacher changing the course
curriculum to the book Watership Down,
chapter overlays which became commonplace in Kelly’s follow-up Southland Tales, and the swapping of
dialogue and sound effects from previously, the new director’s cut might be
closer to Kelly’s original vision but not necessarily for the better. With all the additional footage and chapter
overlays asking viewers to work harder than before to connect the dots, the
film doesn’t make anymore sense than it did in its initial cut. During the
grand finale consisting of a montage of scenes playing in reverse, in the
director’s cut, Kelly superimposes a CGI rendered grid over the footage with
fireworks inexplicably exploding over the grid in the forefront. The release of
the director’s cut also prompted fans of the film to enact a cult of
over-analysis in conjunction with the newly inserted passages from the book The Philosophy of Time Travel. While the
idea is a novel stab at enhancing the interactivity between film and the
literary medium, it became toxic to Southland
Tales, which was released alongside a series of graphic novels precluding
the film with a note that reading them will explain things more clearly for
viewers.
Whenever the decision to watch Donnie Darko comes up, almost inevitably yours truly will turn to
the original theatrical cut. We pretty much get the same movie only much longer
with different music and a just plain crazy new shot that only adds frustration
instead of clarity. In recent years, after the failure of Southland Tales, Kelly spoke about completely re-arranging the film
in a new director’s cut should anyone grant him the opportunity. Given the
nature of the extended Donnie Darko
and how overblown Kelly’s initial Cannes Film Festival cut of Southland Tales fared, it’s fair to say
what’s out there wouldn’t necessarily benefit from additional scenery. Would
anything more bring closure to the door Kelly has opened wide, or would it just
be an even longer sentence saying the same thing? In the case of Donnie Darko, the director’s cut tends
toward the latter.
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E.T.
The Extra-Terrestrial (1982 – directed by Steven Spielberg)
E.T. is one of those films that needs no introduction. It’s one
of the most beloved films of all time. The story has entered the realm of being
a timeless classic that will be shown to generation after generation of new
filmgoers who will fall in love with it, just as we did, and carry that love on
in their hearts until they get to share it with someone new to this world
Steven Spielberg created for us. The reason that love is so timeless is because
it shares its point of view with children. Watch how this film is shot, and
suddenly you will realize exactly why it reawakens the kid in you… and
unavoidably makes that kid cry like a little bitch. Twice.
Spielberg begins the film with E.T. being left behind on
Earth and coming across a family that lives in a suburb on the outskirts of the
forest. Elliott (Henry Thomas, with the best child performance in the history
of cinema) is the middle child in a newly broken family. This is never directly
referenced, but it doesn’t have to be. We understand the hushed voices on the
phone when the mom (Dee Wallace) leaves the room, the hurt tone of voice when
the absent father is brought up, the discomforted glances, and the stifled
tears. It’s the genius of the script by Melissa Mathison and the masterful
storytelling by Spielberg that we never have to ask these questions, but know
the answers in our hearts. Just like we know that E.T. and Elliott are a match
made in best friend heaven. Both lost souls, both trying to go home, whether
it’s a tangible place, or just residual feelings about a life we used to have,
rendered all the sweeter by the high gloss of retrospect.
While not technically a “director’s cut,” the version of E.T. that was re-released in theaters in
2002 for its 20th anniversary certainly suffered from George Lucas Syndrome:
Add a bunch of crap CGI and make a boatload of cash. All of the changes, while
approved by Spielberg, you can tell that his heart wasn’t in them, made all the
more evident by the fact that he insisted this version be released in tandem
with the original untouched film on DVD. The new blu-ray edition does not
feature the 20th Anniversary Edition at all. Perhaps it’s because he knew E.T.
didn’t need a funny run, and we didn’t need an extra scene showing a pre-school
age Drew Barrymore trying really hard to be funny. We also didn’t need a scene
where E.T. stretches his neck and blows bubbles in a bathtub. And we really
didn’t need the sense of tension and urgency in the final climatic chase to be
dispelled by using CGI to replace shotguns with walkie-talkies.
The reason I know that he knows this stuff is because
Spielberg said so. He’s publicly stated that he regrets making those changes
for a simple reason: E.T. is no
longer his film, but our film, and when you alter a time capsule of our
collective childhood consciousness, you are tampering with those memories in a
way that just isn’t necessary or welcome. If only his BFF George Lucas could
realize that, maybe then we could actually see the unaltered Star Wars Trilogy on blu-ray. But that
also is the stuff of childhood fantasy.
