First things first: we’re fully aware that “director’s cut” almost never means what we think it means.  In the film industry, a “director’s cut” is simply one version of a film that the director has personally overseen the editing of, despite the fact that this cut is by no means polished, or final. When we use “director’s cut” in regular usage today, we are usually referring to an alternate, “director’s version” of the film, thus implying that the theatrical release was not, in fact, what the original director had in mind. That being said, we will be using the phrase “director’s cut” as a synonym with “director’s version.” Just because, you know. It’s easier.

All of these films (excluding Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) have had at least one or two “director’s cuts” made after the theatrical release of their films; for some reason or another, the studio disapproved of the director’s original vision, and, as studios are wont to do, replaced it with their own. This is not even remotely uncommon in Hollywood, but we at Filmwad thought it might be prudent to revisit some of those films whose director’s cuts differ so strongly from their their theatrical versions that it becomes difficult to view the two cuts as even being the same film. While the director’s versions are almost always superior to the theatrical cuts, the different versions of these films aren’t necessarily awful: even the awkwardly-directed, hamhandedly written Lester version of Superman II still has its merits, and the studio-perverted version of Brazil is immensely entertaining in its total inanity.

In other words, it’s worth watching all of the different versions of these films; regardless of whether or not all the versions end up being entertaining, their changes and additions will tell you a lot about the politics of filmmaking, and how one or two small changes can transform the entire tone or purpose of a film.

Brazil

Thankfully, Brazil’s theatrical and director’s cuts are one and the same (UPDATE: This is wrong. The theatrical version is twelve minutes shorter than the ultimate edition, now available on Criterion DVD). Terry Gilliam’s tenacity in refusing to release a film he didn’t think was perfect remains admirable even today, and has been chronicled in the book The Battle of Brazil. Still, that doesn’t make the studio-edited cut of Brazil any less hilariously entertaining: Sid Sheinberg, chairman of Universal, evidently felt that Gilliam’s Brazil was too long, too depressing and too good.

To solve this, Sheinberg’s team made a ridiculous “love conquers all” version that not only changed the entire ending of the film, but also removed all the curse words, repeated unnecessary information to the audience, and removed all ambiguity and nuance concerning the political world the film takes place in.

Most amazingly, many of the edits simply make no logical sense: scenes in the film that end up being part of a dream sequence were left in by Sheinberg, but removed of their context as fantasies: characters are killed off in impossible, science-fictiony ways in Sam Lowry’s dream world (one character is devoured alive by paperwork), but, in the “love conquers all” cut, the audience is meant to assume that these things really happened. Sheinberg’s cut is a terrible, disgusting perversion of Gilliam’s masterpiece, but it’s goddamn hilarious if you’re a fan of Gilliam’s real version.

Payback

Out of all the films on this list, Payback is the hardest to judge. The theatrical cut was decent. The director’s cut is decent. Neither version is absolutely amazing, but neither version truly sucks. The original director’s cut involved a much different ending: instead of introducing Kris Kristofferson’s character and the resulting kidnapping subplot, Porter simply sets up a money drop at a subway station, and slowly, methodically, kills and/or subdues every gangster waiting for him before grabbing the money and getting shot (though not definitively killed) in the process. The ending was bleaker and more noirish, but pretty damn anticlimactic.

The test audiences didn’t approve of the ending, and, as such, Mel Gibson himself directed the third act of the theatrical release: instead of a simple subway gunfight, Porter kidnaps a gangster’s son in exchange for the loot, and then cleverly kills all the bad guys in one fell swoop. While this ending is satisfying and somewhat climactic, it’s also irritatingly happy: combined with the unnecessary voice-over narrations of the theatrical cut, the film seems much more audience friendly – sort of like a Lethal Weapon spinoff.

But which version is “best”? It truly comes down to personal opinion. The stark blue filter applied to the theatrical cut is sadly missing from the original director’s cut (now released on DVD as Payback: Straight Up). Without the blue filter in the director’s cut, Brian Helgeland’s amateurish directing really shines through: every scene is lit as if it took place on a cozy Sunday afternoon at grandma’s house, awkwardly contradicting the cold noir tone of the film. When Porter kills Val in Rosie’s apartment, for instance, the scene feels warm and friendly when it oughtta be rough and nasty.

