The cinematic heaven – and hell – of director’s cuts
The news that Ridley Scott has released his most recent film, the Joaquin Phoenix-starring Napoleon, in an extended director’s cut that runs to an awe-inspiring 205 minutes, has been met with a mixed response.
Scott is the acknowledged king of director’s cuts, with at least half of his pictures being re-released in extended or altered form. True to form, his full-sized Napoleon has attracted plaudits for its greater focus on Vanessa Kirby’s portrayal of the emperor’s wife Josephine, and criticism for its now-punitive length, which includes many of the details understandably omitted from the first cut (Napoleon’s unhappy affliction with “the horseman’s disease”, namely haemorrhoids, for example).
Once, a Ridley Scott director’s cut would have been a huge deal, whatever the film; it would have been released on a three or four-disc DVD, complete with audio commentaries, making-of documentaries and all manner of behind-the-scenes information. In a sign of the times, Napoleon as its director intended it simply appeared on AppleTV+ with little fanfare. But did it need to be seen at all?
The idea of a director’s cut itself is a relatively modern phenomenon. While there were many chaotic productions in the earlier days of cinema that resulted in compromised versions – including, notoriously, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, which was only released in a studio-mangled edit – it was only in 1974 that Warner Bros wised up to the idea that there was money to be made out of film fans paying to see different versions of their favourite pictures more than once.
Sam Peckinpah’s classic western The Wild Bunch had been released in a 145-minute version in Europe in 1969, and a slightly edited 135-minute version in the United States, where it was a huge hit. The distributor made much of the longer version being Peckinpah’s preferred cut when it was re-released five years later, and this chimed with the contemporary vogue for the director as auteur, implicitly setting up their vision as the rightful, artistically uncompromised one, with the studio’s as the commercially dictated hotchpotch.
Yet Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was the first director’s cut to truly cross into the mainstream. When released in 1992, it supplanted the original picture altogether and has since been regarded as a masterpiece, without the flaws that beset the theatrically released version.
Since then, the advent of home video meant that many directors disappointed with the first cut of their films could be placated by their chosen version being available later down the line. Sometimes, these could be bizarre. Did the world need a new cut of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour with additional graphic violence? We shall never know, but it exists, just as the director’s cut of I Am Legend, complete with alternate ending that makes sense of the title, should in time come to supplant the studio-mandated cop-out of the original.
There are some brilliant director’s cuts that turn flawed but interesting pictures into masterpieces, and other, no less necessary versions that transform meaningless dross into important, noteworthy films. It cuts both ways, however. Some directors, given licence to be self-indulgent, make dismal changes to their films that only harm the integrity of what they produced in the first instance, meaning that these so-called “special editions” end up being anything but.
Here are five of the essential director’s cuts – and five alternate versions of films that should have stayed on the cutting room floor.
The best director’s cuts
Blade Runner: Director’s Cut (1982/1992/2007)
When Ridley Scott’s bleak sci-fi noir masterpiece was first released in 1982, it was a box office flop. Audiences expecting Harrison Ford in Han Solo mode were put off by its downbeat feel, lack of action and murky depiction of a dystopian future. Yet for all its strengths, the film was crippled by a dreadful, flat voiceover by Ford that was shoehorned in to explain the plot, and an equally mystifying happy ending that used outtakes from The Shining to cobble together a falsely optimistic conclusion.
A decade later, Scott revisited the film and deleted both the voiceover and the upbeat ending in favour of something more brooding and ambiguous that suggested that Ford’s protagonist Deckard himself was a doomed android, or replicant, rather than a human. There was another version, 2007’s Final Cut, which is the definitive version of the film – retaining the bleakness and ambiguity of the 1992 version, and with a few tweaks that make it sing.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2017/2021)
If you spent any time near social media in the late 2010s, you would, at some point, have come across the hashtag “ReleasetheSnyderCut”. This was a reference to the director Zack Snyder’s unfinished cut of his superhero film Justice League, from which he was removed in post-production and replaced by a pre-cancellation Joss Whedon, who proceeded to turn Snyder’s dark, tortured vision into something inappropriately jokey and sarcastic.
