Among the many blessings of civilization is the BluRay. BluRays (and DVDs and home video before them) meant that if you loved film, you, too, could finally own a copy of some classic like Casablanca and sigh over its greatness time and again. But like many other gifts of Western capitalist culture, there is a downside.
One of them is the “Director’s Cut.”
Film history would be a lot more boring without the stories of enfant terribles (and later, adult pain-in-the-asses) like Orson Welles battling against the men with the souls of accountants over their art. Most of the time, it turned out the accountants had a wicked right hook and the artist would end up on the canvas while their vision was butchered.
Some director’s cuts are good. Dances with Wolves added additional backstory without seeming like Costner was giving himself a public handjob. Peter Jackson hit the height of his craft as a director with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he gave his fans more of what they wanted, more time in a Middle Earth that was both familiar and fantastic.
Then there are those… other efforts. Recompilations of beloved, fondly remembered work that are suddenly as welcome as a visit from your creepy uncle who just finished a 25-year stretch in San Quentin for his bad habits.
Ego? Ambition? Pharmaceuticals?
Whatever it is, there are some “Director’s Cuts” that took otherwise fine, fun films and turned them into something as thrilling as watching a carousel slide show of your eight year-old nephew’s geology field trip. Here is just a palate-wrinkling sample of some of the worst of the once-good.
(Note: we’re going to completely overlook that charming genre “UnRated and Now with More Torture Porn!”)
1. Last of the Mohicans
What a great, thrilling film this was. I saw it three times in the theatre when it was first released and owned the soundtrack on CD. Then came the day Michael Mann looked at either his bank account or the film and decided, “let’s take another run at that.”
Mann, a notoriously demanding director, for whatever reason hadn’t quite gotten the verisimilitude he was hoping for when he made a great movie out of a justly-mocked book from the 1800s. To give the Mann-iac his due, the additional character scenes and background were acceptable, but to really put us into the world of the time, he apparently randomly airbrushed india ink over huge sections of the film.
By God, he wanted you there, and if we were watching a scene set in the forest on a cloudy night, then it was going to be dark. Not just artfully shadowed, but blackcat inside a coal mine dark. I’m talking “Mommy, we wandered off the trail four days ago and I think the bears are coming down from the mountains to eat us, but they’ll only be able to find us by scent because I haven’t seen a shimmer of light in hours” dark.
For whatever reason, Mann took a compelling adventure/love story and turned it into a lengthy exercise in eye-strain.
2. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Most comedy seems to work when it has heart, and this film had that, with Steve Carell channeling a kind of Jim Carrey vibe while managing to remain recognizably human (hint: guess which one will have a longer career).
But that heart and the sweet story of a guy finally finding love was hidden underneath MORE potty jokes and MORE ad-libbing that went on way too long (were they stoned only when they filmed those scenes or did the party continue back in the editing bay?) and MORE whacky boobies.
Take a movie that borders on eew (while it was funny, about 20 minutes in I was finding the gratuitous profanity kind of battering) and what do you add? MORE eeeewwww.
3. Blade Runner
This film (and Watchmen, below) are ones that many cognoscenti (and even myself, depending on the day) would argue against including on this list.
The original Blade Runner as I first experienced it in a strip mall in Alexandria, Virginia, is still my favorite (confession…I loved the bored voice-over… it was right out of 50’s noir). But as of last count, there have been 176 “authorized” versions of the film pressed onto plastic disks for purchase and I’m pretty sure there’s a Lego-version in the works.
Was it just a cash grab? A tax-write off?
No matter, because after one has waded through the work-print, the first Director’s Cut, the re-release version, and the final Authorized Gold-Stamp of Approval, what do you get?
(Spoiler warning! Editor’s note: a page break speed bump put in for anyone who still hasn’t seen Blade Runner)
Deckard is a replicant. He dreams of unicorns. Have a nice day.
Okay, that’s not entirely fair. The most recent DC did do a nice job of tidying up some film work that was limited by the technology of the times (wires on flying cars removed, actresses face CGI’d onto what was clearly a smaller stunt woman in a bad wig), but seriously? Just smack us in the face (like Brion James bouncing Harrison Ford off cars and buses) with “He’s one of them.” Let’s take subtly and subtext and Lambada it into the grave.
4. Watchmen
Zack Snyder earned a lot of good-will from me with 300. I had high hopes for his adaptation of Watchmen and for the most part, I wasn’t disappointed. Yeah, Alan Moore took a moment from his avocation as aspiring pornographer to frown about the heresy of taking his beloved comic and making it a, sniff, film, but a lot of what was on the screen was great.
Most especially Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach, which in a just universe would have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but I digress. Naturally, when the Director’s Cut was released, I got one. Maybe in an excess of faith, I got a couple. But even though the addition of deleted scenes right from the sacred text (the colossal Dr. Manhattan striding across a Vietnam battlefield comes to mind) were welcome, the rest of the film was eviscerated by a cause I can sum up in two words: Malin Ackerman.
Sweet Jeepers, who cast her in that part?
Was it that she looked good in high boots? Was it because she had a great profile (below her shoulders)? Gad, every time she appeared on screen, it became more and more painfully obvious she wasn’t just wrong for the part, she’s wrong for film.Any kind of film, anywhere.
Watching her “act” was the visual equivalent of getting a root canal with a blow torch. While one part of you is screaming “Dear God when will this be over?” another more intellectual part is pondering “What does a casting agent have on Zack Synder that forced him to put Malin Ackerman in this movie?”
More “Rorshack” almost makes the extended Watchmen worth it. Almost.
(Profanity warning for hilarious video below.)
5. Star Wars
I’ll eschew the hysterical sobbing references we’ve all heard about how “George Lucas raped my childhood,” but one has to admit this is the reference standard of unholy Director’s Cuts.
I mean… George Lucas made American Graffiti, a film full of heart and affection. Then he made Star Wars, the movie that brought fun back to an increasingly grim cinema — say what you will about Taxi Driver, it wasn’t exactly enjoyable or uplifting.
Not only that, $tar Wars launched careers and entire industrie$: book$, toy$, video game$, theme park attraction$, $pecial effect$ hou$e$. The man created an entire mythos which took on a life of its own, so why go back and start shoe-horning additional scenes into the movie…when there had already been five additional films, hundreds of novelizations, and a buttload of video games explaining what that poorly filmed scene from 25 years previously was now re-explaining?
And if you don’t know what “Han shot first” means, we have nothing further to discuss. (Honestly, the only thing stupider than that would be to take a beloved film about a lost, innocent immigrant being hunted by unfeeling law enforcement bureacrats and erasing every gun in their hands and replacing them with radios. Oh, wait…)
There’s an entire additional category of misbegotten Director’s Cuts: expansions of films that never should have been made in the first place.
I’m looking at you, Peter Jackson, the computer technician behind The Hobbit: The Battle of Five CGI Armies, but that’s a discussion for another day…
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