And as much as I hate to compliment the anti-semitic bastard, Gibson’s directorial choices in the last act of the film, and his overall decision to apply the blue filter, do indeed make for a better-looking film. But also, as said earlier, a much weaker and more disrespectful one: we don’t have to be told, over and over by narration and other characters, that Porter was double-crossed and lost his money. We don’t have to be informed about characters by the narration before we’ve even met them. Helgeland, at the very least, knew this: it’s just a shame that Gibson didn’t.

UPDATE: It's been brought to my attention that it is equally likely (albeit just as rumored) that it was, in fact, production designer John Myhre who reshot the final 30% of the film, and not Gibson himself.

Kingdom of Heaven

If you’ve watched Kingdom of Heaven, you probably don’t have fond memories of it – if you haven’t watched it, you probably failed to do so based off the opinions of those who have. And really, no one can blame you: the first of two Ridley Scott films on this list, the Kingdom of Heaven theatrical cut was a mess – insufficient story and character development made the action scenes boring and uninvolving. Why would Ridley Scott, one of the most nitpicky directors on the planet, again fail to get his preferred version of a film on the screen? We may never know, but at least we have the benefit of a definitive director’s cut DVD that shows exactly what was missing from the theatrical release.

And story was missing. A good 50 minutes of it. A character Balian almost pointlessly kills in the theatrical cut is revealed to be his half-brother, the character Baldwin V is re-inserted into the pot, and every gratuitous scene of action in the theatrical cut now has an important, considerable context. Characters are now three-dimensional, relationships are more detailed and important, and the film actually feels complete: Ridley Scott refers to the theatrical cut as an action movie trailer for the “real” director’s cut. Indeed, the director’s cut is unequivocally better: at nearly 3 ½ hours it’s a bit harder to sit through, but it's infinitely more rewarding. After watching the director’s and theatrical cuts one after the other, it’s absolutely astonishing that Ridley Scott would even consider allowing the studios to release the butchered theatrical version when so much effort had been expelled on the obviously superior director’s version. Whatever weakness of character moved Ridley to allow a “happy” ending be attached to the end of Blade Runner is evidently still very much a part of his personality as a director.

Leon

The American and director’s cuts of Leon (known in the US as The Professional) are pretty similar, save for one eensy-weensy, tiny-winy, teeny-meeny thing:

Pedophilia.

Well, pedophilia and the excision of about 20 minutes worth of additional action scenes where Mathilda helps Leon kill people. This material was (somewhat understandably) cut from the American release for fear that US audiences would not be ready to see a 12-year-old girl sexually propositioning a grown man, much less helping him kill several of his marks. Missing from the American cut are a scene where Mathilda plays Russian roulette to make Leon admit he loves her, a scene where she openly asks Leon to be her first sexual experience and the aforementioned scenes where Leon and Mathilda break into the apartments of local drug dealers and kill them.

Americans were happy to look at the Leon/Mathilda relationship as a father-daughter thing, and nothing more: director Luc Besson was interested in the idea of platonic love between a young, mature woman and an older, borderline-autistic man. Viewer opinion will split on the overall impact of these reinserted scenes (as good and integral to the plot as they are, most film fans wouldn’t want to be labeled as “pro-pedophilia”), but they do, in the end, make the film much more intimate and meaningful – not to mention that one cut scene where Leon throws a grenade into a drug dealer’s apartment foreshadows the way he dispatches Agent Stansfield at the end of the film.

