Hatrack River Forum: Director's Cut

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Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :

So*, can someone explain to me in clear terms what's a "director's cut"? I mean, I can understand that you could go in more than one way in certain aspects of most movies, but why does it always appear that the director's cut is the version that does all the explaining? Why not put that in the standard release?

Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :

The studio has the final cut. And sometimes they totally butcher it.

It's not like when an author releases the unedited version of a book. The director should be the final editor of a movie (you'd think). But studios often do stupid things.

Still, there are times when I agree with the studio. Take The Butterfly Effect, for example. The ending that screened in the theaters was much better (I thought) than the director's preferred one. I have a DVD with both versions on it.

Technically, the director's version is better. There's a major logical flaw in the one that screened, but I'm a sucker for happy endings, so I liked it better anyway.

Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :

Another movie where I thought the studio cut was much better than the director's cut was Army of Darkness. I once bought the director's cut. The few added scenes were pointless and uninteresting. One of them even had random nudity, which he admitted in the commentary was just because he showed up one day and found out that the DP (or someone like that) had hired some naked women to walk across the screen because he thought it would be fun.

But the worst part was the new ending. The studio-imposed S-Mart ending was classic and hilarious. That scene was completely gone and replaced with Raimi's original post-apocalyptic nightmare ending, which was just sort of vaguely amusing in a campy way.

I ended up returning the movie and ordering the regular version off Amazon, and I've never regretted it.

Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :

Thanks for the anwsers.

Btw, starLisa, I've seen The Butterfly Effect, but I think I missed the logical flaw. Care to share it? (please put a spoilers warning if you do)

Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Corwin:
Thanks for the anwsers.

Btw, starLisa, I've seen The Butterfly Effect, but I think I missed the logical flaw. Care to share it? (please put a spoilers warning if you do)

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He kept getting pain and nosebleeds from the additional memories slamming into his brain, right? So when he went all the way back to that party, he should have pretty much crippled or killed himself in the process. But he looked good at the end. That makes no sense.

Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :

An example of a terrific director's cut (and quite appropriate to mention here) is Abyss. The theatrical release was butchered so horribly that you can barely consider it the same movie.

Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :

Nice spoilers warning! [ROFL]

And yeah, that would be a problem... But as in your case, I loved the "happy" ending, so it's not a problem. [Big Grin]

Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :

I like the way you did that spoiler warning... [Big Grin]

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

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:: officially likes starLisa ::

Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :

The director's cut of Daredevil was much better than the theatrical release. Still had a long way to go before I'd consider it a great movie, but a lot of the things that most confusee or bugged me about the one I saw in the theater were addressed.

There's also a single, small, deleted scene from Independence Day that should have been included. It's on one of the DVD releases; where Jeff Goldblum is in the alien craft with the scientists from Area 54 and they're talking about what they've discovered about the computer system so far, and what Goldblum has discovered with the satellite signal he intercepted, with the implication that they may be able to figure out enough about the alien's computers to do something.

Since that was one of the glaring, laughable flaws of the movie -- we can send them viruses? the aliens have Windows? -- the removal of this minor, under 2 minute scene was a clear error. Still improbable, but at least we'd have known the filmmakers weren't (necessarily) morons.