This compromised Justice League was a huge flop and Snyder’s considerable fanbase mobilised to demand that their idol’s vision was given its rightful exposure, which, after years of lobbying, Warners eventually agreed to, at a cost of $70 million. The final four-hour picture may not be the masterpiece some have claimed, but it’s infinitely better than the original – as well as all the other pictures in the post-Nolan DC Universe – with a real sense of weight and authority to it, as well as some breathtaking action scenes. And it’s an audacious tease on Snyder’s part, too, to conclude his cut with a series of vignettes from never-made sequels to the film; a real case of “look what you might have won”.
Snyder is an enormous fan of director’s cuts and extended versions when it comes to his pictures. These are often much-loved by his fans – the Ultimate Cut of Watchmen is particularly highly regarded, not least due to its incorporation of the Tales of the Black Freighter animated story, as adapted from the original graphic novel – but even Snyder met his Waterloo with his extended versions of his much-maligned recent sci-fi epics, the Rebel Moon films. Considerably more violent and gruesome than the original versions released, they are still dire. The three and a half hour extended cut of the first Rebel Moon film has a 29 per cent critics’ rating at Rotten Tomatoes, only a small jump from the original picture’s 22 per cent.
Blackhat (2015)
Michael Mann is another fully paid-up believer in the director’s cut, although, somewhat in keeping with his no-nonsense reputation, many of the films that he tinkers with end up being released in shorter, rather than lengthier, versions. One picture of his, though, that was transformed by such editing was his Chris Hemsworth-starring computer hacker thriller Blackhat. Upon its release nine years ago, it was a huge commercial flop, panned by critics (bar a few paid-up Mann apologists) and ignored by audiences.
However its director spent a considerable time tinkering with the theatrical cut and finally came up with a new version that acquired near-mythic status, only being shown on rare occasions at film festivals, until it was finally released on DVD late last year. It is not stretching the truth to describe Mann’s preferred version of Blackhat as another major entry in his considerable canon, on a par with the likes of Thief and The Insider.
It makes the original’s virtually incomprehensible narrative coherent and focused, allows Hemsworth’s computer hacker to emerge as a conflicted Mann protagonist to rank with Al Pacino in Heat or Russell Crowe in The Insider, and, of course, features some stunning action scenes. Of all the films on this list, it badly needs, and deserves, reassessment now.
Once Upon A Time in America (1984)
Few of these pictures have the unlikely distinction of being regarded as both the best and worst films of their respective years, but Sergio Leone’s epic gangster masterpiece was described by critics exactly like that.
His director’s cut premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984 to a rapturous reception, but his distributor Warner Bros, featuring that they had a disaster on their hands because of the film’s unusual and time-hopping structure, cut it down to two hours and tried to turn it into something more coherent. It was a box office flop, torn to shreds by many of the critics who had praised it at the premiere, all of whom took care to criticise the studio, rather than Leone, who was said to be disappointed by the treatment his picture received.
Yet when it was finally released on home video in its complete version, it was once again reassessed as a complex and brilliant examination of crime, America and friendship, rather than the incomprehensible mess that cinema audiences briefly saw. The cinematic cut is now unavailable; the only version in existence is the director’s cut, as it should be.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Several of Scott’s films could have made appearances on this list – Legend, Alien and The Counselor, to name but three – but the other one that was most significantly improved by its far greater length was his Crusades epic Kingdom of Heaven.
In its original version, there were an impressive array of battle scenes and scene-stealing performances by a great cast of character actors, but plot coherence was sorely lacking; historical figures appeared and vanished virtually at random, and Eva Green’s Princess Sibylla spends much of the final act looking anguished for reasons never explained. In the much longer, much better director’s cut these reasons are spelt out – her son is suffering from leprosy, and she has to decide whether to commit matricide or condemn him to a miserable and painful life of suffering – and the still-impressive battle scenes are given a proper amount of historical context and depth to justify their existence. Shame about Orlando Bloom’s wimpish protagonist, who isn’t any better in the definitive version, but we can’t have everything.