Yet even ignoring the sexual scenes, the exclusion of the drug dealer subplots really change the way the audience views the final act: when Mathilda walks into the DEA building intent on killing Stansfield in the American cut, we haven’t seen her do any killing (or, indeed, anything particularly violent); Mathilda is obviously weak, and there is no doubt that she will be unable to complete her mission. In the real cut of the film, we’ve seen Mathilda accompany Leon on several of his hits; though she never actually kills any of his targets, she watches several of them die and repeatedly helps Leon break into their homes. In the director’s cut, Mathilda seems very much capable of killing Stansfield: the suspense stems not from the fact that it’s only a matter of time before Mathilda is arrested or killed, but from the question of whether or not Mathilda will be able to go through with the murder she has been planning since the beginning of the film. The two scenes play out very differently in either cut, and it’s difficult to choose which tone is better – though the director’s cut is an undoubtedly better film, there’s a certain suspense in seeing an untrained, unprepared, practically defenseless Mathilda enter the DEA building in the unrealistic hope of achieving her revenge.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

In Sam Peckinpah’s filmography, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid should, for all intents and purposes, be one of Peckinpah’s most “normal” flicks. It’s firmly situated in a genre Peckinpah was known for (westerns), it’s based on a fairly straightforward true story (Pat Garrett, former friend of Billy the Kid, is hired to track him down and kill him), and it had a remarkably star-studded cast for its time. This makes it all the more surprising that Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid remains one of the oddest, most original and most outright artistic films Peckinpah ever made.

Bit of a shame that no “real” version exists. Peckinpah made a director’s cut (a real director’s cut, as defined above), but the studio kicked him off the project before he had a chance to finalize it. Studios didn’t understand why Peckinpah wanted Bob Dylan to do the score, or why the film wasn’t as action-heavy as The Wild Bunch, or why Peckinpah so frequently insisted on being symbolic instead of overt. Tired of Peckinpah’s pesky “vision” and “intelligence,” the suits cut down Garrett to nearly half its original length, excising the prologue and almost everything else, save for the scenes of violence. The theatrical cut was positively awful, and critics blamed Peckinpah.

Then, years later, Peckinpah’s original, rough director’s cut was found and, allegedly, broadcast on television a few times. For Garrett’s  2005 DVD release, three versions were included: Peckinpah’s Rough Cut (called the Turner Cut), the Theatrical Cut, and the Special 2005 edition, which attempts to fine-tune the rough cut in a way film historian Paul Seydor assumed Peckinpah would have done.

The Turner and Theatrical cuts are understandably imperfect (the former through a lack of polish, the latter through just plain suckitude), but the 2005 version is almost startlingly inconsistent: Seydor frequently attempts to “fix” things he believes Peckinpah does incorrectly – sometimes he’s right, and sometimes he’s wrong.

Seydor intelligently cuts excess dialogue in certain scenes (particularly in one of the opening scenes, where Billy discusses why he hasn’t killed Pat yet – because “he’s my friend"), but other times it appears that Seydor honestly doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He cuts out Slim Pickens' final line, a symbolic non-answer to the question of where Billy the Kid has run to (“Paris, France”); he removes several lighthearted scenes in the third act simply so the audience can get to the anticlimactic showdown more quickly – yet cutting things like humor, symbolism, and longer buildup seem totally counter to Peckinpah’s original vision. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is most assuredly not The Wild Bunch, yet Seydor edits the film as if it were. When comparing the Turner and Special editions, there’s no clear winner: each has its own undeniable pros and cons. If you want to see an in-depth dissection of the differences between the two, you can check it out here.

Mr. Arkadin

It’s actually unfair to say that Orson Welles’ Mr. Arkadin is simply broken up into theatrical and director’s cuts: in reality, there have been no less than seven different versions of the film. Some European releases were inexplicably called Confidential Report, some versions have entire scenes missing or out of order (ostensibly to make the plot easier to follow), and certain versions even have the names of the cast and crew changed for no immediately evident reason. As is the case with Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett, the studios edited Arkadin without Welles’ permission. What resulted was a film that remained more or less totally incomprehensible or absurd in all of its versions until Criterion recently decided to create three “definitive” versions:

The “Corinth” version is thought to be the last edit of the film that was still under Welles’ control; the film maintains its fractured timeline and, in a general sense, remains faithful to Welles’ original vision – but its rough transitions and sloppy pacing make it obvious that Welles never got a chance to truly “finish” this version.