Army
of Darkness (1992 – written and directed by Sam Raimi)
There are precious few films out there that rank as high on
the fun meter as Army of Darkness.
This is a perfect storm of slapstick humor, dark comedy, sight gags,
one-liners, and Bruce f**king Campbell. I’m still not exactly sure how Ash went
from being the unsure dweeb who couldn’t crawl out from under a plank of wood
in The Evil Dead, to the Duke
Nukem-inspiring, scenery-chewing, chainsaw-toting badass we follow through this
nerdgasm that was originally to be titled The
Medieval Dead. I may not be sure of that, but I am sure of this: No matter
how many times I watch this film, it never gets old, never stops being
laugh-out-loud funny, and never loses its charm.
When we last left Ash at the end of Evil Dead II, he was sucked into a time portal that deposited his
mullet back in medieval times, where the landscapes are drenched in dry heat
and the people are terrorized by demonic forces. Only the Necronomicon, an
ancient Sumerian text bound in human flesh and inked in human blood, possessing
various incantations and spells, can end the demonic reign and send Ash back
home. Granted, the kingdom run by Arthur (of course) could send an army after
the book, which is hiding in plain sight at a cemetery, but why send an army
when you have Bruce Campbell? While we’re on the subject, why put out a
director’s cut with the original negatives as a film source when you have a VHS
tape someone ran through a drier? Couldn’t they at least find it on Beta? The
company that released the “Bootleg Director’s Cut” claimed that no sources were
available, but I think they brain-farted upon delivering that statement,
because we live in the age of the internet, and people can import DVDs from
China… where the Army of Darkness: Director’s
Cut is flawlessly transferred from the original film source.
With that being said, do the scenes add to the film? Yes and
no. There are additional scenes that add real atmosphere to a film that’s
brimming over with intentional camp and comedy, so those will be strictly a
matter of taste. If you like a momentary throwback to the creepy ambience of
the original Evil Dead, they’re a
welcome little addition, even if they are tone deaf when you follow them up
with an extended sequence of Ash being attacked by miniature clones of
himself—something right out of Gulliver’s
Travels. Where the director’s cut really shines is during the battle
sequence at the end, which is cut together with a wholly different timeline of
events, with Henry the Red arriving when it’s almost too late.
But that’s not what you want to talk about, is it? No, you
want to talk about the much ballyhooed ending that has fans divided almost
directly down the middle. We all grew up watching Ash spout off more of his
classic lines while shooting up an S-Mart. That ending is indispensable because
it explodes with more awesome badassery than all of the Kurt Russell and Roddy
Piper one-liners combined. It is the perfect ending for the Army of Darkness Ash… but is it the
perfect ending for the moron we followed all the way from The Evil Dead? That’s where the director’s cut comes in. Love the
original ending or hate it, with its apocalyptic landscapes and darkly comic
about-face, no one can argue that it’s a logical end to a character so awesome,
we’re a little too forgiving of how stupid he is.
P.S. The best existing cut of Army of Darkness is actually a version assembled by someone who
must have been the one and only genius working at the Sci-Fi Channel (no, I
will not call it the SyFy Channel). All the best cut scenes—even those that
didn’t make it into the director’s cut—are fully restored, along with all of
our favorites left in their rightful place, complete with the S-Mart ending. If
they ever air this version again, please DVR it and see it for yourself.
The
Exorcist (1973 – directed by William Friedkin)
There’s that age-old saying that perfection shouldn’t be
tampered with. It should endure and better with time. With William Friedkin’s
1973 masterpiece of modern horror The
Exorcist, here is a timeless work that has only grown in legendary stature
since it was first released. Which is why, when the year 2000 rolled around,
something completely unforgivable managed to tarnish the once impeccable terror
show into what became commonly known as The
Version You’ve Never Seen. While Friedkin maintained his original 1973 cut
was the film he intended audiences to see, the film’s screenwriter and author
of the novel, William Peter Blatty, felt somewhat differently about the matter.
Insisting Friedkin’s film was cold, heartless and suggested viewers
‘misinterpreted’ the film as a triumph of evil over good, Blatty persuaded
Friedkin to restore 10 minutes of previously deleted footage and new CGI
rendered visual effects shots into the proceedings. The result is something far
more infuriating than the controversy which ensued over Greedo firing first.
First of all, let’s begin by talking about the CGI rendered
insertions peppered throughout the film. When Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn)
returns home to find the lights flickering on and off with her daughter Regan’s
(Linda Blair) bedroom window open wide, there’s a series of flash edits of the
white faced demon and the statue of Pazuzu popping about like a Christmas tree.