The most unnecessary director’s cuts
Donnie Darko (2001)
The director Richard Kelly may have passed into obscurity now, with his films Southland Tales and The Box both attracting mystification and ridicule. But his stylish, enigmatic debut Donnie Darko proved a cult hit and a significant calling card on its first release – as well as introducing audiences both to Jake Gyllenhaal and Gary Jules’s chart-topping cover of Tears for Fears’s Mad World.
One of the conditions of Kelly being allowed to make the film was that his first cut came in under two hours, and so, feeling that the theatrically released version was too opaque, he released a director’s cut that was 20 minutes longer and sought to explain many of the mysteries and intricacies of the plot.
Unfortunately, rather than making it clearer, the extended version simply shows up many of the original’s intentionally bewildering elements as smoke and mirrors, making both versions seem inferior. Not only does the director’s cut not work as a film in its own right, but if you have fond memories of the original, it’s best skipped altogether.
Aliens (1986)
James Cameron has released several extended versions of his films, some of which are longer without being particularly better or worse (Titanic, Avatar) and one of which was compromised in its original cut but is a masterly achievement in its longer incarnation (The Abyss).
There are many who would suggest that the so-called “Special Edition” of Aliens is in fact superior to the theatrical cut, citing its increased character development, not least a scene in which Ripley discovers that her daughter has died on Earth while she has been in cryosleep, and some intricate and exciting action beats.
Yet the brilliance of the original version of Aliens – as with The Terminator and Terminator 2 – is that it is a lean, wholly focused thrill ride that begins deliberately slowly and, when it kicks into gear, never lets go.
The theatrical version is 137 minutes, the Special Edition 154 minutes, and those extra 17 minutes slacken the tension noticeably. Alien completists and diehard Cameron fans should go for the longer version, but everyone else should stick with the original.
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977/1997)
It might be stretching it slightly to call George Lucas’s re-released version of the original Star Wars picture a director’s cut, but it’s certainly altered from the cut that wowed audiences in their millions when it was first released. Although it was a huge success when it came out in cinemas, and Lucas’s decision to replace some of the dated model shots with cutting-edge CGI was broadly supported by audiences and critics alike, he chose to make some small but irritating changes.
The most egregious of these, by a significant margin, was to make Harrison Ford’s Han Solo return fire to the alien gangster Greedo, rather than shooting him in cold blood. Not only did this soften the character’s edges, but it was poorly edited and conceived, meaning that fans were, and still are, outraged by the change. If you find T-shirts saying “Greedo shot first”, you’ll know exactly what they are referring to, and for good reason.
Apocalypse Now (1979/2001/2019)
As the world awaits the release of Megalopolis, it’s always salutary to remember Francis Ford Coppola’s other great controversial epic, his Vietnam war picture-cum-adaptation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
The cinematically released version ran to 147 minutes, but Coppola subsequently decided that it was incomplete and re-edited it into a new version, Apocalypse Now Redux, which ran nearly an hour longer and incorporated many more scenes, not least plenty more of Marlon Brando’s deranged Colonel Kurtz.
As with other pictures in this section, the additional footage clarifies nothing, and instead makes an already lengthy film longer without giving it any greater interest or accessibility. Coppola tacitly acknowledged this by taking out ten minutes and releasing another version in 2019 entitled Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, which certainly improves the pacing, but most admirers of the picture would be best advised to stay with the original.
The Hobbit: Extended Editions (2013/14/15)
When Peter Jackson chose to release Extended Editions of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy after their triumphant cinematic releases, it was with the sense of a deserved victory lap. Although each of these longer versions, now at four rather than three hours, could hardly be described as essential, they were full of interest and detail, making the already brilliant films seem fuller and richer.
Would that the same could be said of his revisiting Middle Earth with his Hobbit trilogy a decade later. Not only were the original films horribly overstretched and padded – the original novel, after all, runs to a comparatively snappy 310 pages, while the trilogy of film adaptations comes to just under eight hours – but the additional footage that Jackson saw fit to add for the inevitable Extended Editions of the Hobbit trilogy, running to just under another hour, make tortuous pictures even more unbearable.
Fancy extra scenes of dwarves eating and singing and making merry? Well, you’ve got them. For everyone else, the originals, flawed and disappointing though they are, will more than suffice.
