My Favorite Directors Cuts/Deleted Scenes

Compared to VHS, DVDs aren't absolutely perfect. They lack durability, you can't fast forward through the ads before the movie, and movies are often released and re released with minor documentaries and special features just to fill the studio's pockets.

It seems like every other movie gets released in many different "editions" promising juicy unrated footage, alternate scenes, and director cuts. A lot of these have only minor additions (sometimes mere seconds) that push the movie from a PG-13 to a R rating or from a R to the mythical "unrated" territory. Other movies add in a ton of unnecessary scenes that were cut for a reason: the director's cut really lacks pace.

However, there are some movies that substantially improve with the addition or substitution of key scenes. So I'm going to list some of my favorite director's cuts... These are not my favorite movies, but just the ones that I think were most improved in some way or another.

7. Blade Runner, 1982, directed by Ridley Scott

I don't even know where to begin here... After negative test screenings, the ending was completely reshot (with footage from the Shining of all movies inserted in as the film ran overbudget), a tacked-on studio happy ending and ridiculously obvious (and rushed) voice over narration from Harrison Ford added because several audience members were confused by key plot points. The director's cut movie was released in 1992 after the original rough cut garnered strong reactions. There's also an "ultimate directors cut" that Ridley Scott had complete control over that was released in 2007, however, I have yet to see this cut.

6. Legend, 1985, directed by Ridley Scott

Another example of the the list of Scott movies that the studio interfered with. The initial cut of Legend was a two hour epic but after numerous test screenings, the film was reduced to 89 minutes. Jerry Goldsmith, legendary composer of such films as Patton, First Blood, and the original Omen, spent six months working on the score and dance sequence. When the film was re-edited, the 80s group Tangerine Dream created a new score. The lush, idyllic fantasy world that would have greatly benefited from an orchestral score instead had a goofy techno pop sound. Imagine Lord of the Rings with the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and you get an idea of what I mean...

5. The Abyss, 1989, directed by James Cameron

James Cameron if nothing else is a wonderful director of tightly paced action movies. Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic, True Lies, and now Avatar have all contained some amazing special effects sequence. The forgotten movie amongst Cameron's masterpieces is the underrated gem, the Abyss. The director's cut runs at two hours, fifty minutes, which may seem a bit excessive, but the problem in this case isn't in the length, but in the material cut. One of the main plot threads (the reason why there are aliens in the Marianas Trench) is completely removed. With this gone, the theatrical ending seems like a watery ET knockoff

4. High Tension, 2005, directed by Alexandre Aja and The Descent, 2006, directed by Neil Marshall

I'm lumping these two together because they were both cut to a "R" rating in their American release and beyond losing some gore, both also lost major story issues. The ending of the Descent is completely ruined and the story of High Tension makes no sense whatsoever with the cut scenes. I understand the need to reduce the gore to get the rating for a theatrical release, but cutting story makes no sense at all ratingswise.

3, Daredevil, 2003, directed by Mark Steve Johnson

The theatrical cut of this superhero movie is decent although pretty corny, but the director's cut reintroduces subplots dealing with Matt Murdock working as a lawyer, dealing with religion, and also reduces the importance of Elektra (Jennifer Garner is pretty terrible, but doesn't have much to work with). Also, some of the violence and gritty feel is a lot more pronounced (especially during the various Bullseye fights towards the end). The R rated Daredevil to me is on par with Blade right at the top of the middle tier of Marvel movies. Here's my Marvel movie rating system by the way...

Top Tier - X-Men 2, Spiderman 2, First half of Spiderman 1, Iron Man, Blade 2
Tier 2 (some minor flaws, but otherwise really good)- X-Men, Iron Man 2, Blade, Ed Norton's Hulk, Daredevil Directors Cut, X-Men Origins Wolverine
Tier 3 (big flaws or miscasting, but have some promise)- The 2nd half of Spiderman, Eric Bana's Hulk, X-Men the Last Stand, Spiderman 3, Daredevil Theatrical, Fantastic Four
Tier 4 (pretty terrible but at least one bright spot)- Elektra, Blade Trinity, Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer, Punisher War Zone
Tier 5 (Ghost Rider bad)- Ghost Rider , Ghost Rider Director's Cut, Dolph Lundgren's Punisher, 1994 Fantastic Four, Thomas Jane's Punisher

2. Donnie Darko, directed by Richard Kelly

This dense, hallucinatory tale about growing up alienated in 1988 suburbia tanked in its original theatrical release but found a passionate following on video and DVD. It was re released in 2004, with twenty minutes of restored footage, most of it involving the surprisingly good performance from English teacher Drew Barrymore. Kelly also took full advantage of the chance to touch up his ode to misanthropic angst, beefing up the special effects and adding songs to the eighties soundtrack. Overall, the director's cut dramatically improves on the original: it's both more vivid and more comprehensible, and, at just under 2 hours, 15 minutes, doesn't seem too long, just deeper and more richly textured.

1. Alien directed by James Cameron and Alien 3 directed by David Fincher

James Cameron always seems to make his movies too long. Almost every film of his has a director's cut. Some don't feature enough new things (Terminator 2 didn't really need to be any longer) and some feature arguably way too much (the length of The Abyss) but the one that works best for me is the Aliens director's cut, found in the Alien Quadrilogy. Cameron describes it best in his intro as "the ride he intended you to take". Every detail that's added back in works great, adding depth and nuance to certain things taken for granted, like the Ripley/Newt relationship. It also includes the awesome remote sentry guns sequence (I have no idea why they cut this part, as its amazingly cool and tense). Definitely the best of the Cameron bunch. My problem is that it isn't even the most improved directors cut on the Alien Quadrilogy (yes, its a dumb title for a box set).