That these annoying internet GIFs which look curiously fan-rendered in
execution should preclude the film’s most ridiculous addition, the
“spider-walk” scene of Regan crawling like a crab down a flight of stairs, is I
suppose fitting. Watch for when Regan has her first meeting with her
psychiatrist and the jarring CGI morphing of her face into the white-faced
demon which follows. Equally confounding are the additional music cues of
standard horror film dread added throughout the film, which are completely
antithetical to the atonal detachment Friedkin fought so hard to maintain in
the 1973 cut. Considering he furiously threw composer Lalo Schifrin’s tape
recording across the parking lot in disgust over how informative the score was,
it’s hard to fathom just what possessed him to add newly created cues which
proceed to do just that.
But what is probably the most objectionable and ill-advised
is the alternate ending, which continues after Father Dyer (William O’Malley)
gazes in dismay at the stairwell where his friend Father Karras (Jason Miller)
died. Where the 1973 film struck the perfect ending note and left the audience
alone to deal with what they just saw, in comes this new denouement where Dyer
strikes a friendship with Lt. William Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) over movies,
implying Karras lives on in spirit through Dyer. While true to the novel and
Blatty’s intentions to dispel notions of demonic triumph while injecting human
warmth into the picture, it literally goes off the rails and into some truly
perplexing territory when placed back into the film. What made The Exorcist one of the timeless greats
is how cold and heartless it all was in 1973. You were left alone in your
interpretation on how to digest the events unfolding, and ultimately how to
dispense with them altogether. By trying to light a fire underneath the tightly
sealed igloo, the construct will inevitably melt and deteriorate. Simply put,
Blatty’s intentions to warm things up and drape his cuddling arm around viewers
left catatonic by what came out the first time around actually manages to
diffuse the power Friedkin fought so hard to bring into The Exorcist. I don’t think I’m alone in saying Friedkin was right
the first time around.
Apocalypse
Now (1979 – written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola)
It’s no secret Francis Ford Coppola’s transposition of
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness from
Central Africa to Vietnam for his timeless war fantasia Apocalypse Now was a difficult make. Spanning nearly 5 years in
what felt like an endless, out of control production full of chaos and tumult,
Coppola’s ability to reel in what could have been a dreadful mess into what is
widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time remains nothing
short of astonishing. Heavily
publicized in the press over Typhoons destroying expensive set pieces, problems
with the use of military helicopters during a war in the Philippines, Martin
Sheen’s on-set heart attack and Marlon Brando’s overweight uncooperativeness,
the world seemed stacked against Apocalypse
Now from the onset. Despite aging Coppola by more than a few years due to
fear and stress, a triumph of art and commerce emerged from the madness. People
still quote Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore, still reminisce about how an
underage Laurence Fishburne snuck onto the production, and still recall that
infamous closing line from Marlon Brando, ‘the horror…’. While hours of footage
were lensed with bootlegs of work prints circulating over the years, some of
which were included in the documentary Hearts
of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Coppola ultimately whittled it down
to a taut running time of 153 minutes without losing his deliberate snail crawl
pacing or overall tonality.
Then in 2001, a newly assembled extended cut prepared by
Coppola himself, which became known as Apocalypse
Now: Redux, was released in theaters at a bloated running time of 202
minutes. Although Coppola would sanction both cuts, which are simultaneously in
circulation, it’s telling that most viewers still prefer the original
theatrical release version of 1979 for a multitude of reasons. First of all is
the much discussed French plantation sequence, where Captain Willard’s (Martin
Sheen) mission to hunt and destroy Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) is derailed by
a dinner table encounter with the De Marais family discussing their rubber
plantation after the colonization of French Indochina. While legendarily
curious among film buffs, the sequence is completely incongruent to the rest of
the film, almost like a scene out of one of Coppola’s other pictures. Coppola
himself balked at the scene, claiming it wasn’t lit correctly and felt like a
pointless addition. Then there’s that moment near the end where Kurtz, who was
previously lit in shadow to both hide Brando’s weight, reads Time Magazine to
Willard in broad daylight, destroying the mystique surrounding the character.
The rest of what’s gone back into the Redux version consists of snippets and an unfinished scene where
Willard’s troop mingles with Playboy Playmates trapped in the region. Why
include footage from scenes that were never completed? Is Coppola so proud of
his achievement he was ready to throw in anything he could find? Although no
great film can be too long, scenes that weren’t good enough to include in the
first place can’t be too short either.