The “Confidential Report” version, originally released in Great Britain, was evidently edited for morons. Not only is the film robbed of its entire mystique by placing the plot in an ordered, sequential timeline, but this version also comes with an irritating narrator who restates information and tells the audience things they should already know. Additionally, the motivations of certain characters are changed: when a dying man imparts some information about Mr. Arkadin to the protagonist in the original version, he does so because he is lonely and desires a friend. In the "Confidential Report" version, he does so out of a stereotypical desire to gain revenge.

The “Comprehensive” version is, for all intents and purposes, the “best” version, as it was edited together by film historians Stefan Drossler and Claude Bertemes based off five different versions and general comments Welles made about how a perfect edit of the film would have worked. While everything that made the film so interesting is present (its enigmatic opening shots of an empty plane and a dead woman on the beach, its fractured timeline), it may also feature too much material that, as with the Corinth version, mucks up the pacing of a few scenes despite the fact that, as a whole, it is a much “tighter” cut.

Daredevil

Daredevil is a sub-average film no matter which way you look at it. I personally enjoyed it quite a bit, but I have to admit that the film is often just plain bad. Colin Farrell’s performance as Bullseye is hilariously over-the-top (which, again, is something I liked, but could not possibly defend in an argument), Ben Affleck is playing Ben Affleck, and the action scenes are pretty mediocre. How did director Mark Steven Johnson attempt to fix these problems? By creating an R-rated director’s cut, of course!

Yet, the new version is an undeniably odd one: in addition to including a wholly unnecessary subplot wherein Matt and Foggy attempt to defend an innocent convict (played by Coolio, of all people), the film removes one of the best scenes in the theatrical cut. When Daredevil and Elektra kiss on a rooftop in the theatrical version, Daredevil is immediately interrupted by the sound of a child in danger on the streets below. Elektra tells him to ignore it, and – shockingly — he does. The two go back to Daredevil’s apartment and screw like bunnies. In the R-rated cut, Daredevil does the typically heroic, Spider-Man-ish thing and rushes off to save the boy, leaving Elektra alone and abandoned on the roof. Perhaps one of the only interesting and truly original scenes in the theatrical cut is replaced with a cliched superhero rescue, a ridiculous Coolio/Kingpin subplot, and a few more F-words? Jiggawhat?

The R cut also adds some extended family scenes between Matt and his mother and father, some more violence (especially in the first fight scene in the biker bar), and a remarkably dark bit near the end of the Bullseye/Elektra fight.

Still, though: Coolio?

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now Redux has never been explicitly referred to as a director’s version, but that’s essentially what it is: Coppola intentionally went back to the film and re-inserted over 45 minutes of additional footage before re-releasing it in theaters. But is more necessarily better? Instead of including dozens of small cuts or changes as is the case with many of the director’s versions on this list, Redux includes large scenes not present in the original version, including a scene where Willard trades gasoline for sex with the Playboy bunnies (seen at the USO show earlier in the film), a scene where Willard steals Kilgore’s surfboard, a scene where Kurtz reads Time magazine to a group of Cambodian children and, most substantially, a scene where Willard’s men find a French family living on one of the last remaining French-occupied plantations in all of Vietnam.

While the Playboy and surfboard scenes work fantastically within the overall scheme of the film (both humorous scenes take place in roughly the first half of the flick before the shit really hits the fan, and the Time Magazine scene gives us more Brando), the interlude with the French colonists screams to be cut from the film and relegated to the special features. The scene takes place far too near the end of the film; the French scene is the last scene in the film before Willard meets Kurtz, and considering the scene takes up at least fifteen minutes of screen time (Willard spends the night and sleeps with one of the women), it positively kills the pacing. Not to mention the scene abandons all of the surreal subtlety of everything that precedes it: Willard has dinner with the Frenchmen, who tell him, directly and hypocritically, their reasons for being in Vietnam. Where Coppola was content with suggestion and horror early on in the film, the characters in the French colony decide to simply expound with lines upon lines of dialogue. Not to mention that the music for the French scene was evidently scored by someone other than the original composer: when Willard has sex with one of the French women, the music suddenly becomes extremely synthesizer-heavy and almost begins to sound like bad 80s softcore.