Alien3 has gotten a lot of hate from hardcore Alien fans, mostly because of a troubled production (the script was written as the movie was filmed) and controversial changes (a complete re-edit) made after the movie was done filming. Today David Fincher is one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood, having directed many of my favorite movies including Se7en, The Game, and Fight Club. As his first movie, Alien3 attained semi cult status resulting from various rumors about the degree of studio intervention, lost scenes and a completely different workprint version which actually should have rebuilt Fincher's original vision.
I really didn't want to put this as my top movie, because there is no mysterious and lost Director's Cut of Alien³. An actual DC would have required Fincher to edit the movie with full artistic control. When the Quadrilogy set was put together, Fincher was still so angry at the producers that he completely refused to take part in any sort of re-edit.

The Quadrilogy set does have a completely restored and revised version of the original workprint which was created in 1991 (before the extensive studio re-editing happened). This version has a runtime of an additional 30 minutes, new sequences, and some previously unreleased optical/digital effects which were essential to integrate the new material into the movie.For me, the Alien3 workprint improves the movie to the point where its definitely a solid 8/10 (Alien and Aliens are both 10/10s for me) where as the theatrical version is only about a 5/10. I would love to see David Fincher get a chance with full creative control to make his own Alien movie in the future, but for now, the workprint is all we have.

That's all I have to say about that...

Patrick

some random type musings...

Alrightey,

The Collector... a horror movie that not many people saw in theaters (it had a fairly limited release and came out smack in the middle of summer 2009, right inbetween Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe). I watched it last night... it might be the most singular improbable, unbelievable movie plotwise I've seen.

Now I'm not counting fantasy/science fiction, but movies set in the "real world"... And yes, to think 55 year old Bruce Willis could have survived all the stunts of Live Free or Die Hard with nary a broken bone would be fairly improbable, but the actual plot of Live Free or Die Hard about cyber terrorism seemed somewhat plausible. I'm getting off topic though...

Basically the Collector involves a fairly clever thief named Arkin who masquerades as a handyman so he can get intel on the houses he steals from. (To me, this would be an easy pattern for police to pick up on... but not the police in this universe.) Arkin breaks into a house to steal a giant ruby from a jewelry broker only the very same house also has been taken over by the titular Collector. The hour and twenty five minute run time consists of Arkin trying to escape the Collector and get away with the jewel in order to fulfill a midnight deadline imposed by some loan sharks that Arkin's wife is indebted to.

(Those plot points by the way are all in the preview, so if anyone wants to watch the movie unspoiled, I'll only discuss the setup and things that are in the preview.)

The improbability of the movie comes from the timeline... Arkin gets off work, goes to meet his wife, then meets his job contact, then goes back to the house. His wife even complains that he's really late meeting her (so at the earliest, he's there at roughly 8-9 PM). The family he's burglarizing is supposed to be vacationing, but their very mature teenage daughter (this actress has to be at the very least 21) throws a vague fit... Anyhow, if you assume where he meets his wife is around an hour or so away from the family's house (remember, from 9 PM, he has to get to the house, steal the ruby, get back, and pay off the loansharks before midnight), that means he leaves the family's house between 6-7 PM.

So between 6-7 and 8-9 PM, the Collector comes to the house, incapacitates the husband and wife, boards up the windows, and proceeds to set up a simply massive array of booby traps all around the house. Some of these traps involve fairly complex 'mousetrap' style tripwires and pulleys, basically, its completely ludicrous to think that one guy can do what he does in the span of AT MOST three hours. There is no possible way for the Collector to know Arkin is coming back THAT NIGHT for the jewel. Assuming Arkin isn't there, the Collector wastes a ton of time for no good reason (Now, I realize that the daughter isn't home, so maybe the traps might be for her, but the killer is fairly adept with sharp objects... I don't think she'd be much of a problem).

A lot of reviewers compared this concept to the Saw franchise, and with a lot of color correction, a masked killer and booby trapped rooms, I can see some parallels. The difference is that Jigsaw from the Saw movies sets up all his traps well in advance of ever using them. Jigsaw also doesn't wear a Mexican style luchadore mask like the one at left painted black and actually chase people around like Jason Vorhees (the Collector's signature weapon is throwing knives, which is sort of cool but less practical then a machete). So for being such an expert criminal, the Collector has the most impractical logic bending method of committing his crimes as anyone I've ever seen in a movie (he's also a total idiot, as is Arkin).

The one thing about this movie I like is the actor playing Arkin, Josh Stewart (who resembles Sean Penn and Edward Norton a little), puts on a pretty good performance as the criminal hero Arkin. The guy behind the Collector mask is suitably creepy and is pretty intimidating despite being a fairly average to small sized guy (even more reason to wonder how he can set up his death traps). The directing overall accomplishes what it needs to, without the goofy rapid fire sped up Saw cutting (I like a lot of the overhead shots in the house). But for the amazingly silly, absolutely ridiculous script and concept... I can't say I recommend this as any sort of a good movie...

Collector gets... 3/10...

and that's all I have to say about that