While Apocalypse Now is in
essence a series of encounters Willard and his team have with other miscreants
fighting their own respective losing battles, Redux simply piles on too many detours and disrupts the flow of
Willard’s journey to Kurtz’ compound. If I were to show Apocalypse Now to someone unfamiliar with it, my friendly recommendation
would be to stick with the 1979 version, as it is a perfect and wonderful
masterpiece of filmmaking that doesn’t wear its obviously loose ends with pride
in the way Coppola’s miscalculated Redux does.
The
Lawnmower Man (1992 – written and directed by Brett Leonard)
Around the time virtual reality technology was a hot topic
among consumers and visual effects artists alike, Hollywood seized the
opportunity to turn the pioneering into a science fiction thriller evoking
ageless notions of mad science gone awry. Falsely advertised as being based on
a short story by Stephen King (who sued and won to have his name removed from
the credits and promotional materials), The
Lawnmower Man tells the story of Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan), a
scientist whose local simpleton gardener Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey) becomes the
subject of a top secret experiment in accelerating growth of Jobe’s mind until
he becomes a genius. As with films like Altered
States and Brainstorm, the
experiment spirals out of control and soon the former town idiot possesses
destructive, godlike powers of telepathy of pyrokinesis. It doesn’t take long
for Jobe transformation into a complete monstrosity to wreak havoc on his town
and the doctor who gifted him with his newfound knowledge and power.
Something of a low budget mixed bag, The Lawnmower Man quickly gained notoriety for introducing virtual sex into pop cultural
consciousness, with Jobe and his newfound lover Marnie (Near Dark’s vampiress Jenny Wright) getting their freak on in a
virtual reality environment. Boasting ‘the best computer generated imagery
since Terminator 2: Judgment Day (a
lie if there ever was one), The Lawnmower
Man hasn’t aged particularly well in recent years, with its silly script
and dated visuals. Pierce Brosnan fares well enough as the well-intentioned
scientist who quickly realizes just how dangerous his experiment has become,
and Jeff Fahey makes a startling transformation from dim goofball to vibrant
lady’s man before finally achieving his cyberpunk id. The strongest facet of
the film, really, belongs to Alex McDowell’s production design, which envisions
a cool computer lab bathed in deep blues donning two virtual reality hamster
balls and environment suits which light up like neon-fluorescent black lights.
The film ran at the modest running time of about 103
minutes. However, it would appear writer-director Brett Leonard wasn’t finished
with The Lawnmower Man and decided to
hastily splice back in over 40 minutes of footage that now provides a 141 minute
science fiction thriller that more than overstays its welcome. An alternative
opening prologue to Jobe encountering one of Dr. Angelo’s chimpanzees in a
bloody shootout provides an interesting but unnecessary dynamic. Some restored
scenes showcase more special effects visuals than previously, which are neat,
but that doesn’t atone for the other endless scenes of exposition that
completely screech the film to a halt. Part of being a filmmaker is being an
editor, knowing what’s necessary and what isn’t. You can’t help but think Brett
Leonard just couldn’t live without giving us absolutely everything he shot,
whether it benefitted the piece or not. In the first hour, we’re stuck with
scene after scene of the hapless Jobe being berated by townsfolk, notably a gas
station jobber. We got the idea the first time around, but the director’s cut
beats viewers over the head with it.
In the pre-digital era of re-editing film, splices between
the preexisting film and newly inserted material was often noticeable with
either flashes of light at the top or bottom of the screen or a subtle shift in
quality. Owners of the special edition laserdisc of James Cameron’s The Abyss got an eyeful of flashes and
jumps in the reediting process (which were eventually eliminated by the time
the extended cut obtained a DVD release), but that’s nothing compared to the
jarring shifts in quality you’ll get here. Scenes go from sharp to blurry, with
noticeable shifts in brightness and contrast several times over in a single
shot. The eventual THX laserdisc of The
Lawnmower Man did a decent job of smoothing out the glaring trims, but
they’re still there. Equally aggravating is the sound, which is not unlike
hearing a person speak with a hand over their mouth at times. While far from a
masterpiece, the theatrical film worked fine and was reasonably paced, where
this director’s cut just drags its feet and manages to bore potential viewers
right out of watching the rest of the movie.