Many of the added scenes in Redux are fantastic on their own merits, but the original theatrical cut is much tighter and consistent than the seemingly slapdash way certain Redux scenes play out.

Alexander

Again with the three different versions: Oliver Stone’s epic biopic was split into three different cuts. The differences between the theatrical cut and the first director’s cut are generally negligible.  Apart from the inclusion of actual BC date overlays instead of “30 years earlier” titles (according to Stone, most moviegoers didn’t realize that 356 BC comes before 323 BC) and less Rosario Dawson sex (which begs the question as to why anyone would bother buying this version), the director’s cut mostly consists of the in/exclusion of very short scenes and/or narration.

The biggest differences are between the first two cuts and the third version: Alexander Revisited: The Final Unrated Cut. This version extends the running time from an average 170 minutes to a whopping 217-minute running time (for those of you unschooled in simple division, this equates to roughly thirty-two hours). Revisited is almost undoubtedly the best version, including more character development, less confusing battle scenes, and – thankfully – more Rosario Dawson sex. Oliver Stone considers this the “definitive” version of Alexander, though one has to wonder why it took him three tries to get it right – especially when considering that the film – even with a tighter narrative structure, an added half-hour of footage, more gore and more Rosario nudity – isn’t particularly great. It’s still cruelly impersonal, frequently overblown and Colin Farrell still manages to be consistently almost-interesting.

But, you know. More Rosario Dawson sex.

Superman II

During production on Superman II (filmed at the same time as the first Superman), director Richard Donner argued with the producers over budget, Marlon Brando’s presence (the studio wanted to excise all scenes with Brando – not doing so would have forced them to pay Brando millions in likeness rights) and the studio’s increasing desire to make the film more campy. Eventually, Donner (who had completed at least 75% of the film) was fired and Richard Lester was brought on to “finish” the final 25 percent. Yet, in order for Lester to actually achieve a legitimate directing credit, his footage needed to comprise at least 51% of the finished film: as a result, Lester re-filmed many of Donner’s sequences in addition to filming his own, new scenes. Which sucked.

The theatrical cut of Superman contains about 25% Donner material and 75% Lester.  Funnily enough, Lester shot his scenes at least two years after Donner shot his footage, resulting in a Christopher Reeve who starts lean, then gets buff, then goes lean again, and a Margot Kidder who looks two years older, then younger, then older. The changes in time and director may not have been particularly noticeable to those audience members who didn’t know of the behind-the-scenes troubles, but the resulting film is undeniably uneven in tone – Donner’s scenes are reasonably straight-faced, while Lester, as per the suggestions of the studio, camps it up.

Only now do we have a full, official version of Richard Donner’s cut – though that’s not to say it’s necessarily better. Though the Lester/Donner ratio has been reversed (Donner’s footage now makes up 75%, and Lester’s is only used when absolutely necessary), the film bizarrely includes (very obvious) screen test footage from the first Superman film in order to bridge a continuity gap during a scene at Niagra Falls, the old “fly around the world really fast and reverse time” trick is used, again, and the editing does, indeed, make it feel more like a bootleg mishmash of scenes rather than a full movie that can be enjoyed by any given moviegoer.  Still, though, some crappy editing and a few lousy scenes don’t make it any less invigorating to see more Brando, more Hackman and more Donner in this quasi-definitive cut of the Superman sequel. Purists may prefer the campiness of Lester’s cut simply out of nostalgia, but (editing problems aside) Donner’s cut is generally better.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner is the single best science fiction film ever made. Not Star Wars. Not Serenity. Blade Runner’s ability to take genuine philosophical questions and wrap them around an assumedly action-packed sci-fi flick about a bounty hunter who blasts robots is nothing short of genius; those looking for an exciting time at the movies will be sorely disappointed with Blade Runner’s almost meditative reflections on what it means to be a human. Yet both the theatrical and director’s cut versions are extremely flawed, to the point that the so-called “director’s cut” is really not a “director’s cut" at all. Ridley Scott’s true version will be released in a special edition DVD package sometime this year with some newly shot footage (What? Newly added footage? Like what George Lucas did with Star Wars? Please God no.) and Scott’s personal edits on the film.

For now, though, cinephiles have to deal with two imperfect versions of the film: the theatrical cut and the Warner Bros. “director’s” cut.

The theatrical cut, edited without Ridley Scott’s permission (though he obviously didn’t put up a fight on a Gilliam-esque level, because this imperfect version still was the one that went to theaters), includes two main changes: firstly, voice-over narration that runs through almost every other scene in the movie. This narration helps give the film a much more “noir” vibe, but, at the same time, it does all the thinking for the audience; instead of letting the viewer guess what Deckard is thinking, or letting the audience draw its own conclusions about the Replicants, the narration directly informs the audience what they should be thinking and paying attention to.

The other large change in the theatrical cut is the pasted-on happy ending: after Deckard and Rachel leave his apartment, we cut to the two of them driving through an absurdly green and sunny countryside (absurd because we know for a fact that pollution or war has killed pretty much all plant and animal life on the planet by now), as Deckard’s narration informs the viewer that Rachel is a “special” Replicant: unlike the other androids who have lifespans of only four years, Rachel has no expiration date. Deckard plans to spend the rest of his life with her. The ending is disgustingly saccharine, totally unwarranted, and it contradicts the theme and tone of the rest of the film in favor of making the audience feel better. Critics rightfully railed against the theatrical version of Blade Runner, though they praised its special effects.

The “director’s” cut removes the narration and happy ending, but has problems of its own. This cut was not, in fact, overseen by Scott, and as a result, many of the shots drag: where there should be narration, there is only silence and the shots are not truncated to reflect this change. When you remove the narration from certain scenes without cutting them down, we get scenes that hold on Deckard’s face for a long, long, long time without anything really happening. This contributes to the subtle, meditative tone of the film, but it does indeed make it easy to lose interest, and it’s not what Scott wanted. The other big change in the pseudo-director’s-cut is the inclusion of the “unicorn” scene: as Deckard falls asleep on his piano, he dreams of a unicorn running through a forest for a few seconds. Later on, when Gaff (a rival Blade Runner) leaves an origami unicorn at Deckard’s apartment, the audience is meant to assume that Replicants, who have implanted memories, also have implanted dreams – thereby proving that Deckard is a Replicant.

Sci-fi geeks can and have argued over whether or not Deckard was a Replicant for many years, but the unicorn scene essentially removes all doubt: if Gaff knows what Deckard has been dreaming, then the only possible explanation apart from the grossly unlikely coincidence that both men have obsessions with unicorns is that Gaff knows Deckard is a Replicant. Furthermore, the unicorn scene distracts from the symbolism of Gaff’s origami unicorn in the first place: when taken as a symbol, the entire point of the origami unicorn is to suggest that all life, even the life of a Replicant like Rachel, is truly precious and must be protected. If Deckard is a Replicant, then this origami unicorn loses all its symbolic significance and simply becomes a plot device.

Additionally, the film makes no thematic sense of Deckard as a Replicant: the entire point of the film is that the “artificial” Replicants have a greater excitement and lust for life than the “real” humans, who walk around the film in a perpetual stupor. Life, the film says, is a subjective state of being. Yet if the boring, emotionless Deckard turns out to be a Replicant and not a human, and if Roy Batty (the lead Replicant) saves Deckard’s life at the end of the film simply because they are both Replicants, then this theme is rendered meaningless. Roy’s decision to save Deckard shows that he has come to the realization that even the life of a man who wants to kill him is worth saving because of the painful brevity of life. If the scene is just simplified by a case of “well, they’re both Replicants so they’re looking out for one another,” then the film immediately loses its point.

Ridley Scott has repeatedly stated that Deckard is a Replicant: far be it from me to disagree with the director of the film, but…well, he has to be wrong. Write angry emails if you must.

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