Superman
II: The Richard Donner Cut (1980/2006 — directed by Richard Donner)
Well, it had to happen sometime. Someone had to make the
comic movie equivalent of the Night of
the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition. Most everyone with a pulse
around 1999 heard about this debacle: When John A. Russo, producer of NOTLD, decided he was going to film all
new scenes to add into the original beloved classic, destroying one of the best
horror films ever made. All anyone could say after seeing this monstrosity was
“What where they thinking?” I’m wondering the same thing after seeing the
Richard Donner cut of Superman II.
What was one of the single best sequels of all time has been knocked down and
presented as a shallow retread of the original film, with twice as much whiny
Clark Kent, and additional CGI effects that stick out like a superhero hard-on.
As we all know, Superman
II picks up where the original Superman
left off, with the intention of completing the story that began back on Krypton
before someone forgot they left the gas on. The three uber-criminals that
Superman’s father Jor-El (Marlon Brando) banished to the Phantom Zone break
free of their eternal imprisonment, and venture to Earth. Once they arrive,
they discover they have “powers beyond reason,” and begin a reign of super
terror. Led by General Zod (Terence Stamp in another iconic performance), the
three soon gain control of the world while Superman is off blowing his super
load. Because who can be bothered to keep up on current events when you can
show a certifiably crazy woman your North Pole?
All of this was very briskly paced in the version we got in
theaters, which was re-shot and recut by Richard Lester after Donner was booted
off the project. By the time this happened, Donner had shot roughly 75% of the
movie. What little was not shot is supplemented using actual screen test
footage of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, which surprisingly integrates
very well, as it was shot on 35mm. But that’s about as pleasant a surprise as
it gets. This version of the film hits the skids pretty early with a lot of
pacing issues, and features Christopher Reeve in the infamous costume a grand
total of two times—only once before the climatic finale, which plays almost
identical to what was screened back in 1980.
Here’s the kicker, though. And this is something that will
take you out of the movie faster than you can say “up, up, and away”… Let me
just put it like this: If there’s one moment in all of the Superman films we can say is hands down the dumbest—the single most
intellectually bankrupt piece of writing you can imagine—despite our love for
the original classic, it would have to be when Superman flies the Earth
backwards to turn back the clock. Not only would this have potentially
destroyed the planet, but it most certainly would have put a momentary stop to
our gravity—probably just long enough for all of us to begin floating into
space, only to plunge to our certain deaths when Supes decided to get it going
again. But at least in the original film, there was an emotional crux to the
sequence that made us want him to pull it off. Now do me a favor, and imagine
him doing that twice. You thought you
couldn’t think of anything dumber than the magical memory-erasing kiss from the
Lester cut? Now you can. What a way to completely take and any all sense of
jeopardy out of your franchise. Use the same deus ex machina. Twice. Of all the
sins committed in this director’s cut, which includes painfully obvious new
footage of matted green screen doubles, this one takes the cake and proceeds to
smash it in your face.
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977 – directed by George Lucas)
Perhaps one of the most grievous mistakes in the history of cinema is the tainted and toiled with versions of Episode IV through VI. However, we're just going to focus on the distinct and needless changes that the grand Ewok himself made to his original masterpiece, A New Hope. You know, the one that changed science fiction forever and made Lucas billions of dollars before he sold it to the Disney empire. No pun intended.
Setting all apparent fanboy love aside, Lucas took nearly everything that made A New Hope one of the best science fiction films ever and turned it into a joke that's been running since 1997. Star Wars being one of the most loved franchises ever did not deserve a creative unraveling that turned practical effects into some bad looking CGI moments and changed Han Solo from a bad ass smuggler with a chip on his shoulder to a little bitch that was just defending himself against Greedo.
While most of the story didn't change, Lucas took too many liberties with the property and added way too much computer generated imagery that steals from the great looking original print while turning it into a self gratifying "look what I can do with my computers" type of movie. Additional X-Wings at the Death Star Battle, a terrible looking and awfully rendered Jabba The Hutt, additional animated creatures at Mos Eisley, new bar crawling aliens in the cantina, and the addition of Boba Fett do nothing to make the movie any better and have ultimately tarnished the legacy of the series. And a few seconds of Biggs Darklighter does nothing to create that emotive connection with Luke's past that Lucas was going for. Instead, it's just another questionable mark that begs for an answer Lucas will never give. Why?
For years, Star Wars fans have been begging for a re-release of the original versions of these films. Now that Disney owns the property, we hold out hope that we just might get them. May the Force Be With You.
-Blake O. Kleiner
-Andrew Kotwicki
-CG
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